Career advice

Managing your personal brand: an interview with Dr Andrew Makar

March 4, 2013

Today I’m interviewing Dr Andrew Makar, IT programme manager, blogger and author of Project Management Interview Questions Made Easy, about managing your personal brand at work and building a professional project management profile. Andy, why is it important to have a professional project management profile? Would you hire an individual dressed up in a bed [...]

6 Things I didn’t know about being a project manager

February 20, 2013

I decided to be a project manager. Admittedly, it wasn’t until I started working that I knew such a job existed, but when I realised I did, I knew it was for me. However, even though I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for there were still some things I didn’t know [...]

3 Steps to Presence: Book Review of The Power of Presence

March 5, 2012

Presence. It’s that thing all successful project and programme managers have. It’s when you walk into a room and the team subtly acknowledges you’ve arrived. You see it when the project team listen to a good project sponsor talking about the project’s objectives, or when a portfolio manager discusses the business benefits that will be [...]

Advising Upwards: Interview with Dr Lynda Bourne

February 6, 2012

Today I’m interviewing Dr Lynda Bourne, author of Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders (Gower, 2011). Lynda is CEO of Stakeholder Management Pty Ltd, a training and consultancy firm based in Australia. Lynda, your book is about helping project managers communicate better with executive stakeholders. Let’s start at the beginning. [...]

Focus on Coaching: What a coach does, with Josh Nankivel

January 4, 2012

It’s January, which means it is cold and grey and we are looking to do things better than last year. That’s why I’m spending January focusing on coaching and the role it can play in improving your performance and that of your team. Today I’m talking to project management coach Josh Nankivel about what he [...]

Turning the Generation Gap upside down: 5 tips for working with Baby Boomers

December 7, 2011

PM Network last month reported that 65% of people feel that there is a generation gap in project management. We are living in the first period where five generations are working together in the workplace. Experienced (i.e. older) project managers now have Generation X and Generation Y people on their teams. The age differences at [...]

Ask the Smart PM: Networking Within the Organization

July 18, 2011

This is a guest post by Conrado Morlan, the Smart PM. Dear Smart PM… I am a new hire at the project management office of a large corporation. I had been working in project management for several years as a freelancer. Although I consider myself to be a good networker, I found difficulties networking within [...]

Two career resources

July 2, 2010

Two new career resources for you today: Stepping into Project Management Stepping into Project Management is a new website from Soma Bhattacharya which aims to pair novice and experienced project managers together to form mentoring relationships. You might know Soma from her blog: she’s an Assistant Project Manager who started out on her journey to [...]

6 More tips for getting taken seriously at work

April 12, 2010

Last month I wrote an article for The Glass Hammer on being taken seriously at work. I was surprised at the feedback I got and at how many people worry about not being considered a serious player in the office. Young women seem to suffer the most – at least, I’m most aware of it [...]

Going up? Taking a sideways step in the job market

March 8, 2010

The career path for a project manager is pretty straightforward. Start on project support and small projects, manage bigger and bigger projects, then become a programme manager. Some people would argue that programme management and project management are different skill sets and programme management is not necessarily the natural progression. But programme managers earn more [...]

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