Educating the Recruiters

To aid recruiters in finding the best fit between opportunities and skill sets for project managers, allow me to share some helpful pointers.

First, it is important to understand that most employers tend to use the term project manager to mean many different things. It is very common in mature industries such as construction, manufacturing, utilities, telecommunications and aviation to identify project managers as real full-blown managers with the authority to hire and control a budget. It is very common in high tech industries such as software to identify project managers as supervisors and even administrative staff.

There is of course is a difference between managers, supervisors and administrative staff. In the most basic terms, administrative staff performs tasks on behalf of managers and have no decision-making authority; managers on the other hand control assets and supervisors control resources.

Another way to say this is that managers are agents of the company, which means the have decision-making authority over some form of company asset. Assets include the cash that is used in hiring workers, as well as the cash that is used to purchase materials and other assets such as equipment.

Supervisors have decision-making authority over the application of resources such as knowledge, skills or experience that workers use. The key here is to understand that workers are neither assets, nor resources. Workers are people who apply resources of knowledge, skills or experience.

Administrative staff may maintain reports and communication documents, but have no power to author commitments or promises.

When looking for a management type, look for the PMP. PMP stands for Project Management Professional, the certified management type. PMP’s must learn to negotiate contracts, select and hire team members, build teams and control budgets among other things. PMP’s are certified in their mastery of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK). The PMP certification is owned and operated by the Project Management Institute (PMI).

To the best of my knowledge, there is no certification for a Project Supervisor, Project Lead, Project Administrator or Project Specialist.

It has been a couple of weeks since John Krafcik was name CEO of Hyundai Motor America. Not exactly a household name.

While little has been shared in the popular press about John, he is famous for the term LEAN Manufacturing, which is used in association with the American interpretation of the Toyota Production Systsem (TPS).

While many like James P. Womack get the press for writing about LEAN Manufacturing, John has been the person actually doing LEAN Manufacturing and his promotions seem to honor his accomplishments.

John went from earning an engineering degree at Stanford to NUMMI where he learned about the TPS. Then on to MIT where he was a graduate student and worked with Womack. He then went to Ford where he spent 14 years practicing and then on to Hyundai.

Way to go John!