Here I am at my first day of university starting the journey for my MSc in Applied Project Management. Of course we start with the most important module, Principles of Project Management. Our module is based on the publication: An Introduction to Project Management” by Kathy Schwalbe.
I am pleased to hear that the publication is similar to the framework published by PMI – PMBOK Guide 5th Edition.
The first seminar session at the course was to go through job search engines to determine what companies are looking for in Project Managers. This was aimed for our small group to come up with the skills the market looks for under “Project Manager”. The search engines we were tasked to look at are indeed.com, reed.com, and monster.com
My teammate and myself decided to pick one search engine each and start the search accordingly. We immediately came across 2 different roles. I picked the financial sector and she picked the IT sector. And to add more diversity, we decided to choose Marketing & PR for our 3rd sector.
Here is a snap shot of what we found:
|
Financial Sector* |
IT Sector** |
Marketing & PR Sector*** |
| Gathering Business Requirement & Producing Documentation | Understanding the framework of Project governance, defect management and configuration management | Defining and developing of the project statements of work with the Managing Director and Client Engagement Director |
| Liasing with teams to ensure all requirements are understood | Plan and schedule resources | Working closely with stakeholders to achieve effective scoping, planning, forecasting and implementing requirements which add real value to both the client and the agency in terms of outcomes. |
| Responsible for implementing the process change including and technology aspect | Track and report on overall progress. Co-ordinate creation of a fortnightly project update pack | Management of project teams – UX and UI designers, front and backend developers and testers |
| Ensuring smooth and timely delivery of changes and enhancements | Record and track invoices and Sales Orders relating to the project | With strong project management skills and experience of delivering marketing campaigns, user experience projects and large web builds. |
| Responsible for producing relevant project documents such as process flows and business documents | Strong written and verbal communication, minute meetings and drive follow up actions, Confidence when challenging decisions | You will be a strong team player who formulates and communicates coherent plans and manages priorities well. |
| Provide updates to stakeholders | Ability to prioritise work, driven to complete tasks to deadlines | Excellent presentation, interpersonal and organisational skills and line management experience is desirable. |
| engage with SME to drive progress efficiently | Experience of analysing large amounts of data and managing small change implementations i.e. Change Requests | You will be an experienced, Project Manager or Account Manager with experience within |
The conclusion to this is that if you intend to go into project management, make sure you learn the framework of project management. Once learned, you can put into practice in any sector or industry. Of course, practice makes perfect. So the more you work in a certain sector and apply the project management framework, the more experiences you gather and the more you learn from each project’s lessons learned.
If you would like to read more about the framework, have a look at my earlier post Simplifying a Framework.
References:
*The Financial sector was based on a job advert for Project Manager – Liquidity Risk for Bank of America on indeed.com
** The IT sector was based on a job advert for IT Project Manager at Lifeways group on monster.com
*** The Marketing and PR sector was based on a job advert for Project Manager in a London marketing company on reed.co.uk
The Project EDIT 
Hey, all the best for your Masters journey. Reading your previous posts, I was under the impression that you already have a Masters in Project Management, which makes it even more amazing.
Coming to this post, it was quite informative. I personally am more interested towards the finance sector so this gave me something to ponder upon.
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Thank you so much! I am certified with practical experience. My masters is finally happening. Am glad you found it informative. I also like the financial sector. That’s how my career started!
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