Keywords are becoming KEY!
In this incredibly tight hiring environment, I'm seeing a major divide in thoughts about hiring Project Managers. On one side of the coin is the argument that hiring a Project Manager for an Information Technology environment is great, provided that they came up through the programming ranks - on the other side they want professional PM's that have more Project Management experience than technical expertise. In many cases I see that hiring PM's that used to be programmers is not the greatest fit - OK, I'm trying to be kind here. To clarify, I'm not saying that a good programmer can't be a good PM, just that in many cases the skills that make someone good at linearity do not usually equate to good people skills. And anyone that doesn't realize that people skills are required to be successful in this job, really doesn't understand the job at all. So that means, in half of the cases, a traditional professional PM doesn't even make the first resume cut.
Reviewing a ton (and I do mean TON, I received over 600 resumes in less than 24 hours for a Junior PM position recently) has also brought the importance of “keywords” to my attention. While reviewing resume's I, and most of the Human Resource professionals that I know have been utilizing these keywords as an initial screening tool – no keywords, you get filed under “G”. Keywords and terms that I've identified as being especially important recently are “Enterprise”, “Best Practices”, “Efficiencies” and “SDLC” - without the specifics “popping” out of your resume when defined as part of the requirements of the position, you are dead in the water.
This may be a redundant posting, but if you are presently looking for work, make sure that your resume is very well tailored to the position you are posting for. After all we have to remember that the true purpose of a resume is to get you a meeting so that you can sell yourself. I have a friend that tells me that it's like dating – “the purpose of a first date is to get a second date”, so let's keep it all in perspective. And let's keep our heads up, the economy is cyclical, this won't last forever!
