Have you noticed the number of job adverts for "Project Managers", as the recruitment industry calls them?
When I was a project manager it involved complex scheduling, allocation of nonexistent resources, critical path analysis, extensive monitoring, producing reports that no-one read until the project was late and countless, interminable meetings to ensure the project was on track, all with the aid of some pretty nifty software which took at least a year to master.
If you read today's adverts in depth you discover that the requirements of the role are no more onerous than being able to make a shopping list or order some printer ink. Not a mention of proficiency in Prince II or even MS Project.
Another much misused word in the recruitment industry is "Director". Whereas it used to mean someone on the board of a company or at the very least running a department, it's now invariably a sales person.
When I was a project manager it involved complex scheduling, allocation of nonexistent resources, critical path analysis, extensive monitoring, producing reports that no-one read until the project was late and countless, interminable meetings to ensure the project was on track, all with the aid of some pretty nifty software which took at least a year to master.
If you read today's adverts in depth you discover that the requirements of the role are no more onerous than being able to make a shopping list or order some printer ink. Not a mention of proficiency in Prince II or even MS Project.
Another much misused word in the recruitment industry is "Director". Whereas it used to mean someone on the board of a company or at the very least running a department, it's now invariably a sales person.
1 comment:
Project managers these days are pale shadows of the former glory of practitioners of that profession; the only attribute required seems to be a skin thick enough to wander around groups of actual workers asking "is it done yet", then injecting a 30 second silence followed by "how about now"..
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