PM POWER Moves: Breaking INTO Project Management - Vol 014: Job Description TAILOR

Welcome back to the PM POWER Moves newsletter! If you missed any of the other iterations, check my profile to read!

I've been actively engaged on LinkedIn since April of 2022. In that time, I've developed a niche of aspiring project managers looking to translate their existing experience (like I did) to gain new opportunities in the project management field. My desire for my content (and this newsletter) is to be able to help YOU do that!

I will be publishing this newsletter every other Sunday and covering a wide variety of content to leverage in your own experience and career to help provide you opportunity!

This week's topic: Job Description TAILOR

If you’ve followed my content for any amount of time, you know that I highlight the need to tailor your resume to the job description often (along with every other LinkedIn resume content creator).

The reality is, it’s true and necessary to gain opportunity into today’s job market.

The problem is, you don’t know how to do it, for any number of reasons.

• You’ve never done it before
• It seems very overwhelming
• You’re unsure how to do it

Luckily, today’s newsletter will show you how.

I’m going to include a common project management job description and:

• Break down what you should be providing from your current position.
• An example from my own experience of what I’ve provided to address it/highlight my skills.

Let’s get to it.

PM job description excerpt:

""Attends project meetings and assists with determination of project requirements. Assists in development of project plans and schedules. Utilizes project administration tools to monitor project plans, work hours, budgets, and expenditures. Provides day-to-day support to projects ensuring all deliverables are at an acceptable level of quality before proceeding to the next. Assists in identifying, assessing, and facilitating resolution of business and technical problems/issues/risks. Assists in post-close analysis of process improvement for future projects."

What you should highlight:

• Outlined WHAT work to do and WHO should do it as well as WHEN and HOW LONG it should take. Ideally, you will have overseen that work from start to finish.
• Communicated with teams regularly to ensure that work was being done properly and on-time.
• Watching/tracking any deviation from the work being done and anything that could derail it. If an issue came up, talk through how you documented it and talked through strategies to resolve it.

Example from my experience:

"Duties include creating, managing, and updating timelines, budgets, resources, vendors, and key project deliverables from project initiation to close out as well as assess project risks, propose resolutions, manage change requests, and track implementation of resolution through to completion to ensure successful and on-time project delivery."

PM job description excerpt:

"Assists in the development procedures, processes, and milestones while working with management staff to resource projects accordingly. Develops and maintains productive working relationships with project team and third party service providers/vendors integral to project delivery. Ensures effective communication between all members of the project team by ensuring timely and appropriate generation, collection and dissemination of project information."

What you should highlight:

• Suggested WHICH people should be doing the work and why.
• Worked with those people and any outside companies to complete work.
• Documented work as it was being done and communicated that status to the team and other stakeholders appropriately.

Example from my experience:

"Established a therapeutics screening facility with multiple stakeholders, requiring budgetary planning, resource allocation and delegation with multiple groups, teamwork, data collection and analysis, report generation, and deadline adherence."

Make sure to add supportive metrics wherever you can. I didn't add specific metrics to qualify my experience here, but you definitely should (if you know them and are legally allowed to). These can include:

• Size of team or number of departments worked with/impacted
• Budget
• Number of customers rolled-out to/impacted
• Revenue generated/saved
• % of something (% adoption, % increase/decrease in X outcome, etc.)

These are just the start. If you want to show IMPACT, you have to be SPECIFIC about how it was applied. Metrics support your outcomes, provide them as often as you can!

Another great option for helping you do all of the above with your own resume and comparing it against multiple job descriptions is through a free platform called Teal.?

You can save JDs and match your existing resume against it, tailor based on the keywords and hard/soft skills highlighted, and then save separate drafts for each resume in 1 place.?Check it out!

LinkedIn “Hack of the Week”

Austin Belcak is the king of providing LinkedIn hacks for better networking via LI for job seekers.?

Rather than breaking down his steps, I’ll just send you to his most recent carousel to level up your commenting to build your network effectively and leverage toward a new opportunity.

If you’re not already following Austin, you should be.

Check the carousel resource out here!

Thank you for reading! Hopefully this week's newsletter has resonated. I'd love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for future topics that you'd like me to cover. Please let me know in the comments below or DM me!