IT Career Advice - Project Management/TeamLead/Developer?

Question

I'm an IT professional with 12 years of experience. I have a B.S. in computer information systems. I'm also PMI Certified as a project manager. I'm kinda in a jack of all trades role right now. My company offshored all development. So, I get my hands into code to tweak it. I coordinate web development refresh activities and migrations. We aren't following formal project management activities.

Many job ads want a strict project manager or a strict developer. I wouldn't consider myself either and I'm not sure how to position myself in an interview for a strict role like Project Manager or Developer? Going for either role would make me look under qualified in comparison to other candidates. How do I better sell myself or position myself when I'm probably not going to be the most highly qualified candidate because of the role and experience I'm currently in?

Answer 1

On the contrary, I think that even though jobs list strictly "PM" or "Developer", you have the best of both worlds - you're a developer AND a PM. And to be honest, every developer needs to know how to do a bit of PM, and every PM needs to understand what a developer does.

Going for either role does NOT make you look underqualified, but rather more like a well rounded individual.

Structure yourself based on the position that is being offered.

So for example:
Project Manager - IT Integration Systems

- make sure you meet the qualifications (PMI certified)
- 5-10 years experience
- undergrad in Computer Info Systems, etc etc..

And then look at the skills they're asking you to have:

If they really emphasize for example:

"Must understand ITIL concepts"

Then read up on ITIL concepts (Wikipedia has a slew of overview info on this, or you can check out libraries that have free info), and go through what you know from your 12 years of experience in the IT field and match it up to what you're reading in ITIL. Then when you get into the interview, you can throw in a bunch of situations containing ITIL concepts inherently.

I think you're selling yourself short, especially since you're PMI certified. When they say they want a PM, you have to at least be certified, and have experience in it - which you do (most companies ask for 3-10 years, and you have 12. You're more than qualified).

And you just have to think about your current job and your experiences and think of the best way to position them, based on what the job wants. So if your job is informal, changes a lot, has outsourced a lot, then you can say things along the lines of: My current job offers a lot of challenges, and while the bulk of the coding is managed overseas, I project manage the process using these PM concepts [Insert a couple of well known ones] and tweak code as necessary (which highlights that you know some coding). Then bring up some situations where you've shown your skill in being a PM.

It's all mostly based on what you've taken out of the jobs as experience, and what you did to benefit the company you were working for. You need to highlight results.

Same experience, different approaches example:

If Candidate A were to go into an IT job and said: I coded in _____for telecommunication companies, along with a bunch of people in India and managed them as well.

And Candidate B went in and said: I coded in _____for telecommunication companies, to bring in an additional $10M of revenues to the company by finding a more efficient way to manage the company's main applications by using relational databases. In addition, with my honed project management skills, I led the team in India and finished all of our projects within a tight timeframe, with a 24 hour response time.

Who would you hire?