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Project Manager job interview can become a dreaded experience like a, well, performance review. 🙂 While it need not be, if we can focus on certain things beforehand, we often can engineer our job interview to be a pleasurable experience for ourselves.

And for the interviewer.

And thus increase our odds of getting the job.

Interviewing thousands of people for various positions over the decade and a half, and appearing for half a dozen interviews myself, here are 5 areas that I think are essential to focus before the interview.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Do these 5 things and you’ll feel confident of doing well during in your next job interview.” user=”@pmexamsmartnote” hashtags=”projectmanagerinterview, interviewtips”]

1. Know what YOU want in the next job

This is really the key.

We often try to refine our expectations based on job positions available at a company we want to work at.

Are you looking for new job because you are not able to grow in your current role?
Are you looking to make a move from, say PM role, to PMO role?

What exactly is that you want in your next job profile?

If you know what you want and are able to find a suitable profile, you will be able to enjoy the work. When you enjoy what you do you have a greater chance of excelling and growing in the company.

What if you don’t know what you want in the next job? [continue reading…]

Yet another month rolls over and more PMESN community members get their PMP certificate! Join me in congratulating –

Lalit Sharma, got his PMP certificate on 13-March-2014 and
Cristian Rimoldi, passed his PMP on 24-March-2014
(did I miss anyone? 🙂 )

There are two good news this month.

First, we have 5 winners for 3 positions in our PMP-Question-Of-The-Day contest. First and second place tied. Who would’ve thunk? 🙂

Here are the winners

First place tied between – Manikya Rao Eppa and Onuoha Uma
Second place tied between – Lalit Sharma and Munir Hossain Auntu
Third place goes to – Sharat Kanti

Congratulations to all the winners.
Scroll below to see the entire list of participants who scored points.

Winners, please mail me so I get your mail Ids to send certificates (shiv-at-pmexamsmartnotes-dot-com).

What’s the second good news?

[continue reading…]

Just completed another ebook – ‘The Super Guide to PMP Question Types’.

This eBook describes 13 different types of PMP questions.

Why is it necessary to identify the ‘type’ of PMP question?

Well, although 4hrs seem quite a lot of time for the exam, considering that you need to answer all of 200 questions (including 25 pre-test questions) – you get just over a minute to solve a question.

Then there are moments of lapse in concentration, calculation based questions that take time, and even a necessary break you might have to take (coffee/rest room/water) – which may mean you get less than a minute per question.

Every minute you can save will give you an additional minute to tackle tough questions.

This is much valuable considering that a re-test will take more money, more time and delay in reaching goals tied to PMP certification.

While knowing your concepts AND practicing mock tests do help – if you are able to identify a question type, you can quickly use the appropriate strategy to answer it, thus giving yourself ‘additional’ time for tougher questions!

That is what this book does – it identifies 13 types of questions and strategies to answer them quickly. Further, it shows sample questions belonging to the type so you know how they look like and how to answer them.

This book also reveals my overall strategy to get most of the questions right on the exam, and to get best results for the same amount of exam preparation. In short, it ensures better ROI.

For a limited time I am giving this book away for free.

Click here to see how you can get this book.

Note – this is in addition to other 3 free ebooks I am already giving away, which complement your PMP study and help towards passing the exam on first attempt.

Which means to say that Work Performance Data that goes into a process as input comes out as Work Performance Information. And Work Performance Information that goes into a process comes out as Work Performance Reports.

Work Performance Data is the raw project data, which, when analyzed under a particular project context becomes Work Performance Information. And then Work Performance Information when presented in a suitable manner (tabular, graphical and so on) becomes Work Performance Reports.

Work Performance Data typically contain hard numbers – number of defects, start date of an activity, actual cost and so on.

Since most of the project management processes are executed in a parallel and/or overlapping manner (based on the intricacies of the project) and rarely in a linear fashion. In PMBOK guide the processes are described in a linear manner just for the ease of understanding.

When you use Work Performance Data as an input versus Work Performance Information as an input depends on the process being used. Work Performance Data typically is an output of Direct and Manage Project Work – which is nothing but the actual project work. And so this process belongs to Executing process group. Sounds logical, right?

Examples of Work Performance Information are forecasts, status of work packages and so on.

Now, with the same logic, this output should go as input into Monitoring and Controlling processes such as Control Scope, Control Schedule and so on.

Work Performance Reports are just that – Reports. Weekly status reports, Defect fixing reports, Agile dashboards and so on.

From some of these processes Work Performance Information comes as output and becomes input for Monitor and Control Project Work. And as per above flow diagram it turns into Work Performance Report as output.

And that’s the relationship between Work Performance Data, Work Performance Information and Work Performance Reports.

By the way, did you know that many people have passed their PMP exam by just using the exam notes on this blog? You can access all of my study notes for free, from the Menu above on this page.

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If you’ve ever wondered how to get promoted at your place, well, knowing the environment that you are in there may be few things right in front of you that you are overlooking. However, getting promoted need not be at the mercy of others, it is in our hands, to a good extent.

Here are 8 ways to get promoted quickly. Most of them need investment of time and effort on your part, so if you have just missed that promotion in the recent performance appraisal, it’s time to plan now.

1. Start doing the tasks of your next position

Being good at your position is nice, but not enough. In fact, being just ‘good’ at your position is a sure-fire way to NOT get promoted. No one wants to move someone who is doing a good job at her place. You need to be too-good for your position. Be willing and open to taking up opportunities to do some of the tasks of next level.

This will result in indication to your management that you are ready to move to the next level (which by the way results in a better ROI for them on your salary).

2. Help your manager do her job well

This goes well with the first point. Everyone is busy. If you can help your manager get some of her work done, two things will happen –

(1) you get to be mentored by your manager and get to learn new skills
(2) your manager can focus on doing tasks of her next level. Win-win? [continue reading…]