Contracting as a PM - whats it like out there?

[Charl1e brown74]

Here’s some more fuel for the fire:

The 4 years experience I have is all with the same company, it’s a medium sized company turning over 80-100 million a year. Prior to this I was in a non IT related job.

They had (and still have a policy of taking on people with little experience but who are keen to get on) hence the pay bracket I’m in. I know my boss is onto a good thing with me but his ‘budget’ dictates that 21K is all I am worth to the business.

I look at it like this: I am in this for the long term and have stayed to get ‘experience’ as being able to deliver the specified product is key. (I do actually care about being very good at what I do, I’m not a fly by night.)

I see myself as a strategic PM, (as opposed to technical) even though I work in an IT dept and 80% of my projects are IT related. I manage teams of up to 5 people, and budgets range from 10K to 65K the 6 projects I quote are my ‘best’ examples, 6 months is about the longest time taken to implement anything I have ever worked on. Not sure if it helps but I am 30yrs old?!

From what you guys have said, and being realistic, I would pitch myself at the London PM market looking to get 300 a day, minimum 250. At this stage to double my gross annual income would be fantastic!! Securing a first contract and building a solid reputation is my first priority.

Enjoy

[malvolio]

From the lofty heights of 15 years of multi-million pound projects, and as someone who started about where you are now...

Go for it, but be aware that it is very competitive and there's a lot of chancers out there (default option for failed techies these days is to become a PM. It only takes a week to get Prince2...). To be blunt, if I saw your current history on the CV I probably wouldn't give you the interview, much less the job, because a PM on £21k is usually either doing something badly wrong or is puffing up his credentials. So...

Your CV will have to focus entirely on successes to date measured by delivery to time and budget and net business benefit, it will have to be well presented (you're a PM - organisation and presentation is 90% of the job) and you will need a better story for going freelance than "I want the extra money" (even if that's true!)

Given all that, and on evidence to date, you may have a half decent chance, but be careful what roles you go for until you get some proper freelance history behind you. And be prepared for being rejected...

[Underscore]

Change your CV to say circa 35k.

[WageSlave1]

CB, where you might find some difficulty is marketing yourself as a strategic PM but coming from an IT environment. If you have worked on IT projects then clients and agencies will automatically label you as a technical PM. If you want to be a strategic PM, then you really need to focus on change management (not in the PRINCE sense but rather the business transformation type).

At 30 you are not too young; a lot of clients dislike young PMs, despite their experience and skills. However, I would be a little concerned about the small budgets you have controlled. Most clients are looking for PMs with experience of managing budgets over £1,000,000.

Personally, I wouldn't take your £21k salary as a bad sign, as there are lots of companies out there prepared to take advantage of staff who don't know the market rate, but that's just me. You need to remember that the majority of people on this board are pure techies and have a strong dislike of project management, so you will always encounter the 'pms are failed techies' attitude. Certainly this can be true, and God knows there are enough incompetent PMs in the market to give the profession a bad reputation, but there are good PMs around.

You need to manage your career very carefully. You mentioned that government sounded an attractive route. The reality is that government is a large market for project management; it's recession proof and thanks to the poor quality of civil servants a vast skills gap exists. However, once you get into government it is incredibly difficult to get out again. Private sector clients will never look at you in the same way again, so be warned!

[rebekkaloos]

Why are you guys focusing on that 21K salary? Surely you don't put your current salary on your CV!!!????!?!?!? Of course the agent will ask "how much are you on", but do like everyone, lie - when an agent asks me for my current rate, I usually tell him the rate I want to be on for my next contract. Say you want more, the agent will find ways to make you reduce your asking rate, but it will be easy for you to tell him you do not want to go below what they think is your current rate, and for him to accept this, and away you go!
A low salary can indeed mask a problem (which agents will pick on, as they only understand money and not skills), so just adjust the facts to your targets - in that case it's for a good cause and you are not cheating anyone - lying about your skills and experience is not a good thing (although we all do it to various degrees), lying about your rate/wage is not a sin at all in my book.

[malvolio]

That's what I said, actually...

One of the points I was making was that if I saw that £21k was the last salary or £75k was the top managed project budget, then bye-bye candidate for a major piece of work. That's why I suggested stressing business impact and delivery as opposed to how much it cost. It works the other way, as well - why would I trust a £20m piece of work to someone who can only command £300 a day?

Don't forget I and other at my level get get a dozen applicants evey time I look for people and the filtering has to be pretty abrupt.

[WageSlave1]

Re: That's what I said, actually...

Malvolio, I take your point and it's sound advice.

Which industry sector do you work in? And when sifting through a mountain of CVs for a PM, what do you want to see? What pushes all the right buttons?

[malvolio]

What do I look for??

Good question. I don't there's a simple answer - picking CVs out of the pile is often more subjective than objective.

Not technical qualifications, not a long list of specific experience of 38 diffierent flavours of .NET, but solid evidence of having done a similar job in the past. Clearly I'd expect to see exposure to the discipline in question but I've never been hung up on having people from specific sectors (I'm working in enegy at the mo, but two of my team are ex-banking) - it's relevant to a business analyst, but a PM is a manager first and a technical expert second. If you're moving 400 servers around, it really doesn't matter that much what they are supporting. If you're delivering an application build, you'd better undersand the business side but not necessarily how the code is put together (that's what specialists get paid to do)

However, for PM roles, and where I have several equally capable people, I'll be looking at the style, layout, consistency and content of the CV itself, as much as the experience it describes: if you want to persuade me that you will be paying attention to the complex task of relocating an internet server farm, it would help if you could produce a three page CV without avoidable typos on the first page.

And the other golden role is "no bulltulip" - that gets spotted a mile away

[WageSlave1]

Re: What do I look for??

Malvolio, thanks for the explanation. I certainly know what you mean about the BS. I once received a CV for a PM position where the candidate had a recent position listed as 'Relocation Project Manager'. Upon reading the description is was obvious she had hired a couple of decorators to paint her bungalow!

[malvolio]

Actually...

having just re-read my previous post, I would seriously fail my own quality standards for grammar and spelling

But hey - it's been a long day...