Developing Young Professionals in The Field of Project Management – Eskandar
Abstract:
Developing young professionals in the field of project management directly has a great return on investment. Historically project manager came from other fields, such as engineering and IT among others, later on learning proper skills necessary. With such huge demand for project managers along with the available resource it is more imperative than ever to develop project managers at younger ages and bring them into the work force.
At Exelon we started a new recruiting strategy over a year and half ago to bring in project managers directly after completing their undergraduate degrees. They take on smaller budget projects with the support of a senior project manager, a senior manager’s mentorship, and a strong project controls team. We have promoted several associate PMs (newly hired) to the role of project managers, operating independently.
In order to do this, we relied on the following strategies:
- Explaining the over all vision of how the one project the associate PM is working on fits into the bigger picture.
- Seeing the big picture is important.
- Developed an extensive training course of how project management is done at Exelon Specifically.
- Relied heavily on mentorship.
- Built relationships between the associate PMs so they support one another.
PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills
PDUs: 0.75
