Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Salary Trends for Project Managers and the Like

PMI’s 2015 Earning Power survey reveals that current project management compensation varies widely.

The Project Management Institute’s 2015 Earning Power report, which is based on a survey of more than 26,000 respondents in 34 countries, detailed 12-month salary trends among 15 demographic variables and shares important insights on roles ranging from entry-level project managers to senior executives.

Overall, most participants (72 percent) reported that their total compensation (including salary, bonus and other forms of compensation) increased over the 12 months prior to completing the salary survey, with over one-fourth (27 percent) of respondents reporting increases of at least 5 percent over that time period.

The median annualized salary recorded in this survey, across all countries, roles and experience levels was $81,000 (USD). Approximately 75 percent of respondents earned at least $53,689 (USD), and the upper 25 percent earned at least $110,000 (USD). However, median salary varied greatly depending on a number of key demographic factors including the following:

• Country of employment
• Number of years of experience in project management
• PMP® Certification Status
• Position
• Average size of projects managed, including average project budget and average project team size

Country of Employment

The median salary for someone in the project management profession varied widely from country to country. The country with the highest median salary ($130,000) was Switzerland, whereas the country with the lowest median salary was Egypt ($19,602).

Industries

Project managers in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, mining, consultation, aerospace, engineering, utility, government and IT industries were among the highest paid.

Experience

Although the total number of years of work experience did not appear to impact salary, the stronger correlation was with the number of years a person had worked within the project management profession. The most dramatic increase was seen in Singapore. The median salary ranged from $47,657 for those just starting out in the project management field to $131,972 for those who had been in the field for 20 years or more. This represented an increase of 177 percent from low to high experience in the field.

The difference in median salary was not nearly as striking in China, for example. For those with less than three years’ experience, the median salary was $21,073 compared with $29,178 for those practicing project management for 20 years or more.

Certification

The majority of participants in this study earned the PMP® certification.  Those with the certification were paid more than those without in virtually all of the countries. The largest differential was noted in South Africa where PMP holders had a median salary 47 percent higher than those without the certification.

In nearly all countries, median salary steadily increased with PMP tenure. In Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, the median salary of those who had been certified for 10 or more years was more than double those who had been certified for 5 years or fewer.

For the rest of the piece, check out QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

Negotiation Tactics for a Game-Changing Deal

The prospect of negotiation can be frightening. You may be accustomed to treating your goods and services as commodities, where the set price is the set price. Or you may have close relationships with your loyal customers and be reluctant to disturb them. And sometimes the process might feel unnatural and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, negotiation is a part of life in most types of businesses, and your long-view success can depend upon putting these five tactics to work during the sales process.

1. Understand What’s Really Important

In his book Give and Take, Wharton faculty member Adam Grant suggests an approach called rank ordering. Grant’s negotiation research illustrated that participants achieved stronger outcomes when they ranked all their issues in order of importance. The idea is to share your rankings with the other party and compare them so each party walks away with the items that are most critical to them. This process usually involves trade-offs—for instance, a shorter warranty for a reduced cost.

As a small-business owner, the prospect of negotiation can be frightening. You may be accustomed to treating your goods and services as commodities, where the set price is the set price. Or you may have close relationships with your loyal customers and be reluctant to disturb them. And sometimes the process might feel unnatural and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, negotiation is a part of life in most types of businesses, and your long-view success can depend upon putting these five tactics to work during the sales process.

1. Understand What’s Really Important

In his book Give and Take, Wharton faculty member Adam Grant suggests an approach called rank ordering. Grant’s negotiation research illustrated that participants achieved stronger outcomes when they ranked all their issues in order of importance. The idea is to share your rankings with the other party and compare them so each party walks away with the items that are most critical to them. This process usually involves trade-offs—for instance, a shorter warranty for a reduced cost.

 

2. Hear Your Customer

William Ury, the author of the negotiation books Getting to Yes and Getting Past No, recommends listening carefully to your customer, acknowledging their needs and agreeing whenever possible. Should the customer ask for something extra, probe sincerely. Why is this necessary? Instead of pushing your agenda, imagine that you are a mediator. Come back with an alternative arrangement (Ury calls this the golden bridge) that incorporates their ideas and shows that you understand their position.

3. Throw Out Your Dream Price

If a customer asks you how much a deal will cost, consider starting high. Why? If your customer balks, it can be easier to negotiate down than to negotiate up. In her book The Heart and Mind of the Negotiator, Northwestern professor Leigh Thompson calls this the anchoring effect. Essentially, the first offer is an anchor that establishes a set point for the rest of the negotiation. The number that you ultimately settle on will likely be somewhere within the anchor’s general vicinity.

For more where this came from, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.

Do You Reject Candidates Politely?

Once your first choice has accepted the job, how do you close the loop with the other candidates who have interviewed?  My first piece of advice is to contact them and let them know of your decision.  This may sound obvious, but it’s shocking how many organizations don’t do it and just leave candidates hanging.  If a candidate takes the time to interview with you, you at least owe her the courtesy of a phone call or email.  Here are some general best practices:

Err on the side of overcommunicating

You can get things off on the right foot by explaining your selection process before or during an interview.  When you provide this information, the candidate will know exactly when they can expect communication from you and will be less likely to check in repeatedly about offer status (or sit and stew about why they haven’t heard from you).

Yes, you must use a phone

Now that most organizations have an applicant tracking system and/or career portal that can send automated emails to candidates at various stages of the recruitment process, there’s no excuse for allowing a rejected candidate to disappear into a black hole.  However, if they went through the trouble of coming in for an interview, you should really call them as soon as you’ve given an offer to someone else – if not sooner.  You’d be surprised how fast word gets around in local job hunting circles.  If your call gets sent to voicemail, leave one.  They might be one of those non-checkers, but that’s not your problem.  A voicemail is better than no call at all.

For the rest of my tips, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

Hiring: Are You Being Too Picky?

The 2014 Job Preparedness Indicator study conducted by the Career Advisory Board confirmed previous reports that a skills gap exists at all levels of U.S. employment. Only 7 percent of hiring managers said that “nearly all” or “most” job seekers have the right combination of skills and traits that their companies need to fill open positions. This belief causes them to spend months interviewing candidates, often walking away without having hired anyone at all.

What’s interesting, though, is that the hiring managers in the study also said that they commonly see essential, individual skills – such as accountability, problem-solving, and time management – among candidates.

What does this mean? I’d speculate that although hiring managers recognize stellar traits when they see them, they won’t settle for anyone who isn’t the perfect package.

I think that sometimes, hiring managers forget that they are dealing with human beings. And human beings simply aren’t equipped to be all things to all people all the time. For example, you could bring in a candidate who has the exact experience you’re looking for and appears to have a strong work ethic, but her verbal communication isn’t top-notch because she’s not a native English speaker. Or maybe you get that native English-speaker who uses correct grammar in everyday conversation and has the best employment track record you’ve ever seen, but her experience isn’t in your industry.

I’d argue that given the skills gap, you ought to seriously consider both of these individuals. And yet more often than not, hiring managers don’t. They remove them from consideration because in an endless series of qualification boxes, one isn’t checked. They don’t hire anyone because candidates for which every single box is checked don’t exist. The expectation that they do is unreasonable.

For advice on how to appropriately manage expectations, check out my advice on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Using ROI to Make Your Case for a New Program

Last spring I had the opportunity to keynote the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM)’s 60th anniversary conference in Chicago.

After I spoke, I attended an extremely useful session from Elizabeth Ruske and Betsy Sobiech of Tiara Coaching. Although the topic was elevating global women’s leadership, the speakers presented a simple process for planning a strategic, ROI-generating initiative that is relevant across the board. I only wish I had had 10 years ago. In the HR space, ROI can be rather elusive, and this is one reason our functions tend to get relegated to the tactical realm. For your future benefit, here is Tiara’s process using women’s leadership as an example.

Step One: Assess Where You Are

Rate women’s leadership development in your organization from 1 to 10, with 1 being that no programs currently exist, and 10 being that you have visible efforts and sponsorship for female leaders. On the same continuum, indicate where you will be by next year, and where you will be by the year 2020. While completing this step, consider that women’s leadership development might include women’s affinity groups, mentoring for women, succession planning, leadership and career coaching, learning opportunities, rewards and recognition, recruiting and hiring, company communications, and other efforts designed to attract, retain, and advance women.

For more where this came from, please visit the full post at the SilkRoad blog.

Help - My Team Always Backburners My Priorities!

When you work on a team that must collaborate on competing priorities and yours always seem to be the last to get added the “to do” list (or sprint if you’re doing Agile), how do you advocate/influence the team to give your work/tasks priority over their own? Do you just say, “OK guys, it’s been two months and I still haven’t gotten any support from team member X to finish the Acme project. Are you going to have some cycles next week?” What if they say, “Sorry, still working on the Jones project, maybe next month?”

Along with several of my colleagues at the Intuit Fast Track blog, I weighed in on this issue:

"Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not all that surprised that your colleagues aren’t tripping over themselves to prioritize your projects. It sounds like you are approaching them with the attitude “I need you to help me with my projects,” and what exactly is motivating them to do that?

Here’s a hard truth about the business world: other people don’t care what you want or need. Human beings are selfish creatures and want to know what’s in it for them. If you need your colleagues’ assistance, you have to make them want to help you.

How do you do this? First, examine the situation from their point of view and determine their work priorities. What do they have to get done, and how are they being evaluated? Then, in your initial approach, talk about what they want and how your completed project can help them get it.

Since I don’t know what your projects are, I can’t offer you specific wording, but here’s an example from my own career. Once upon a time, my colleague Alan knew that one of my job responsibilities was to find and publish the latest Internet marketing statistics on our team’s blog. He needed my help convincing our supervisor to buy us access to a new monitoring service. While this new service would benefit Alan and his team, he knew it would also benefit me.

Here’s what he said: “Alex, I think this new service would help you research your stats in half the time. If you could mention this to Paula, that would be great.” I had no trouble supporting Alan’s cause because he had made clear that it was going to help me as well. It was a win for Alan because he got his service, a win for me because my research time decreased, and a win for the company because productivity went up!

This approach does take a bit of extra time and consideration, but you’ll more than make up for it by cutting nagging time and more quickly harnessing your colleagues’ cooperation."

For the rest of my colleagues' answers, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not all that surprised that your colleagues aren’t tripping over themselves to prioritize your projects. It sounds like you are approaching them with the attitude “I need you to help me with my projects,” and what exactly is motivating them to do that?

Here’s a hard truth about the business world: other people don’t care what you want or need. Human beings are selfish creatures and want to know what’s in it for them. If you need your colleagues’ assistance, you have to make them want to help you.

How do you do this? First, examine the situation from their point of view and determine their work priorities. What do they have to get done, and how are they being evaluated? Then, in your initial approach, talk about what they want and how your completed project can help them get it.

Since I don’t know what your projects are, I can’t offer you specific wording, but here’s an example from my own career. Once upon a time, my colleague Alan knew that one of my job responsibilities was to find and publish the latest Internet marketing statistics on our team’s blog. He needed my help convincing our supervisor to buy us access to a new monitoring service. While this new service would benefit Alan and his team, he knew it would also benefit me.

Here’s what he said: “Alex, I think this new service would help you research your stats in half the time. If you could mention this to Paula, that would be great.” I had no trouble supporting Alan’s cause because he had made clear that it was going to help me as well. It was a win for Alan because he got his service, a win for me because my research time decreased, and a win for the company because productivity went up!

This approach does take a bit of extra time and consideration, but you’ll more than make up for it by cutting nagging time and more quickly harnessing your colleagues’ cooperation.

- See more at: http://quickbase.intuit.com/blog/2014/06/03/my-team-constantly-back-burners-my-priorities/#sthash.HrCUcat7.dpuf

Are You Hiring the Best People to Manage Your Projects?

When you bring in new project managers, do you do so strategically?

Interviewing is subjective, of course, but for the essential job of Project Manager, you want your process to be as bulletproof as possible. After all, ending up with a bad Project Manager could cost you big time. Fortunately, PMO director Russell Harley is here to share his best practices for making the right hiring decisions upfront.

Alexandra Levit: Russell, what’s the biggest mistake that hiring managers make when recruiting new PMs?

Russell Harley:  They use generic job descriptions. You’ll see things like “good communication skills,” “be a self-starter,” and “work well with teams.” Well, job descriptions like this will quickly get you overrun with responses that are hardly targeted. So instead of wasting time with vagaries, describe the details of the actual project, and if you want it done using a certain methodology, say so.

While stellar project managers can usually work on any type of project, there are certain projects we really enjoy doing versus ones we are capable of doing but would prefer not to. By putting the specific needs for the position into the job description, you are far more likely to get responses from project managers who really want to do that type of project. And wouldn’t you rather have someone leading the team who doesn’t think of it like a dentist appointment?

Alex: Do you recommend hiring PMs for specific technical skills?

Russell:  Someone once commented on my blog that a good project manager’s knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep. Technical skills can often be learned, but excellent PM skills are harder to come by. By requiring PMs to have very specialized knowledge, you will dramatically reduce the pool of applicants, and an outstanding PM who could do amazing things for your company might be left out. Deciding on what is truly needed for every position will save you time and attract the right people.

For more of Russell's tips, have a look at the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Cope When Your New Job Is a Bust

According to a new survey by staffing firm Robert Half, 41 percent of workers said the role they accepted at a company was different than what had been outlined to them during the interview process.

If you find yourself in this situation, what’s the most productive way forward? To gain insights into this unfortunately common scenario, I tapped Paul McDonald, senior executive director at Robert Half.

Paul, from the company’s perspective, why might a job not be what was originally intended? Where is the disconnect?

Companies don’t set out to trick candidates who might not be a good match for the position. Sometimes the needs of the company may change during the hiring process or soon after an employee joins the team. A project may change, goals may shift, team resources may vary – and or all of these could impact a new hire’s job duties.

Or…the company didn’t really know what it wanted in the first place! If you are a new employee and you’ve realized after a few weeks that your actual job is nothing like it was described in your interview, what is your immediate recourse?

Request a meeting with your manager to review the job description as it was discussed in the interview process, as well as your goals and expectations of the role and how they differ with reality. Your manager might be able to address your concerns and adjust your duties. Many times, professionals don’t address things that are bothering them at work, which lowers their morale and makes the situation worse.

For more advice from Paul, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Workplace Lessons Learned from Prison

Do you ever wonder what happens to all the disgraced business leaders and politicians who get caught and end up in jail?  Jeff Smith, a former up-and-coming star in the Missouri State Senate, can partially answer that question for you.  After all, he went to prison for a year for covering up an election law violation.

Smith spent his tenure talking with fellow prisoners, who were mostly drug lords, about business.  It turns out that there are some striking similarities between life in the Big House and life in the business world.  Now a political commentator and writer, Smith inspired these workplace lessons in this recent TED Talk.

Everything is a Hustle

As you might gather from watching cable, prison life is not easy.  In order to survive, you have to hustle.  Smith tells us that prisoners have to pay for everything, including toothpaste, and the in-house jobs don’t cut it.  If you want something, you have to find an unorthodox way to get it, such as charging another inmate to clean his cell.  Think about it – it’s the same deal in the business world.  Unless you’re the boss, getting people to collaborate with you can be like pulling teeth, and bureaucratic red tape often keeps you from doing your job.  Success absolutely requires the ability to hustle.

Innovation is King

Smith says that one of the defining aspects of prison life is ingenuity.  Whether it’s concocting delicious meals from stolen scraps from the warehouse, sculpting people’s hair with toenail clippers, or constructing weights from boulders in laundry bags tied on to tree limbs, prisoners learn how to make do with less.  The most effective professionals are the ones who can innovate in order to improve operations, products, and services and save the organization time, resources, and money.  Your upward career trajectory directly depends on being able to accomplish spectacular results on a rapidly fraying shoestring.

For more about what prison can teach you about the business world, visit the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Chocolate and Business? Sign Me Up!

What's not to love about a book that uses the analogy of chocolate?

I'm sure Rose Fass felt the same thing as she was writing her new book, The Chocolate Conversation : Lead Bittersweet Change, Transform Your Business.  An experienced business transformation consultant and a former executive at companies like Xerox and Gartner, Rose shows us how leaders can avoid a meltdown and instead drive change by the way they communicate in a language that all stakeholders can understand - just like chocolate!

I asked Rose to share of our top tips for leaders coping with change here:

• When faced with a merger or acquisition, keep in mind you need to establish new standards and rethink your worldview.  Appoint an integration manager to address cultural differences and work to create a third identity.

• Every leader's job is to translate and create an emotional connection with his or her constituents. It’s important that people see themselves in the change that has to happen in your company. You can’t call yourself a leader if no one is following you.

• Craft your message carefully.  Distill it to its essence.  If you use message discipline effectively, it will translate into operational discipline.  Listen to your people, seek feedback, and do something with it.   

Rose uses a lot of big business examples in the book, but I believe the advice she gives about the art of conversation apply in our personal lives as well.  Sometimes, even when you're technically speaking the same language, you have to be a great translator.  This talent can mean the difference between whether a change initiative succeeds or fails.