Today rather than dispense some valuable project management wisdom, I want to share a major personal frustration of mine … fake job posts. Let me explain what I mean by that. There is a whole bunch of organizations in my city that - due to (I guess) provincial laws - are required to post an external ad every time they have an opening. Even in the scenarios when they have either (a) an internal candidate, (b) former colleague they want to hire or (c) a current friend who they think would be a great fit for this job. As a result, the employer usually follows one of the two scenarios:

Scenario 1:

Create a job description that is so unique that no other person on this planet fits the description.

Example 1.1

“We need an expert-level senior business analyst who is also an internationally acclaimed project portfolio management authority” (Note: it is just like saying “I need a plumber who is also skilled at neurosurgery”)

Example 1.2

“We need a project manager who had at least two ERP implementation projects at Company A in the last three years” (Note: Just how many ERP implementations did Company A have in the past three years? Seven? Eight?)

Example 1.3

‘We need a project manager who also possesses a clinician experience” (Note: Google Dictionary defines “clinician” as “a doctor having direct contact with and responsibility for patients, rather than one involved with theoretical or laboratory studies”. I will let you come up with a joke of your own on this one)

NOTE: None of the above job descriptions are a figment of my imagination! They are very real!

Scenario 2:

Write a normal job description and invite three to seven unsuspecting candidates and then subject them to an excruciatingly boring panel interview. Avoid talking about the project itself, ask a whole bunch of really dumb questions. Thank them at the end. Still hire your former colleague or friend.

1. PowerPoint – create your status reports in the PowerPoint format. For one they are very easy to project on the wall when conducting stakeholder meeting both at the project and the PMO level. Second, they look attractive; after all PP has been designed as presentation tool!
2. Length – keep your reports limited to one slide. This approach will help you with selecting the most important information bits about a project. Also, keep in mind the limited attention span of the senior managers. The last thing they want to do is to listen to essays being read out to them at the status meetings (And, yes, I have seen that happen!)
3. Name and Date – Include the name of the project manager and the date of the report (see Figure 1)

Figure 1

I frequently employ an exercise when teaching my courses; I ask the audience members to think for one moment of their idea of a "dream home". I ask them whether they thought about this before and the majority of them agree that yes, indeed over the course of their lives they have given this topic a lot of thought and can envision this building pretty well.

Then I tell them that they now have to sit down with me - and I am willing to invest as much time as needed - and describe the house to me in detail, down to the type of flooring in the kitchen and living room, colour of the walls in the master bedroom including the exact shade, specific type and model of faucets in the bathrooms, molding in the dining room area, etc., etc., etc. The goal of this exercise is that at the end of it I should have a detailed blueprint of the building and the bill of materials including product SKUs I can go to, say, Home Depot with and purchase all the necessary supplies.

After a couple of minutes someone in the room exclaims,

“But that is impossible! How can you expect us to know all the little details about the house?”

Why am I telling this story? The reason is that thinking that one can easily come up with a complete list of detailed requirements at the beginning of the project is a self-deception. Requirements elicitation is a long and at times painful process of probing, asking questions analyzing the preliminary results, coming up with more questions and investigating again.

Furthermore, once the technical experts sit down to have any kind of requirements elicitation interaction with customers or users, they (the users) do not necessarily provide the analysts with a structured model of requirements that follows a predefined taxonomy. In other words, the customers rarely start these conversations by saying, “I will cover all of the high-level business requirements first, followed by product features. And at the very end I will provide you with all the functions and attributes of the product".

The requirements management domain is by far the most advanced in the technology field where the requirements are (see Figure 1) traditionally broken into:

• Business Requirements (or problems, or objectives)
• Features (epics in the Agile world) and
• Functional and Non-Functional Requirements (user stories in Agile)

Requirements analysts in the IT and software development fields also have tools like use cases, constraints, business rules and data definitions to better define the detailed level requirements.

Here is an example of such hierarchy. Let us assume that a small business producer of, say, scented candles decided at one point that she wants to sell them online. What is the resulting Business Requirement?

• BR 1.0 “We need to sell our products online”

Features that naturally flow from it include but are not limited to:

• F 1.1 "Customer Login"
• F 1.2 “Product Catalog”
• F 1.3 “Search Function”
• F 1.4 “Shopping Basket”
• F 1.5 etc.

The features are later broken into functional and non-functional requirements. For example Feature 1.4 (Shopping Basket) can be broken into the following functional and non-functional requirements:

• FR 1.4.x “The user shall be able to add products to the shopping basket”
• NFR 1.4.x “The process of adding a product to the shopping basket shall not exceed 1 sec”

I warn you, the article you are about to read is a cry from my heart that has been “wounded” in the recent couple of incidents…

Episode 1 – Conversation with a recruiter

R: (enthusiastically) Hi, Jamal! You have recently applied for a Senior Business Analyst position

Me: (also enthusiastically) Yes, I did!

R: (somewhat less eagerly) But your resume says “Project Manager/Requirements Analyst…

Me: Yes!

R: But the client is looking for a Business Analyst, not a Requirements Analyst

Me: But you see, titles like Business Analyst, Systems Analyst, Business Systems Analyst and Requirements Analyst are all synonyms and are used interchangeably depending on the industry and even the company…

R: (sternly) Oh no, unfortunately we can’t send your resume to them. They were very specific in their desire to hire a Business Analyst!

Me: (quietly banging my ahead on the table) Oh God, please take me now!

Episode 2 – Conversation with a different recruiter

R: (thoughtfully) So, Jamal, you are a Senior Project Manager, right?

Me: Yep!

R: (inquisitively) But do you have any experience with end-to-end implementations?

Me: Well, by definition, EVERY project is an end-to-end implementation… You have your Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control and Close-out phases. So, every project that has been completed by default went through end-to-end implementation!

R: (confused) How come your resume doesn’t mention “end-to-end implementations"?

Me: (sighing heavily) Because it uses traditional project management lingo! We use words like “Planning” and “Execution”

R: (sternly) Oh no, unfortunately we can’t send your resume to them. They were very specific in their desire to hire a Project Manager with “end-to-end implementation” experience!

Me: (quietly banging my ahead on the table) Oh God, please take me now!

Do you, guys, have the same experiences or is it just me?

Found this on www.visualcapitalist.com.  Fascinating read :)

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

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This is, by far, the best business analyst job description I have ever seen!

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

• Please follow me on Twitter: 
• Like our page on Facebook: 
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: 
• Subscribe to my RSS feed: 
• Visit my Udemy Course page:

Jamal is an author of three very popular books: 

Some interesting statistics form the recent “PMI Job Growth and Talent Gap” report:

• By 2027, employers will need 87.7 million individuals working in project management oriented roles.
• The talent gap could result in a potential loss of some US$207.9 billion in GDP through 2027 for the 11 countries analyzed.
• Anderson Economic Group (AEG) and PMI analyzed project-oriented employment opportunity in 11 countries on five continents that represent developed and/or growing economic powers. Project-related job growth is expected to be 33 percent collectively (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

• GDP contributions from project-oriented industries forecast for 2027: US$20.2 trillion.
• GDP at risk due to the project management talent shortage: US$208 billion.
• PMI’s original projections in 2008: 52.4 million PM jobs worldwide by 2020.
• PMI’s actual estimate of worldwide PM jobs in 2017: 65.9 million jobs.
• On an annualized basis, employers will need to fill nearly 2.2 million new project-oriented roles each year through 2027.
• In the U.S. in 2017, wages of project management-oriented workers in projectized industries were far higher on average than wages of non-project-oriented professionals—a premium of 82 percent.

So, if you ever wondered whether to consider project management as your next profession, the time to make the decision is now! Oh, and check out my new online learning platform that can help you to become a project manager, business analyst or a portfolio management expert.

I recently had a very interesting conversation with my much younger colleague. He is also in the project management field but has only five or seven years of experience in our domain. Bob (let us call him that) had his first interview for a PM position at one of the local government organizations. He has been subsequently shortlisted for the second round of interviews and called me up to get some advice.

Bob: (enthusiastically) Jamal, this company is great! I really hope I land a job there!

Me: (apprehensively) And what is so great about it?

Bob: (even more enthusiastically) Listen, they told me a story how they had a problem project that had all kinds of missed deadlines …

Me: (skeptically) And?

Bob: You wouldn’t believe hat happened! One of their vice presidents drove to the construction site and helped unload the trucks. He stayed there for five days straight to assist the workers!

Me: (to myself) Oh, dear God, please take me now! (aloud) Did you ask them WHAT they did wrong to end up in a situation like this?

Bob: (somewhat confused) Oh, yes … it had something to do with improperly calculated lead times … But, as they have indicated, that was not the point of the story! It is the “just roll up your sleeves and work hard” attitude!

Me: (sarcastically) You want my advice, Lord Commander?

Bob: (smiling) Yes!

Me: (using Darth Vader’s voice) Run! Run for your life!!!

So here is my question:

Do you think I gave this young man the right advice?

Please leave your comments below.