If you were blessed to have a high-quality expensive education or you can easily get a job through a relative’s recommendation, I wish you all the best, but this article is not for you. My message is for the average person like me who is trying to make the best use of the available resources and work hard to become a better person.
After I graduated, I realized that my skills can’t add any value to the marketplace. Yes, it is a broken system but more on that later. During that time, there was no guide or training that teaches fresh graduates the practical application of knowledge. I had an ambition, but I was angry and disappointed. It is funny how time flies so quickly.
I receive many messages from young engineers who share the same frustration. If you are one of them, I just want to tell you that I can exactly resonate with your feelings because I have been there myself. I am going to share what I would do or tell myself if I have to start all over again. I hope this can help someone out there understand the job market and life better.
1- It takes time
We live in a world where you can get whatever you want so quickly with high certainty. Are you hungry? Order your food and it will be there within 30 min. Would you like to change your phone? Make the order and you will receive it tomorrow. You get the idea.
Similar daily behaviors affect our actions, feelings and expectations but career success can’t be achieved that fast. Many young engineers get disappointed because they don’t subconsciously feel a certainty that is similar to the forecasted delivery dates. However, life is not smooth and full of changes. You need to embrace this change and enjoy the process. You need to work hard every day even if you don’t realize any career improvements. You need to keep working until you create enough momentum and your snowball gets bigger before you unlock better opportunities. Rinse and repeat. A plane should have a runway before it takes off. As a planning engineer, your runway is time.
2- Be different
You might have average skills and are applying for online job vacancies but if you do what 99% of people are doing, you get similar results. When you improve your skills over time, these small daily improvements will compound and you will feel more confident. After you improve your skills (it takes time), you can be innovative on how to present your offering. For example, you can share the link to this amazing Power BI dashboard and attach your comprehensive Extension of Time Claim with your CV. Moreover, finding a job is a job. You need to do your best to put yourself in front of the available opportunities, both in-person and online. The bottom line is to be different.
3- Curiosity is punished
Our education system punishes someone who is asking many questions in the classroom. Students don’t feel comfortable asking questions because they fear being seen stupid. Curiosity is a human gift. How is this related to a project control career? I am glad you asked. In my experience, planning engineers often lack execution-related knowledge because they don’t ask their team enough questions. They don’t want to be seen as inexperienced or stupid. On the other hand, modern project management frameworks recommend having open and clear communication. My advice is to go ahead and ask so many questions to improve your knowledge. Your current employer won’t probably be the one that you will work for until your retirement. You will unlikely continue to work with your current colleagues forever too.
4- Postgraduate Education
During your frustration, you might think that a master degree will solve all your problems. I am here to tell you that this is not true. While construction is getting more complicated every day (e.g. Expo, Iconic Towers, High Rise Buildings, whole cities to support urbanizations), the university curriculum hasn’t been updated much to support the practical market requirements. A university degree doesn’t teach you advanced P6 shortcuts, comprehensive progress reports, KPIs, progress curves, Power BI or extension of time claim tips – just to name a few.
If you want another proof, I am sure that we all know someone who is not even an engineer but gets a decent salary. The reason is simple. He offers great value and gets the job done. While a university degree is very expensive and time-consuming, it doesn’t provide an attractive ROI. You should seek knowledge from an experienced practitioner or practical books. Moreover, I believe that pursuing certifications such as PMP or PSP is a good thing to do. However, such certifications should be complementary and not the focus of your career because they won’t entirely solve your problems.
5- Content consumption
There are so many resources on the internet to learn project control from. In my opinion, there is only limited content that provides the desired “practical” benefit. Before you consume any piece of content, ask yourself: will this help me get the job done? I recommend that you improve your P6, advanced excel, Power BI and delay analysis skills because such skills can be directly applied to the workplace. Some theoretical content about management behaviors? Not so much.
Conclusion
You might not have had the best of everything. There are so many uncontrolled variables that happen to you by default(e.g. education, demographics, wealth, etc). However, we need to work hard on the things that we can control. In this article, I shared my own opinion about the common misconceptions in the project control career and explained the importance of doing hard work over the long term.
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Regards,
Osama Saad, MBA, PMP, PSP, PMI-SP
