A guide to assessing the competence of project managers, based on a lengthy LinkedIn group discussion. It covers definitions, types of competence and assessment techniques, including resumes, interviews and testing. Note the internal hyperlinks were not enabled by the conversion from an epub format, but the external links are enabled.

2. Project Management Competence:
A Pragmatic Guide to Assessment
for Project Managers

3. Introduction
Background
If you are in the business world today, you already know that LinkedIn® is a powerful networking
tool. But it also has a tremendous variety of groups in which some very interesting discussions
evolve. Several discussion contributors encouraged me to 'do something' with the wealth of
information that was shared in one such discussion about project manager competence. This ebook is
the result.
There is a link to the original discussion and several related ones in the Links Chapter. The original
question posed was simply this:
What are the true indicators of PM competence?
The discussion on age as a factor in PM competence posted by Sabitha Anisetti got me thinking
about how we can truly demonstrate competence as a PM. There are several proxy indicators
such as age (as we've discovered, not a good indicator), experience, certifications, academic
achievement, etc.
But nothing really stands out as a reliable indicator when faced with the decision if this person
is fully competent for that assignment. So what thing or things do you use as competence
indicators? Keep in mind there needs to be a balance between rigor (it really is a true indicator)
and utility (in the sense of efficiency, for example, the indicator should be verifiable without
excessive effort).
The result was over 1,200 posts across three months that explored this topic in amazing detail.
Scope and Audience
This ebook is aimed primarily at project managers and HR/recruiting specialists for project
managers. Its scope is based on the contributions made in the discussion, consolidated into an
approach to understanding, assessing and decision making around PM competence. What this ebook
provides is a simple guide to help you achieve the following:
Learn what you need to know about PM competence and a related topic, fit
Apply that knowledge to assess competence needs relative to a specific project assignment or in
general
Deploy some simple best practices for assessing PM competence, specifically for résumé
evaluation and interviewing
Dig deeper into the topic through resources listed in the Links Chapter.
Of course in the project management world, there cannot be a scope statement without an out of scope
statement immediately following. So this ebook is not:

4. a comprehensive guide to competency assessment or hiring practices in general. Its focus is on
items that have the highest value and impact on assessing PM competence and fit, set in the
framework of a generic hiring process for the purpose of illustration.
sanctioned by any professional association. It draws solely on the expertise of the author and the
very talented contributors to the LinkedIn® discussion.
Finally, an assumption is required for completeness. The assumption is simply that you have at least
some familiarity with typical assessment and hiring practices, as well as access to professionals and
materials to assist you. These materials include PM-specific discipline and methods reference
documents. If these are not at your fingertips, check for resources in the Links Chapter.
For your ease of navigation, you will see fruit icons inside the book, extending the theme on the cover
that this is an 'apples and oranges' topic:
Oranges for PM Disciplines
Apples for Fit and Culture
Pineapples for Certification and Domain.

5. Definitions
Your initial thought will be to scan this quickly then move right into the guide - please don't. The
discussion contributors spent a surprising amount of time understanding and misunderstanding what
individual words meant. It turns out there is a fair degree of overlap and therefore confusion across a
core set of words in this topic: competence, competency, ability, skills and others.
Here is how most of these words describing degree of ability relate to each other, and how they will
be used in the book:
Represented this way, competence has a couple of defining characteristics:
1. Being 'taller' than the bars below, it may be one skill or a combination of skills (or abilities,
capabilities) and other characteristics
2. There is sufficient ability that it can be demonstrated and validated via some sort of testing or
verification.
The best formal definition of competence that I found in relation to project management comes from
the Association for Project Management in the UK and is:
The combined knowledge, skill and behaviour that a person needs to perform properly in a job
or work role.
You can find their site in the Links Chapter.

6. Guide to Project Management Competence
In the discussion group we discovered there are four basic steps to assessing competence, and oddly
enough, the first one has little to do with competence itself:
Assignment description
Required group of competences
Finding and assessing candidates
Making a decision.
The next few chapters are a step by step guide to getting to a decision point, at which you can
confidently state, 'this is the most competent person for this assignment'. However, this is a slightly
narrower purpose than you might have, so before we take the first step on that particular journey, we
need to explore why you are considering this journey at all.
In the LinkedIn® discussion that spawned this ebook, we explored competence at two levels:
1. competence in general, i.e. how does a competent PM behave, in a range from minimally
competent to leader in the field
2. competence for an assignment, i.e. what do you look for in a PM when you have a particular
assignment in mind.
This ebook will focus exclusively on the second item, as that is likely the most frequent need. It also
served well to focus our thinking in the original discussion towards something more tangible, in this
case, a specific assignment versus a broad need.
However, this guide works for the first item as well, as long as you make one mental adjustment:
further on when you read 'assignment', substitute 'desired set of skills and attributes'. The context
here is your job is to assess a group of existing PMs or candidates, against a marketplace or other
general demand, i.e. not a specific assignment. This demand is likely not to be uniform, so you may
have to develop multiple sets, such as 'entry level' through to 'expert'. So an extra step before you
start is to understand how many sets you need, and how they are different. Then treat each of those
sets as an assignment as described below, and you should find this guide suits your purpose well.
In addition, for your quick reference after reading through, there are three Step Summary sections that
provide the key steps and focus items for their chapter.
Now let's take that first step together, and satisfy your curiosity about why I described it as 'odd'.

7. Assignment Description
Skills and Competences
One thing that quickly became apparent in discussing competence was the importance of
understanding how an assessment of competence was going to be used. In the absence of a purpose,
discussion of competence quickly becomes academic: this is a better list of attributes than that, this
skill is more important than others.
So in the context of finding the ideally competent PM, you need to describe what the competence is
going to be used for, and what is the importance or weight of each competence selected. In other
words, you have to build a job description using required competences as the main components.
Perhaps this really is not odd at all: this becomes the requirements statement that your competence
assessment project will be planned and executed to fulfil. A template is provided to assist you with
this and you may want to have it available for reference as you read through this section. You can
download it from SlideShare:
http://www.slideshare.net/mjont/pm-competence-template-16533895
Start with specific skills and related competences, and for that you need a list that is in
common use where you work. Since many exist, I am going to presume you have one or can get one
(and there are some links to lists if you need help on this). Which list is not as important as having a
good list, since how you use it is what makes it valuable, so pick your list and continue. Be aware
that different terminology is used across various providers, so your keywords if you are searching
and matching may need to be broader than just 'competence' and 'skill'.
Now start to describe the assignment in terms of the PM competences it will require. This can be
quite challenging since project management differs in one respect from many other jobs. PMs
require a fairly broad list of skills to be effective, so the list can get quite long quite quickly. I like
the metaphor of a basket here: to be able to lift the basket when it's full, you can put only so many
items with so much weight into it.
So how to start? A useful technique is to define a list of items that are required in every PM basket of
competences, then supplement as required. Now here is an unpleasant surprise: it was impossible to
get a consensus on what that basic list should be! When this happens, the best rule is Keep It Simple.
My recommendation is to leverage whichever PM method you subscribe to and work from its list of
disciplines, more specifically, PRINCE2's seven principles/components, or PMI's nine knowledge
areas as examples. For each of these, ask how skilled the PM needs to be in each in order to be
successful at this assignment.
The challenge remains: how to avoid overloading the basket. A PM should really be at least
minimally competent in all of these disciplines or you risk a potential performance gap. Here is
where a simple scale can help. Consider a scale that looks like this:

8. There are two concepts to keep in mind when applying this scale:
1. The shaded numbers indicate that a verifiable level of competence has been achieved, on this
scale, at the threshold of 4 to 5
2. As indicated by the slanted boundaries between them, there is some room for interpretation as to
which side of the boundary a particular person's competence lies, as we will see later when we
discuss evaluating experience.
In many cases you will want someone who is at least 5, i.e. verifiably competent, in all major PM
disciplines. There are two reasons to make an exception and consider candidates who are not yet
fully competent:
1. You are actively seeking entry level staff whose gaps will be closed through on the job
experience in a monitored work environment
2. There is no need for a particular discipline on the assignment, e.g. procurement.
Avoid going 'all tens' across the list, as what you will end up with is a very short list of very
expensive candidates. Then supplement with assignment or work environment specifics. This is
where you can add skill sets like tool proficiency, or familiarity with specific techniques, such as for
risk management.
I hope you left some room in the basket, though, as we still need to shop for other competences.
Domain Knowledge and Experience
One topic that got a lot of discussion was this notion: how much domain competence does a PM
require to be effective on an assignment? The most frequent answer was 'some' but that is not
particularly helpful in describing and validating competence.
First, a quick definition of 'domain', right out of the original discussion:
... one domain is different from another when the technical expertise is not interchangeable.
Example: you wouldn't hire an Oracle DBA to design a building and you wouldn't hire an
architect to design a database. But you need a project manager to manage the technical team to
bring both to completion through a design/build/operate cycle. This begs the question of how
much domain expertise a PM should have. ... the test I use is that the PM has to have sufficient
domain knowledge not be blind-sided by challenges that the specific domain's technical details
will surface.
Include a description of domain knowledge and competence in the basket, but keep the threshold low.
The reason for a low threshold is that domain competence tends to outweigh all other competences.

9. Example: if candidates don't have knowledge of our domain (usually expressed as industry or
technical specialty), then the rest doesn't matter, they will not be accepted by the team. Setting the
threshold too high will exclude a lot of excellent candidates whose better knowledge of other
domains may in fact bring fresh perspectives to yours. So describe its threshold in terms of expected
experience or extent of accreditation at the lowest reasonable level, then compare candidates on how
much they exceed it later at the same time you are assessing other competences. This will provide a
more comprehensive evaluation of your candidate pool.
Certification
This is a topic that went back and forth in the discussion and has been the focus of many other
discussions, particularly around the topic of a certification's value as an indicator of competence. In
fact, a poll was created to explore perceptions of certification (accessible from the Links
Chapter below). You cannot treat it as statistically valid so use the results from the original
discussion quoted below cautiously; however, the conclusions are useful guidance.
Out of 32 votes, two thirds of the voters selected [certification as] 'evidence of a grasp of PM
fundamentals and vocabulary', and only one voter selected evidence of functional competence
for every four of the majority group.
So how does this relate to the original question? I read it as certification serves as evidence of a
basic level of capability for project management. As an indicator of competence, it scores high
for efficiency ... but low for effectiveness (evidence of only basic capability).
So applying this indicator for the purpose of candidate assessment can at best be a filter for
reducing a candidate pool, by rejecting uncertified candidates as unsuitable for an assignment
that requires better than basic PM capability. At worst, however, this can result in rejecting
candidates that have better than basic capability but who lack a credential. It creates an
effectiveness/efficiency trade-off: you have efficiently narrowed the pool of candidates that will
progress and within which you can expect to find some who are suitable for the assignment,
against the reduced efficiency of validating in some other manner uncertified candidates who
may be more suitable.
A simple technique to avoid over-filtering is to state the certification credential expectation this way:
[name of usual credential] required, or equivalent credential or experience
This will increase your pool of candidates but also increase the workload of reducing to a short list,
as you will need to do some apples and oranges comparisons between credentialed and other
candidates.
In addition, you may need to include domain-specific credential requirements; follow the
recommendation above regarding threshold.
Fit, Culture and Attitude

10. These items are not strictly speaking competences, but are attributes that affect how competence is
evaluated and is likely to be applied on the assignment.
A very strong consensus item was that a PM needs to 'fit', and that fit is more than just the sum of a
person's skills and experience. Fit must first be determined towards organization (who employs you)
and client (external customer or internal sponsor/stakeholder for the assignment). Its second
dimension consists of attitude (the approach towards work objectives and people, in relation to work
performance) and culture. Culture is a deep topic on its own, so for our purposes here, we will
primarily be concerned with work culture (how we do things around here) and less on societal
culture (loosely defined as group behavior associated with a specific region). These clearly overlap
and influence each other. For example, organizational fit is influenced by work culture.
At this stage you need to determine what kind of fit you are looking for. Basically, it comes down to
two choices:
1. The 'just like us' fit - you need someone whose attributes are demonstrably similar to your work
environment so that integration is presumably quick and seamless
2. The 'we need someone to bring something new to the table' fit - you need someone dissimilar in
some respect for a specific purpose. This is best illustrated with an example: if your work
culture tends to be overly accommodating of client requests, and you have a client that you know
will leverage this to the extreme, one of your fit requirements for attitude may be 'hard-nosed' for
this assignment's candidates.
There are existing HR tools and techniques that can be used to establish various types and degrees of
fit, so to the extent your organization uses these and finds them valuable, use them here as well. In
their absence or to supplement them, an easy technique is simply to list descriptive words that relate
to your fit expectation, and as you proceed through subsequent steps, evaluate how well a candidate
matches up to them. Here are some samples:
flexible
by the book
lateral thinker
process-oriented
tenacious
maverick
risk-averse
Although this seems almost too easy, it is more difficult than you may think. For it to be effective, you
need to understand your and your client's fit expectations well across culture and attitude, and that
requires a degree of introspection and understanding that could reveal uncomfortable realities about
your organizations - nobody is perfect. Be as realistic and forthright as possible in developing fit
expectations. The risk to mitigate is assigning someone who ends up underachieving because of a
mismatch between their attributes and your true but uncomfortable work cultures.
For the sake of completeness, you may need to include other criteria that are HR-related, such as job
level expectation for internal candidates, or eligibility to work in your jurisdiction for external

11. candidates.

12. Steps Summary
Construct an assignment description comprised of:
Competence expectations across PM disciplines
Degree of domain knowledge and competence
Certification requirements and equivalences
Fit towards organizations, attitude and culture
Required HR-related criteria.

13. Assessing Candidate Competence
The core of the original discussion on LinkedIn® was a journey to find the best ways to assess the
competence of a project manager, and to do so efficiently and effectively. This eventually filtered
down to three techniques or best practices to assess PMs for competence and other criteria:
1. Résumé review with credential and reference checking
2. Interviews
3. Testing.
A relatively good consensus was achieved on the applicability of the first two. The third one, testing,
was only thinly examined. Before exploring these more deeply, the concepts of efficiency and
effectiveness need to be positioned first.
Assessment of competence, or anything else, is hard work, and so must be planned and executed well
to achieve its desired outcome. As outlined in the Guide to Project Management Competence
Chapter, this ebook describes selection of a PM for a particular assignment, but the applicability of
these techniques is broader. In fact, this work can be arranged as a project and although I chose not to
present it this way, it would not be difficult to reverse engineer a project plan out of this ebook to
achieve a project outcome called 'selection of ideal candidate'.
Any type of work, assessment included, can be examined for efficiency and effectiveness, in this
context:
Effectiveness: how do we apply reliable techniques and effort that will result in the selection of
the best candidate for an assignment?
Efficiency: how do we achieve that effective outcome for the least cost in terms of effort,
expense and time?
The unfortunate result is that none of these three techniques scores high for both effectiveness and
efficiency. Here is a broad generalization of how these techniques compare:
Résumé review
Effectiveness: poor to moderate
Efficiency: high
Credential (usually certification) check
Effectiveness: poor to moderate
Efficiency: high
Reference check
Effectiveness: moderate to high (high mostly for the purpose of elimination not selection)
Efficiency: moderate
Interviews

14. Effectiveness: moderate to good
Efficiency: low to moderate (range depends on how many interviewers over how many
interviews)
Testing
Effectiveness: moderate (with the proviso not much examination took place here)
Efficiency: poor (same proviso)
So the assessor faces the same challenge that a PM faces every day: how do you achieve the outcome
on time, budget and with high quality with only imperfect tools available?

15. What's Your Plan?
By this stage, you should have a good sense of the type of person who can do the assignment well.
The next sections will explore our learnings on what works best for PMs, so this will be the focus
rather than generic hiring process steps. You need to decide which of the following steps make sense
to align with your process, in terms of sequence and depth.
To cover the discussion's learning, the step sequence across the following sections will be:
1. Build a list of candidates - an existing process is assumed
2. Gather and review résumés
3. Perform reference and credential checks
4. Perform interviews
5. Perform testing
6. Make the final selection decision.
These steps and their related activities are the core of your plan, and like any project there are
constraints on time, effort and budget. The following sections are intended to help you achieve the
best possible outcome, i.e. the ideal candidate for the assignment, while respecting your constraints.
Also, keep in mind this is framed as an external search for a contract or employment hire, but the
steps and guidance apply equally to a pool of internal candidates. What will need adjustment is
mostly the terminology.

16. Résumés, References and Credentials
The reality of a candidate search is that the early stages focus as much on who you will not consider
as much as who you will. The challenge with PM searches is avoiding the exclusion of good
candidates early, as you have a lot of criteria to be considered: competence + credentials +
experience + attitude + culture. Each of these can act as a filter so it is very important to know which
of these you are going to use ahead of others.
The guidance from the group discussion was quite varied on weight and priority across these
criteria.
Start with the résumé, or in reality, a stack of paper or online résumés that you are
expected to review. Your assignment description preparation work should make this relatively easy,
since you should have a list in front of you that acts as your primary filter. Inspect each résumé
looking for:
the highest weighted competences the assignment requires, both for PM and domain. Keep in
mind that the terminology describing PM practices and disciplines is not uniform, so you may
have to infer a match through close reading of experience statements.
The certifications you are seeking, and optionally:
- the equivalent credentials you will accept
- acceptance of relevant experience as an alternative
References for work experience and outcomes.
After review of the last résumé, you should have two stacks, one of candidates that are clearly not
suitable, and another stack ranging from 'exact match' to 'I like this one even though the match is
marginal'. Although it's not practical to look for attitude and culture fit from a résumé, you should
have those desired attributes in your mind as well. Including some more marginal candidates
broadens your pool for finding superior fits later.
However, keep in mind the efficiency/effectiveness trade-off. Avoid having too large a number for
the next step, or you risk exceeding your cost/effort/time constraints. Your hiring process may
provide guidance on the suitable proportion remaining after this step. One factor to consider when
applying this is that its ratio may be based on seeking a narrowly skilled person, which a PM is not,
so in building your plan anticipate whether you may want to exceed the recommended proportion and
then budget accordingly, both here and in subsequent steps.
The next step is the relatively routine process of validating credentials and references. Following are
the key learnings from the discussion:
One of the key findings about certifications was that there are many credential holders who are
good test takers but inadequate practitioners. Keep in mind that verifying that someone actually
does have a specific credential does not verify ability to manage your assignment.
Reference checking was identified as a highly valuable tool, as it provides the opportunity not

17. only to evaluate competence in disciplines, but also attitude and culture fit. Include questions
relating to fit in reference calls. Questions about experience should focus on contributions to
measurable outcomes, in order to differentiate between simply being there and actually making a
difference.
Another valued technique was finding references off the candidate's list in order to gain broader
insight about the individual. Ask the listed references for team member names you could
contact. Seek contacts across these three levels if possible: senior (who the candidate reported
to or other senior stakeholders), peers (who the candidate needed to influence) and junior (who
the candidate had to lead and manage).

18. Interviews
Interviews were considered the most important technique for assessing PM
competence and fit. There are many approaches to performing excellent interviews. What follows
are the specific approaches for best results with project managers.
Interviews are also an expensive technique - one participant in the discussion described his recent
experience of multiple interviews with multiple interviewers for multiple hours each. That is a
significant investment, so preparation to ensure the effectiveness of interviews is crucial.
An extensive topic of discussion was the value of experience, particularly as a predictor of future
performance. Opinions varied widely, but what came through as a consistent theme was how the
candidate used previous work to learn and grow in capability. So questions about prior assignments
should focus not only on what the candidate accomplished, but also on what the candidate learned and
how that can be applied usefully on the assignment in the job description.
Use scenarios as a tool to examine candidates' understanding of both how to apply PM disciplines
and their experience in a challenging situation, as well as attitude and culture fit. This approach had
the strongest consensus. A framework for a scenario could be constructed this way:
select a possible and undesirable event that could happen during the assignment, for example, a
significant delay by a critical vendor.
Construct context for this event in two parts: first, some explanation that you provide during the
interview to the candidates, and second, answers to their anticipated questions. In other words
you are not going to provide the full context at the outset.
Determine what evidence of competence in disciplines and domain you expect, as well as for
attitude and culture fits. This may be difficult, since attributes like attitude often have an 'I know
it when I see it' aspect to them. But at a minimum have the interviewer(s) be prepared to record
a fit impression, even if it is as simple as a selection along the scale of 'poor - adequate - good -
excellent'.
During the interview, advise candidates that you are going to provide a scenario (i.e. the first
part of the context), give them a fixed time (say 2 minutes) to ask questions about it (for which
context part 2 was prepared), time to think about it, then time to outline the solution to the
project's steering committee.
Both the candidates' questions and solution response will provide insight into the use of PM
disciplines and fit. Allow the interviewers to ask clarification questions, but within a time
budget.
Once the response is completed, advise that the solution is accepted as outlined, then ask the
candidates to explain the solution to the project team. This will provide further insight into fit,
particularly towards the organizations that will be staffing the team.
Length of interview was a discussion point as well, particularly in a separate group taking place at
the same time. There was no consensus except around what not to do. A 'speed dating' approach, the
specific example being a 5 minute interview intended to exercise a high pressure, think on your feet

19. scenario, was not favored. A good rule of thumb would be a minimum of an hour.

20. Testing
Let's quickly examine testing. In this context, testing is a technique to evaluate knowledge and
cognitive ability, usually as a test administered at a keyboard or by specialists in a personal session.
Using the LinkedIn® discussion as a source, it is not possible to recommend or reject the use of this
type of testing for assessment of PM-specific competence. Specifically, while there are many types
of such testing in the marketplace, there was not a high degree of comfort that any would be specific
enough to PM competence for differentiating PM candidates.
The best guidance for this technique is to apply it to assessing PMs in the following way:
Your selection list has been narrowed using both previous steps (résumé reviews and
interviews) or alternatively testing could be inserted between them; and then one of:
1. Your organization has a general purpose tool and has found it useful in the past for PM
assessment
2. Your organization has built, found or adapted a tool or technique that is PM-specific
3. Your organization is willing to invest in a testing product or service as it finds its current
process inadequate.
For any of these three, look for the following two capabilities within it:
1. In addition to evaluating knowledge and competence in individual PM disciplines,
ensure the process looks at the list of selected disciplines as an integrated whole as well.
The reason is that effectiveness as a PM is as much a result of finding the right balance
across disciplines at various points of time in the project life cycle, as it is being competent
in each discipline individually.
2. Assessment of fit for attitude and culture needs to be applicable against multiple
profiles, since a PM has to fit not only against organization and client cultures, but against
stakeholders' sub-cultures as well (for example, Marketing and Engineering typically have
different work cultures, so even if neither is the client, if both are significantly involved the
PM needs to understand and operate effectively with them as well).

21. Steps Summary
Based on the Assessment Description, build a plan for filtering and selecting candidates
determine which techniques will be used
determine what proportion of candidates should remain after each step below
Develop competence and fit questions for each of:
résumé review
reference checks
interviews
Develop scenario questions and context for interviews
Perform résumé reviews and narrow the candidate field
Perform credential and reference checks and further narrow the field
Perform interviews and narrow the field
Perform testing and narrow the field

22. Making the Decision
The topic of how to make a final decision from a short list of highly qualified candidates was not part
of the core discussion in the group, but there was some consensus that applies.
First, fit trumps competence. If it comes down to a decision between candidates who are all
more than adequately qualified on all criteria, favor strength in attitude and culture fit over
competence in disciplines. The main factor here, and this is largely my rationale, is that your ability
to work with people is extremely important. Think of it from a risk mitigation point of view: it is
more likely a PM can recover from a competence/discipline failure than an attitude/cultural failure,
simply because the latter always have emotional content and as a result make these the most difficult
to recover from.
This has implications for your final selection techniques, likely the final interview. It should be
planned to evaluate the fit attributes, so its participants should be briefed that way and be people that
the candidate will have to work with functionally. It is still appropriate that the interview have a
competence-oriented structure, for example, using scenarios as described above. But the
interviewers' focus should be fit evaluation.
Second, know in advance what the final decision process is; specifically, who has the final decision
authority. It can happen that the key recommenders are split over the final two or three candidates,
and what can occur is unproductive back and forth discussion. Momentum is lost and you then start to
risk having the decision made for you by candidates' impatience and other offers. After all, if they
were good enough to make it to your final short list, there is a good chance they are on someone else's
short list too.

23. Steps Summary
Narrow the field to a short list of candidates
Agree in advance how the final decision will be made
For the final evaluation techniques, focus more on fit than competences.

24. Links
All links were click-checked in February, 2013 but may have been disabled or become otherwise
inaccessible since then.
Discussion Links
These are links to the original LinkedIn® discussion and some others that cross-pollinated the conversation.
The discussion that is the basis for the ebook
http://lnkd.in/f3eqxE
The discussion started by Sabitha Anisetti which triggered the discussion above
http://lnkd.in/T4rr2G
Poll on certification
http://lnkd.in/pk2skj
Poll on the use of interviewing as a technique for understand a PM's competence
http://lnkd.in/vrZcXN
Discussion on interviewing PMs
http://lnkd.in/2XWzi2
Discussion on the merits of short interviews
http://lnkd.in/rMwbZw
Discussion on the difference between project failure and PM failure
http://lnkd.in/Q5NN-g
Discussion on need for domain/technical skills
http://lnkd.in/F5VjGZ
Open discussions for you and others to contribute related links
http://lnkd.in/aNTPU9
http://lnkd.in/k6kmna
Link to Templates
http://www.slideshare.net/mjont/pm-competence-template-16533895
Resource Links
These are some topical links provided by discussion contributors to more detailed information about competence and
related areas. Note that any contributed links that require a sign-in or payment were not copied here.
Links on Project Success and Measurement
http://www.pmpartners.com/resources/defmeas_success.html
http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/01/it-project-success-2011
http://www.build-project-management-competency.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/FMI-06-Project-Management-
Surveyfin.pdf
http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/6-ways-to-measure-the-success-of-any-project.html?
goback=.nmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1
lnkd.in/zqGjH3

25. Links on Project Methods
http://www.p3m3-officialsite.com/
http://www.apm.org.uk
http://tinyurl.com/7l5zb7r
http://www.globalpmstandards.org/main/page_project_manager_standard.html
Links on Project Competence Approaches
http://www.workitect.com/pdf/ProjectManagerModel.pdf
http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/08/competency-model-for-project-managers.html
http://tinyurl.com/cebrov2
http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=itls_facpub
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/emf-cag/project-projet/documentation-documentation/pmcc-cbgp/pmcc-cbgp-eng.pdf
http://www.globalpmstandards.org/main/page_performanced_based_standards.html
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_91.htm?goback=.gde_4066904_member_174795822
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_bk_pb_234_en.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/humancapitalmedia/start-the-new-year-right-focus-learning-through-competencies-in-2013
Links on Interviewing and Testing
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121028234540-15454-guinness-record-for-the-shortest-interview-course-on-
record
http://globe2go.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/showlink.aspx?
bookmarkid=FVRFCJTKAL08&preview=article&linkid=bd51cbfb-7728-4403-b632-
5f6f9656c75f&pdaffid=Y5C3MI0caRJof0QjZALI9g%3d%3d
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121031133108-128811924-what-turnover-can-teach-us-about-growth
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121126061916-15454-thinking-backwards-will-help-you-improve-every-hiring-
decision?trk=NUS_UNIU_PEOPLE_FOLLOW-megaphone-fllw
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130117183637-15454-the-most-important-interview-question-of-all-time
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130108212947-201849-three-killer-interview-questions
Links on PM Certification
https://mosaicprojects.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/the-value-of-your-pmp-qualification/
http://www.asapm.org/Cert/WhatCert.asp
http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP/
http://pmworldjournal.net/article/project-management-credentials-compared-an-update/
Links on Fit and Culture
http://www.diversity-executive.com/articles/view/think-you-know-an-employee-s-age-don-t-be-so-sure/1
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121112112646-15454-cultural-fit-is-much-more-than-affability
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121126161739-59549-11-ways-to-gauge-your-next-employer-s-culture
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-03/job-applicants-cultural-fit-can-trump-qualifications#p1
Link on PM Humor

26. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-11-22/?Page=1

27. Acknowledgments
First I would like to acknowledge everyone who participated in the original discussion, as well as
those who voted in the related polls. The discussion was clearly richer with the variety of voices.
The Links Chapter would be empty without your contributions.
That richness was clear from the sheer number of contributions: over 1200! Those of you who have
been active on LinkedIn® discussion groups before know what a chore it is to scroll through them
once they get large. I knew it would be impossible to write this book without easy reference to the
discussion, so I needed a way to download the contents into a scrollable and searchable HTML file.
I have to thank Chris Hayes for this who developed an export tool for this purpose. You can contact
Chris at chris@chrishayes.ca or view the LinkedIn® exporter at www.chrishayes.ca/linkedinexport .
Nothing worthwhile is published without a reviewer's critical eye, and I was fortunate enough to
benefit from from the insights of three talented PMs: Sabitha Anisetti, Bonnie McKenzie and Deb
Exel. Thanks for your time, ideas and attention to detail.
Saving the best for last, thanks to my family. They were very indulgent of the time I spent at the
keyboard bringing this to life.

28. Copyright Notices
© 2013 Mark Jones
All Rights Reserved
The templates provided on SlideShare are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License.