DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR JUNIOR STAFF

THE CHALLENGE

Recruiting for junior staff can be a challenging task for any business; you are looking to hire less experienced employees, who usually have never worked in a corporate or professional environment. Therefore, the first year often requires their manager to invest significant time and effort to help the employee to be successful in their new role.    

At PL Projects, we experience a similar situation as described above, when we hire a new junior consultant. Typically, we recruit candidates with a project management (PM) degree, or PM module, and have a keen passion for entering into the PMO and PM profession. The recruitment pool is small, so it’s a challenge to find the right candidate for our business. Our clients expect high quality service, and we expect all PL Projects’ employees to oblige. We therefore have to overcome this challenge by preparing this candidate to be a successful consultant, despite their relative inexperience.

THE SOLUTION

Our strategy at PL Projects to develop less experienced individuals, is to use a combination of stringent recruitment, in-house training and exposure to client environments to nurture these junior staff into successful consultants

Not only do we recruit based on junior candidates’ technical abilities and qualifications, we also put great emphasis on the individual having;

  • good written and communication skills,
  • a professional attitude,
  • interest in learning about project management,
  • good listening and direction skills,
  • strong customer service experience or skills,
  • other passions outside of work.

We conduct a number of interviews with interested candidates, over the phone and face-to-face throughout the duration of the recruitment process. We explain to the junior candidates how intense the work can be in our clients’ project environments, the level of professionalism we expect from all employees, and how tightknit the culture is within the company.   

Once we have selected the right candidate and bring them onboard as a new employee, we discuss a development plan for the next six months to a year. This plan involves being assigned to a client site where a PLP team is in place with an account manager. This existing team will assist senior client management and the PLP account manager in developing the new junior consultant’s skills. The junior consultant will work alongside their team, completing a variety of tasks/roles assigned by the account manager and senior managers. They will also be required to support the business on internal projects which puts them in touch with other departments. This gives the consultant a well-rounded experience, achieves buy-in to the business quickly, and starts professional development right away. The individual will then have periodic checkpoints in which we monitor their development and give them any opportunity to ask questions and feedback on their experiences.

Lastly, the candidate will enrol in our Association for Project Management (APM) Project Fundamentals Qualification (PFQ) course within the first three months of their employment. This introductory qualification is a great way to give our junior consultants the confidence to understand PM methodologies and techniques discussed in our clients’ projects. We also have created a ‘Novicate Festival’ where different employees lead training sessions around topics such as; stakeholder management, planning on MSP, managing a meeting, etc.

THE OUTCOME

This solution has proven extremely beneficial to both the junior staff and the business.

For the junior employees, they receive hands-on training from experienced consultants, while working in different client organisations throughout the year. They are able to obtain an internationally recognised qualification while developing their soft skills such as stakeholder management, communication and leadership.

We have committed employees who are passionate about providing the company’s mission to our clients. The majority of our employees began their career as either placement students or graduate consultants, and are now middle to senior managers. We also have a low staff turnover rate; most staff recommend their network to join PL Projects when we hire for new employees (at any level) and we have created a culture that staff are proud to belong to.