The PM Podcast - Episode 220 Volunteering for Project Managers as a Networking Technique for Professional Success Transcript

Transcription

1 The PM Podcast - Episode 220 Volunteering for Project Managers as a Networking Technique for Professional Success Transcript Presented by Kevin Reilly, PMP Cornelius Fichtner, PMP Disclaimer: The information contained in this transcript is a textual representation of a PM Podcast episode and while efforts are made to provide an accurate transcription, there may be material errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in the reporting of the substance of the lecture. Please refer to the original audio as the authoritative source. Copyright: Episode and transcript of The PM Podcast are copyright by OSP International LLC. All rights reserved. The PM Podcast and content are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of OSP International LLC. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notices Page 1

2 Episode 220: Volunteering for Project Managers as a Networking Technique for Professional Success Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode #220. This is The Project Management Podcast at and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Nice to have you with us. Before we get started, are you by any chance thinking about getting your PMI-ACP certification? That is the brand new PMI exam that certifies you as an Agile Certified Practitioner. Well, if you are then I will be able to help you. In the past, I have helped over 20,000 students prepare for their PMP exam with The Project Management PrepCast and in the future I hope to help the same number of project managers prepare for their PMI-ACP exam with The Agile PrepCast, which should be ready around the end of October If you are interested in this exam and in the Agile PrepCast, please stop by at that s one word, and sign up to our mailing list. We ll keep you informed about when this course is available for you. And yes, agilecertificationpodcast.com is a bit long and we will shorten it at some point. And now on to today s interview. I have always said that one of the most beneficial actions that I took to further my career and success as a project manager was to become involved with PMI as a volunteer. I started out as an event volunteer and worked my way all the way up to becoming the president of my local PMI Chapter. This volunteering not only helped me to find a job, it also introduced me to colleagues in my field who became my friends, put me on the path of becoming PMP certified and it was the starting point of this here, The Project Management Podcast where I ve expanded my volunteering efforts out towards a world audience of project managers. The good news is that I m not the only one who has seen such great results from volunteering. Kevin Reilly, PMP has seen very similar results. Ever since he started volunteering a little over a year ago, doors have opened up for him and an incredible number of opportunities have opened up for him. Kevin has now gone ahead and he has taken this approach and turned it into a process for you. Yes! A step by step process that you can follow towards your professional success as a project manager. We first review the 6 steps that he recommends in detail and then Kevin tells us his personal story of volunteering and networking to illustrate how powerful a driver this approach was in his career, how it helped him and how it will help you do the same. Page 2

3 And now, is that your network plan or are you just happy to volunteer? Enjoy the interview. Podcast Interview Female voice: The Project Management Podcast s feature Interview: Today with Kevin Reilly, PMP, Senior Project Management Training Consultant for KRPM Training Solutions. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello Kevin and welcome to The Project Management Podcast! Kevin Reilly: Hi, Cornelius! How are you today? Cornelius Fichtner: I am very well today. Thank you very much. Well before we begin the interview in the spirit of full disclosure, we have to say this is not the first time that you and I are speaking today. In fact, you and I had a daily scrum earlier today because you work for our company as a part-time consultant right? Kevin Reilly: Yes I do and I always appreciate the opportunity, Cornelius. Cornelius Fichtner: Right! We just want to get this out of the way so that everybody is aware of our relationship here. We want to talk, however, not about your work for our company today. We want to discuss something that is completely unrelated with what you do for us. It is all about volunteering for project managers as a networking technique and professional success. But the first question I have to ask you here: Why, why on earth should the people listening, our listeners here, be interested in this because you know they are all project managers like you and I and they have daily issues like they need to meet the budget and the schedule and that s what s important for them? So what s in it for them in the coming interview? Kevin Reilly: It s a great question, Cornelius. And really when we think about networking, most of the time we re thinking about when we re in transition between jobs or looking for a new career or some new opportunities. But we re volunteering comes in when you couple it with networking. You are able to expand your base in a specific industry or area that you have expertise in and want to increase it or areas that you want to increase that you have expertise in. So they really do go hand and hand volunteering and networking. And not only when you re in transition but throughout your professional career to guarantee your professional success. Cornelius Fichtner: Excellent! Now what you have done is you have taken your experience and you have put this together sort of in a six-step, shall we call it, process that you have created? Kevin Reilly: Yes! Cornelius Fichtner: And on a high level, they are Understand benefits, Analyze skills, Determine goals, Select organization, Leverage your time, and Market your skills. We re going to go through all of these six steps right now. Page 3

4 So let s begin at the very beginning. So please help us understand the benefits of volunteering and the benefits of networking. Kevin Reilly: Well, it s funny because when I started thinking about this in trying to pay it forward to other people from the experience that I had, I thought about the reasons why first of all I volunteer. And I came up with about 20 of them. But I what I wanted to do is track down the top 3 for me. So I m going to review those and might throw in a couple that I ve gotten from other people also. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay! Kevin Reilly: The first one for me is really to make a positive difference. So the old adage is that one person cannot change the world. I don t ascribe to that. I think that if you volunteer your time in something that you re passionate about and that you feel like paying forward to people, you can really make a positive difference in other people s personal and professional lives. I really think that s important. The second one for me is helping others makes you feel good about yourself. So really when you give, when you help somebody out, it really increases your self-esteem and your feeling of self-worth. It makes you feel a lot better about the things that you re doing by helping other people and that s just human nature, It just helps us to validate that. And then paying it forward. That s the term that I use quite often. I have had a lot of people in my professional career and personal life who have helped me so I feel not obligated but I want to pay it forward so that anyway that I can help people become better at what they are good at or to learn something new, that s what I like to do. So those are kind of the top three reasons. But another reason is that it s fun. When you volunteer, you get to meet other people. You get to do fun things. You get to go to great events. So really fun is the top one that I have to add and could be at the top really. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! Yeah and I could wholeheartedly agree with everything that you have said here. I ve been volunteering and networking ever since about 2003 and 2004 when I came to the United States. It really got me to where I am today. I made a positive difference first in my local PMI chapter helping other project managers. Then I took it outside. I now have a Project Management Podcast around the world. To me, this is volunteering. I m paying it forward. I m helping others. It s sharpening my skills. But I have to tell you though, it s not just keeping me productive during my downtimes, it s keeping me overworked most of the time. Kevin Reilly: And we ll get in to that a little bit about one of the steps is limiting the time while having that but that s a good, very good point. Cornelius Fichtner: So that was step one: Understand the benefits, know why you are volunteering, why you are networking for you personally right? The end goal of course being your career, improving your career, right? Page 4

5 Kevin Reilly: Right! And also those we discussed kind of a high-level, the benefits of volunteering, but also on networking, the benefits of networking. So you mentioned one of those which is sharpen your skills. So if you have specific skills that you want to get better at for a promotion or moving in to another industry, you can go ahead and do that by volunteering for a specific task and activities in organizations where you can sharpen them. And the important thing to remember about networking again is it keeps you productive during downtimes. So what I m talking about here is specifically when you re in transition. You know that employers hate to see gaps in your employment history. Well if you volunteer, you can put that on your resume. It is valid experience that you can put and employers really appreciate that you re doing that. And also it allows you to effectively market yourself when in networking, finding out where your strengths are, telling people how you can help them really helps you to effectively market them. So those are some specific networking benefits. At least my top three in that regard. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! Step two: Analyze the skills that you have. What do you mean by that? Kevin Reilly: Well, you want to kind of take an inventory of everything you ve done at a high level in your life to see what skills you have to be able to employ those both with volunteering and with networking. So the first one is your education. Look at the education that you have the specific degrees you have, certifications that you have, anything that you have done in the past in terms of getting into education and learning skills to help you with experience, okay? Even if you have a degree that you don t use anymore, it forms the basis for what you do today. An example is one of my best friends is a psychology major and he is a project manager for Amylin Pharmaceuticals, one of the biggest companies in the world. But he started as a psychology major but he uses that in every day. So education is very important. Secondly, you want to look at your experience. What have you done in terms of the different types of tasks, different activities? Where have you worked? Do you have any type of military service? Any previous volunteer experience? Take a look at all these and take an inventory of these and these will help you determine what organization to volunteer for and also what specific tasks that you want to target when you do volunteer and network. And then you want to look at your current skills. What are the skills that you currently have available to you that you use on a regular basis. These are going to be the skills that you can transfer most easily in a volunteering and networking environment. Page 5

6 But one thing we don t want to forget about is we might have unique skills, okay? An example with me is when I was in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, we had to take two semesters of Latin and Greek word roots. So I have never got less than a hundred on the vocabulary or spelling test since I was 12 years old because of this reason. So a unique skill for me is when I work with people, I act as an editor, as a proofreader as a finalizer of texts and they really appreciate that especially in a volunteer organization. And then lastly, desired skills. There might be certain things that you don t currently do that you would be interested in. You may be a programmer and want to get involved in testing. You may be a tester and want to do some technical writing. Find out what those desired skills are and this is going to guide you to the specific organization and the task within that organization that you are going to use to volunteer and network. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay! This all seems way too complicated, my friend. Because if I m a project manager, and I m thinking: Okay! I d like to volunteer for my professional organization. Do I really have to go through all of these, think about my education, my unique skills, my desired skills? Can I just give him a call and say hey, give me a volunteering position? Kevin Reilly: Well, you could do that but there s a couple of dangers in that. The first one is, you will not be effective in your volunteering position. The reason is you might not have the passion for that particular thing that you re doing, that particular activity. And also, you might not have the ability to do that activity correctly. Secondly, when people hire people, I m going to use the word hire, hire volunteers, they know that volunteering takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. So they want to have those activities as synchronized as possible to the specific task and goals of the organization in the specific department underneath whether it s marketing, whether it s putting on the meetings, the programs, operations. So it really makes sense to know what your skills are, know what your interests are and determine what you want to volunteer for specifically. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! So those were the first two steps: Understand the benefits, and Analyze the skills. Let s move on to step three: Determine your goals. Kevin Reilly: Okay! So when determining goals, basically, there are three types of goals: They are immediate, short-term and long term. So your immediate goals might be something as simple as: I need to get out of the house more often okay. Whether you re in transition or not or you might be a very introverted individual. An immediate goal might be to get you out of the house, to get exposure to other people, to get exposure to other groups to help your speaking, okay, your public speaking, et cetera. Your short-term, an example maybe, you may be in transition. You want to start volunteering and networking through that to get more skills, to get that promotion, Page 6

7 to get that new job, or to move into that new industry. So that would be considered more of a short-term goal, short term being like 3 to 6 months, I would say. And the long-term would be if you re planning on getting a certification, if you re planning on changing industries, if you re planning on opening up your own business. These are the types of goals that you want to keep in mind when you re selecting an organization and the specific task that you re going to do when you volunteer. So it s important to know immediate, short-term and long-term goals in order to be successful at volunteering and networking. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! That was at step number three. Step number four, I think you don t actually have to go through this step all the time because it is: Select your organization. My guess here is: I m a project manager. I want to volunteer for my local project management organization. There s pretty much usually only one of them in every area available. But Select your organization, that s more when you are trying to expand and reach out and do new things and change your career right? Kevin Reilly: Well it s interesting, Cornelius, because I m going to answer that in two parts. The first part is you are talking about like a regional, a geographical let s say Project Management Institute, PMI for instance Cornelius Fichtner: Right, or a PM Kevin Reilly: IIBA any of those. Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, yeah, there are tons of project management related organizations in the world, yes. Kevin Reilly: Right! Now the thing you want to think about is I ll give you for instance, there are five PMI Chapters in Southern California. I belong to all five of them and I go to all of their meetings. Now, the reason I do that is for volunteering and networking, okay? What I want to expand on that is you might have a specific chapter that has a small number of members and there might be a chapter in a different geographic area that has more members that will give you more activities or more opportunities to expand your different skills and to help in different areas. So that might be one reason even though it s the same organization such as the Project Management Institute, PMI, you might want to volunteer in different chapters or organizations of that. In addition to that, you are absolutely right. A lot of people volunteer for more than one organization. I m very active with Susan G. Komen. I m very active with Salvation Army. A lot of different volunteer organizations I m active in for different reasons. So when you re selecting that organization, you want to look at a couple of different things to determine what organization to select. So the first thing is your goals. Again, what are your immediate, short term and long-term goals and will these organizations that you re looking at help you achieve your goals? Okay, first of all, this sounds a little selfish and it is. But to be Page 7

8 a good volunteer and good networker, you have to have a little selfishness to know what those goals are because there has to be a value proposition for you. Otherwise, you will not be doing it in the first place, right? Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah! Agree! Kevin Reilly: So the second thing you want to look at is your time. And when I talk about time, I m talking about two things. The first is your actual schedule. Are you in transition? Are you unemployed? Are you working full time? Are you volunteering 20 hours for other organizations? You have to be realistic about your schedule. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay! Let me stop you right there because you are volunteering for five PMI Chapters. Did you go through this particular step? I don t think so! Kevin Reilly: No, not this particular step. I usually had a schedule and I knew on this date, I was going to this meeting. And this date, I was going to this other meeting, yeah! Good question. But the thing is that you have to know your limitations and you have to be realistic about it. Most people just like myself when I first started volunteering, I volunteered way too much time and I think everybody that has ever volunteered goes through this. You determine what your limitations are. When I first started volunteering for PMI, I was unemployed. So I was volunteering 50 hours a week. Once I started working, I couldn t do that even though I tried to because I had committed to that. The point is with time and schedule, know when you can volunteer and know the number of hours per week, per month, per quarter and stick to that. The only way to realize that is to kind of experience it as you go along. And then the third thing you want to do is research the different organizations. If you re interested in project management, we have PMI. There s the association for project management. There are a lot of different types of organizations out there that have different strategic objectives. So get on Google just basically if you have an idea of what you want to volunteer for like project management, Google project management. Type in chapter, type in organization, type in institute, association. Get a list of the different types of organizations that you re interested in your geographic area, okay, and then review those. Find out how they can fit in to your goals, your time and your schedule. So what we re doing as we go through these, we re narrowing down the field. And still it s being a little selfish because all you have now are those specific goals, those specific skills and the amount of time you have available to offer. Okay, so all the goals, the time and the research is a selection process. Then you finally get to the organization or organizations that you selected to do that volunteering, okay? So based upon everything you ve done up to that point, you re going to select a specific organization. And then once you have gone through this process, go out and volunteer. Determine what events come up. Look at the project, the volunteer coordinator. Page 8

9 Contac them. Go on their websites. See who you need to talk to. Talk to friends that are part of that organization already. Get a feel for it. Go to a meeting. Go to a breakfast meeting. Attend a webinar. Whatever the case may be, find out more about that and actually start volunteering and that s when the fun begins. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! So those where the first four steps: Understand the benefits, Analyze the skills, Determine the goals, and Select the organization. Step five, I think we ve already talked a little bit about this: Leverage your time. Anything else what we need to say about this other than know your schedule, only volunteer as much as you actually can? Kevin Reilly: Really, some of the important things, Cornelius, on top of that is to target specific tasks to maximize your productivity. So instead of going in and just saying: Okay, if you need editing with anything, just send it to me. If you re interested in creating a newsletter for your own business, tell them that you want to specifically work on editing the newsletter or adding content or writing, okay? Determine what the specific need of the organization is. Find out how it falls in to place with your needs but don t take on every task. Start small. Get productive and as you get these little wins, you actually gain more experience and you ll start volunteering and networking with the people that can help you with your specific goals. In addition to that, it s kind of common sense and human nature. You always want to thank people and follow up, okay? So one of the things is that when you network with someone, you volunteer, you network with someone through volunteering, always exchange business cards and use that time to find out a little information about them. I always carry a little pad and pen with me and as soon as I stop talking to people, I immediately write down a couple of bullet points so that when I follow up with them later, I know exactly what we talked about. And then the followup in general, myself, I m a speaker/coordinator for the Orange County Chapter as you know, I always send a card and an and a thank you for people that have helped me. So whether it s a volunteer organization in life in general or of course when you re going for interviews, you always want to follow up and try to personalize that as much as possible. One of the biggest things that works for me is I actually send a physical greeting card to people. And they are surprised because they don t think that physical greeting cards exist anymore because everything is either an e-vite or a thank you. So get creative but always follow up with people and thank them for taking the time out because everybody s time is very precious. Cornelius Fichtner: Right! And the sixth step in your process is Market your skills. So how do I market my skills and why do I have to market my skills now? Kevin Reilly: Okay so the most important thing first of all is to know what those skills are and know what skills that you want to market to other people, alright? Page 9

10 It s important so that people understand what they are and how you can help them. If you are talking to a dentist, okay, and he s talking to you about amalgam fillings and you know nothing about dentistry, you know that s probably not a networking activity that you want to continue. However, if that dentist had bought a new software system and needs a project manager to implement it, you have the skills to help that specific dentist. So that s kind of what it comes down to is the reason why. Know what your skills are so that when you talk to people, you ll be able to help them but they will also be able to help you. So it s a two-way street. So some other skills are first of all your two-minute commercial. Two-minute commercial, 30-second commercial, elevator speech, we all know what that means. But know this and have it memorized so that when someone comes up to you or you re in a volunteering and networking opportunity, you can tell them in 2 minutes or less all the pertinent points about yourself not only what you re looking for but also how you can help that person. I constantly use the term value proposition. What is the value that I m giving this person and what is the value that this person could give to me? Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! The one problem that I have with these speeches, these 30-second speeches, they sometimes sound like a company s vision, you know that piece of paper that is stuck somewhere up on a wall that nobody reads, okay? Kevin Reilly: Right! Cornelius Fichtner: It seems to me sometimes like: Okay, this person is now stepping up to that wall and is reading his vision to me. It s high, strong; they re using words that they wouldn t normally use in a regular conversation. So I kind of let that go by and then I say: Okay! Now tell me a little bit about the real you and let s forget about what you have just told me because frankly, I did not understand what you told. It was so complex and so complicated. My appeal to everybody is you re commercial about yourself. Make it so that everybody can understand it. Don t use words that you have to go look up in a dictionary. Kevin Reilly: Very good point. No, you want to personalize it. You don t want it to look rehearsed. You want it to be natural and it should be natural. After you practice for a while, it will be natural. Absolutely! Good point! Okay, next thing you want to do is always talk about your skills positively. So when you re in transition, it s very easy to fall into that negative slump: Nobody wants me, okay. I m unqualified. I can t do this. Talk about your skills positively: I can do this. I m out and about. I m volunteering to improve my skills. As a volunteer, I m targeting those people that could help me and who I can help. So again, it s a two-way street. So always talk positively about the skills that you have. Don t talk about: I ve been out of work for 18 months. People don t want to hear that. They want to hear how you can help them in a specific task that you can help them with. Tell people what you have to offer. Page 10

11 Again, this kind of goes back to those unique skills. If you have a unique skill that someone is looking for, let them know about that right off the bat. They might be looking for someone that s a master chef, okay, that s also a project manager. If you fit that bill, let them know that upfront so they ll be able to understand that you have value for them and you can have a good valuable relationship going on between the two of you. And then again, I keep harping on it but tell them how you can help them, alright? How can this person help me? Yes, it s interesting when you re networking and volunteering. It s selfish because you re looking for something but you can t really expect anything in return. If you do, you re going to fail the whole process. Offer what you can to help, okay, and whatever you can do to help other people. And really when you do that, you are going to get it back tenfold just by being yourself. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! So this was your six-step process. And to review, first of all, Understand your benefits. Then, Analyze your skills. Determine the goals that you have. Select the organization. Leverage your time. And then, Market your skills. Before we move on and do a little bit of a review and your general thoughts about this whole thing. I d like to show our listeners what the power of this is because your story and what happened to you in the last 12, 18 months and how you have leveraged this process is incredible. So how have you implemented these activities? What has happened to you? What was the positive effect of this in your life? Kevin Reilly: Okay, great question! Basically, it all started about a year and half ago. I was in transition. I was laid off because it was a small company and instead of normally going home and watching soap operas for the next 3 weeks, I actually decided to first of all go to Employment Development Department. So you don t really think of that as a networking opportunity. But it would ended up being a volunteering opportunity. So the day that I got laid off from my job, I went there to fill up paperwork for unemployment et cetera. But they also needed a trainer that day. So what I ended up doing that day but I went through their training program and actually as a volunteer helped run a couple of the resume shops, that type of thing. Strictly volunteer, non-pay; but what I was able to do was get networking and be able to hone my own skills as far as resume writing, et cetera, okay. So right off the bat, it was working for me, the volunteering and the networking were intertwined. Over the next couple of months, what I did was I volunteered for the PMI Chapter in the Inland Empire. Again, one of the reasons for me was to pay it forward and also to be able to hone some of my skills. And because I was in transition quite honestly, I was looking to network and help other people with that. I ended up being the Director and then VP of Programs for that chapter. Page 11

12 So a couple of months after I started that, I went to a regional meeting for PMI, Region 7, and this was a great opportunity for me to meet other project managers and also other leaders in the PMI Chapters of Region 7 which included Nevada, Hawaii, California and a couple of other states. So what I did was instinct there, the first day that I got there Cornelius being myself, I went down to the place where they were having the conference in the hotel and I asked if I could help. For me, it was second nature. Cornelius Fichtner: Okay! Kevin Reilly: So I walked into the room. They had a closed door. I knocked on the door. They said: Can I help you? I said: No, but I can help you. And that first day I helped stuffed bags. I helped licked envelopes. I helped put name badges together. Of the approximately 40 people that I met during that particular conference for leadership for our Region 7 PMI, about 35 of those are still main contacts that I talk to at least once a week. So this is the power, okay? So in addition to that, I m not going to tell my whole history but the power of paying it forward, last year I got my PMP exam and several people helped me including you so what I did after studying for that, yes, 320 hours for the PMP exam using your PrepCast, thank you very much, I had been an IT trainer for about 10 years, software trainer. And I asked you and the 2 other people that had helped me: How do I get in to this? How do I do this for a living? So what happened is through the volunteering through the PMI, through actually going through the PMP exam prep, I met the three people including you that told me that day after I passed the PMP, why don t you come on as a 1099 consultant because we can work together on this project. And I have been a 1099 consultant ever since then, still working those three original people that helped me pass the PMP Exam. So another example of paying it forward. So really, volunteering and network to me, they go hand in hand. When you volunteer, try to meet as many people as you can. Another trick real quick, the PMI San Diego Chapter and some other chapters actually list the people that are attending events, dinner events, breakfast events, et cetera. So what you can do is you can actually target your networking when you go to these volunteering opportunities if you know the specific people that are going to be there. How can you help them? How can they help you? It s a two-way street and a symbiotic relationship. So again, volunteering and networking really for me go hand in hand and they should for everyone in my opinion. Cornelius Fichtner: Alright, perfect! Thank you very much. So before we close, let s hear sort of your review, your closing thoughts about volunteering and networking for professional success? Kevin Reilly: Okay! They really do go together volunteering and networking. Keep in mind that benefitwise, you will get both personal and professional benefits from volunteering and networking. Every time that you do by paying it Page 12

13 forward whether it s for a professional organization or for an organization like Tumekala Valley Balloon and Wine Festival where you serve wine, there s always personal and professional benefits to doing those. You have to determine what those are. If you get to a point where you re in an organization and you re not getting a benefit or you re not giving a benefit, perhaps it s time to move on to do something else because your interests and your skills may have changed. Also, it s important to remember that you re volunteering and networking should be done as an ongoing process. Don t just do it during transition. That is the best time to do it but do it often because you ll always be able to fill those gaps in in your employment history plus the fact that hopefully most of us do want to retire and be able to do the networking and the volunteering as a full-time job if you will. So it s important to keep those relationships open on an ongoing basis not just when you re in transition. Also, you want to make sure that you choose the right organization, okay. If you re volunteering for volunteering sake, it s not going to work in the long run. Do your due diligence, find out your skills, select your organization, and you will provide value to the organization and you will receive value from the activities and tasks that you perform for that organization. And then know your limitations, okay? You have to know your schedule. You have to know the maximum number of hours per week, per month, per quarter, et cetera. Don t exceed those because then other parts of your life will begin to get stressed out and that will affect everything including your volunteering and networking, okay? Target specific tasks and individuals like I was talking about. If you can get a list of people that you want to talk to beforehand or if there are specific skills and tasks that you want to increase or that you haven t done before that you re interested in learning, target those and don t overload yourself. If you don t like doing editing then don t volunteer to be an editor of the newsletter. If you don t like writing, don t write articles for the blog or for the monthly newsletter or in the LinkedIn groups. Do something that you enjoy and make sure it s targeted and valuable to both you and also to the organization. And then the last one is know your skills and market them. You have specific skills that are valuable to organizations and other individuals that you volunteer for and that you network with. Let people know what those are. It s not being pompous, it s being informative. Tell people what you re good at. Tell people what you re interested in and they ll take from that how you can help them with those specific skills that you possess. That s pretty much it! Cornelius Fichtner: That s pretty much it. So here s my final question for you today, Kevin. That is a lot of work, right? There may be people out there, listeners out there who have really never considered volunteering and networking for their professional career. And you know, there s a lot ahead of them. Let s send them off in the right way. What would you say can they do today, maybe Page 13

14 they re listening to this on their way to work or on their way home: What are the one to two tasks that they can do today in order to get themselves started into this direction? Kevin Reilly: I think it goes back to a couple of things from presentation or from the interview. Number one, know what your goals are, okay? What is missing in your life? What do you need immediately, alright? Once you know that then you can determine what types of volunteer organizations to look at. And then target your search. If you know that you want to learn how to bake a cake and you don t know how to do that then go on the internet and look a different organizations that show you how to bake a cake and then between those organizations, contact them. Find out when their next meeting is. So you don t have to go through everything in this process that we talked about. But the most important thing is know your goal, make an initial step and then get out there and do it. Even if you go to a meeting or you go to a library for two hours on a Saturday, you walk dogs, whatever your passion is or whatever you have an immediate need, just start that, know the goal, go out and make a contact and make the first step out the door and go to that meeting and do that first volunteer activity. That s kind of what it comes down to I think. Cornelius Fichtner: Wonderful! Thank you very much, Kevin. I appreciate your time. Kevin Reilly: Thank you, Cornelius! Podcast Exit Cornelius Fichtner: And that was our discussion with Kevin Reilly on how to network and volunteer for professional success. And that s it for today. Thanks for listening. As always, you can find us on the web at And following up on what I said in the opening of this episode. For all those who are currently thinking about getting their PMI-ACP certification, please stop by at and get on the mailing list so that we can tell you all about the Agile PrepCast and help you get certified. Please send your s to info@pm-podcast.com and when you write, please tell me where in the world you are writing from. And finally, we have this. It s another popular saying that we twisted for project management purposes. The saying is: No man can serve two masters. But for us, project managers, this becomes: No man can serve two masters. But every project manager can manage at least four projects simultaneously. Page 14

15 Until Next Time Page 15