Natural born leaders

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith speaks to four millennial project managers about their career stories

The millennial generation continues to intrigue employers. Born after 1981, this section of today’s workforce is often labelled as lazy and self-serving, but, in reality, Generation Y is a group of hard-working, socially conscious individuals who believe in a work-life balance.

Many have found their way into project management through unorthodox routes, having first completed degrees or found work in other industries, before realising their communication and leadership skills could enable them to start handling their own projects.

This is certainly true for Stephanie Schiller, 32, who got into project management through a graduate scheme with Surrey County Council, though she hadn’t known it could be a career before then. In fact, she’d just finished a chemistry degree. “People always say that chemists have a lot of problem-solving skills and they’re liked in business, so I wanted to know what that actually meant,” she says.

Schiller’s interests outside the industry have played a crucial role in her career. She applied to work in aviation because she was training to be a pilot, and now, when she looks back at her degree, she realises the skills she uses today were already shining through in the lab: “I naturally ended up leading my team and the group projects that we had to do,” she says.

Having done the APMP, now known as the APM Project Management Qualification, Schiller went to Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group. As she’s moved up the ladder to project manager, the rest of her training for situations such as risk management, change management and customer engagement has come on the job.

“I think we’re in an age at the moment of instant gratification, where everybody wants to be at the top of their game very quickly,” she says, adding: “If you’re prepared to work for it, this can be a really rewarding career.”

Her advice to millennials in the profession is not to worry about what career progression looks like, because it all counts. “Every role you do as a project manager is always going to be slightly different, and will just add to your toolbox,” she says.

Many older millennials in the industry now occupy high-ranking roles, but APM is working hard to ensure the next generation are engaging with the sector. It has expanded its university events to students outside project management courses to reflect the increasingly diverse make-up of the industry and has started outreach programmes with schools to boost awareness among teachers, pupils and parents, among a host of other initiatives.

Transferable skills

One person taking part in APM’s schools outreach programme, ‘Make It Happen’, is Jemma Bowman, 30, pharmacy project manager at NHS Dumfries and Galloway. She’s guiding pupils at a Dumfries school as they plan their sixth-form prom, “right from starting the idea process to delivering the project and objectives”.

Bowman’s introduction to the industry was in the same town as the kids she’ll be helping, but it was something she “slipped into”. After graduating with a business management degree in 2008 – just as the recession hit – the graduate schemes froze, and Bowman ended up working in telecommunications and recruitment. It wasn’t until November 2017 that she found herself needing to act as a project manager.

“When a new state-of-the-art hospital was built here, I was heavily involved with the migration of its pharmacy department,” she says, and she assisted in leading a team through the transition. “That’s when I identified that I was using the knowledge and skills I obtained during my degree – and realised it was what I trained to do,” she says. When a project management post opened up at the hospital, she was quick to apply for it.

Now she’s doing a part-time master’s degree in project management to build up her skill set. Bowman has also made links with another pharmacy project manager (who is, crucially, not a pharmacist), and they try to meet regularly to share best practice with one another. “He’s really good at the analytical, data-driven side of project management, and I’m quite creative and ideas driven, so it is a great opportunity to bounce ideas around,” she says.

Her advice for young people looking to get into the industry is to identify the transferable skills they have picked up since graduation, in whatever form of work they have done, in order to “realise that you do project management daily”, she says. “It could be planning a party, a wedding or renovating a bathroom in your house – it’s just about applying the same principles.”

Wanting to learn how to improve the world around you is another route into the industry and was one of the drivers behind Ednah Nzombe moving to the UK for her project management master’s. Originally from Zimbabwe, the 31-year-old did her first two degrees in South Africa, where she spent 10 years learning and working in different industries, from corporate communications to the financial sector.

But the more Nzombe got involved in handling different projects, the more she realised she wanted to join the profession. She chose to study in the UK due to its impressive infrastructure projects like HS2. Now she’s a project manager at Mott MacDonald, working as part of a water industry alliance to deliver crucial infrastructure.

Nzombe feels the profession is special, as you don’t need a technical background to succeed, and there is always expert help on hand. “At first, I was worried about coming from a financial services background – I was not an engineer – but you are surrounded by experts. It’s just up to you how you use their resources,” she says.

One day, Nzombe plans to take her experience back home, where she says good infrastructure is lacking. “I always had a car at home and my frustration would be traffic and potholes on the road. But here you can still get to where you need to be on time on the train.”

While people love to complain about transport in the UK, they “don’t see how good they have it”, she says. The infrastructure in Zimbabwe is “terrible”, but she believes the economy can be improved with more effective systems, whether for road, rail, water or telecommunications. “Good infrastructure improves the quality of people’s lives.”

Mentorship

For Dan Allsop, 31, his formal introduction to project management came while working for an event management company – but he got a taste for it in his teens at Nando’s. “I left school without a huge amount of qualifications and tried to figure out what career I wanted,” he says. As he started planning local events for the restaurant chain, his strengths became clear.

By the age of 25, Allsop had a degree in project management and had moved to Rolls-Royce in the engineering department, later doing a master’s. Now he’s programme manager for the company’s IntelligentEngine – the aerospace-engine maker’s vision for the engine of the future – and is overseeing its strategic software and digital portfolio. Allsop is at a level where he can be a mentor for junior project managers – a practice he finds essential in the industry.

“Mentorship has been hugely influential in my career and is why I’ve been successful, and I want to try to do the same for others,” he says. “Having individuals who are willing to share prior challenges with you and explain some of the things that could go wrong has helped me develop.”

One piece of advice he gives to people is how to stay stress free when a project becomes trying. “One of the biggest pitfalls people can get into is constantly being in firefighting mode and trying to resolve the issue right in front of them – but, ultimately, you need to enable your teams to do that.” And part of that means making sure that everyone in a team understands “how they’re collectively influencing the wider goal of the project”.

One part of the job Allsop appreciates most is not being sat behind a desk for hours on end: “I’m constantly engaging with people and communicating with them – it’s a really sociable role.”

And it’s one that suits millennials’ traits perfectly.

To find out more about APM’s education programme, email caspar.bartington@apm.org.uk

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith is a freelance reporter