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So you bullshat your way into a role for which you're completely unqualified and now those beneath you will be affected by whatever you do/don't. Congratulations, you are now a bona fide manager and everyone hates you. The good news is that you can always find a way to blame it on them.

Sorry, but no sympathy for this kind of stupidity. People doing exactly this sort of thing are the main reason we've not actually delivered any programmes for the last seven years, why we were hit by record level fines by the court ... and why we're now on our third CEO in that same period.

Best you can do is talk to your sponsor/boss, find a way to use that same BSing tactic and get some guidance out of them on where to start. Things will obviously be different to your last job, so use that as a starting point.
 
Blag it, learn as you go. Projecting managing isn't that difficult. Being a really good one is I'm sure. I know many, well, a few :), who have stepped into and stepped away from project managing as they prefer using their 'skills' and declared it easy.
Buy a good book on it.
Time management, communication, negotiation and a degree of leadership depending on the org although IMO it's often just someone co-ordinating everything. None of these require a load of courses to learn
 
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Trig said:
I don't get why people lie or add fluff to a CV, you can either do things or you can't, the whole "everyone does it" thing is just BS, yeah I get tailoring a CV to a job but lying about stuff just makes no sense to me..
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I guess it's about getting a foot in the door; the hiring processes in many office jobs have a huge experience bias i.e. a lot of firms hire people who [claim to] have done similar things well before over people who haven't done similar things before but have the aptitude to do those things well. So you have a repeating cycle scenario where if you never allude to having done X before, then firms wanting people to do X will overlook you time and again. That's not universally the case and it varies with the type/seniority of role, but it is definitely common. People get pigeon-holed based on what job titles or at least experience they've had, not what skills they have.

The way I look at it, a lot of talented people who are effective communicators, with good learning skills and a high level of critical thinking can turn their hands to many tasks. But there will always be a first time they do every task. If I look back at my career, every job I've had, I've needed to learn something new. And I've been able to do that, in some cases performing better than people with many years of experience in that field (IMHO).

In summation, after working for 20 years I've come full circle back to the same way of thinking I had when I was starting out; that experience is massively overrated and that it is making our labour market less efficient in terms of not fully exploiting young people with lots of talent but little experience. The difference is saying that as someone in their 40s gives me a bit more credibility that someone in their 20s who implicitly will lack experience and thus might be considered biased.

But that's a bit of a tangent, to bring it back to your specific point you've then got the "CV inflation" problem whereby if everyone has over-egged their CV then people feel they need to as well to avoid landing in the bin, with the interviewers taking that into consideration so actually setting the benchmark lower than the quality of CVs might suggest.
All that being said, I embellish very little on my CV, there isn't anything I claim to have done that I haven't so I'm always confident I can talk to everything on my CV in an interview.

As for the OP, remember that every time you change job there's always an element of well, perhaps not feeling out of your depth, but certainly being in uncharted waters. You have loads to learn in most jobs before you can really start feeling productive, so the imposter syndrome affects even experienced people as they worry about getting 'found out' due to lots of things being new.
 
OP, congratulations, you're probably not too different to various other PMs and BAs working as contractors, at least this isn't a role requiring specific domain knowledge or technical competency, I've seen people bluff those types of roles and they'll get found out much sooner.

You've worked on projects before, you're familiar with the methodologies etc.. right? So it ought to be possible for you to wing it a bit here, you will need to be confident, you're probably going to have to work your ass off and you'll need to get around and meet all the various people involved fairly quickly.

Essentially it's just going to mean you need to put in the hours and be super well organised in terms of keeping track of everything, keeping people informed etc..

It might be stressful given the lack of experience, you've brought that on yourself by bluffing your way into the role, but it isn't some unachievable task, you should have the skillset to do it, even if you don't really have the experience.
 
Rroff said:
Fact finding.

There are probably some good guides out there. Google, even YouTube, on the end to end process of project management these days.

Or you can do what so many people seem to do, come in swinging, claim all existing processes aren't fit for purpose and start implementing whatever project management software, etc. is flavour of the month, suggest the fat needs to be cut in as many areas as possible :s then disappear when the going gets tough and actual progress needs to be made.
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:cry:
 
Is that not how all project managers start?

In at the deep end, fake it and make it, etc, etc.
 
amigafan2003 said:
Is that not how all project managers start?

In at the deep end, fake it and make it, etc, etc.
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Not really seriously but I almost wonder sometimes if some of these providers of solutions for project management don't use stooges to get their product adopted within a company then disappear when it comes to actual work.
 
Also sets yourself up well for the future because you will have genuine experience to fall back on when you are looking for your next role, potentially meaning you can cut corners on career development.
 
True story. I got this from the charity shop (two for a pound) and seems to be what you need:



Just get stuck in and brush up on the parts that arent common sense. Believe in yourself. I have worked with plenty of people that completely winged it over the years and they were never in danger of losing their positions (that I knew of).
 
Rroff said:
Maybe the intention is to damage the reputation of a real person by that name.
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This, however there is a link further up where someone else has posted the same OP but under a different name on a different forum, unless that is also another name that this same person is known by...
 
Trig said:
This, however there is a link further up where someone else has posted the same OP but under a different name on a different forum, unless that is also another name that this same person is known by...
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On this note I probably should get used to Googling the first post by a new user heh - so many seem to be dubious copy and pastes though in this case appears to be someone looking for advice from multiple places.
 
Th0nt said:
Also, lets not forget, the employer made the decision to give them the job.. its not anyone else's fault but the panel and the scoring process!
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I've found it interesting in that many job I've applied for seemingly no checks have been made either against my qualifications or to really test my knowledge beyond what you can easily bluff - but in a small number I've had to sit down talk about my learning experiences and/or sit a short written test impossible to bluff your way through (usually on a subsequent interview or as a conditional part of an onboarding process).
 
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