Imagine you have all been selected, straight out of university, to attend interviews at Babcock Marine in Devonport for the position of Graduate Project Manager. Should you be successful you could be working on anything from the infrastructure of the base to the refit of Nuclear Submarines. You have all been told in advance that your interview will begin with you giving a 10 minute presentation covering each the following three main areas, equally:
- What it takes to be a good project manager?
- How you would judge if a particular project could be called successful on completion?
- Why would you be the right choice as someone with the potential to one day manage a multi £M, hugely complex project such as the refit of a nuclear submarine?.
It is rarely good policy to read a presentation from a script and certainly not in a situation such as this. However, for an event as important as this interview, it is a good idea to produce a very detailed outline of what precisely you will say. By the time you have evolved your presentation on paper you should be in a very good position to make a professional, near word-perfect presentation with reference to no more than your PowerPoint slides. You can even work what appear to be ad-libs into the presentation if you do enough preparation.
For this assignment you are required to provide a âscriptâ for the presentation along with paper copies of the PowerPoint slides (no more than five in total and printed 3 to a side of A4 ) you would use to illustrate your talk. Remember that this is not simply the reproduction of text-book/internet answers for an examination. This is an interview with real people who understand real project management and who have read the popular text books and seen all the lists on the internet. You want to impress with your personality, knowledge, understanding and potential ability to do the job. You will not do this by simply regurgitating glib lists from on-line âconsultantsâ.
This piece of work must show clear evidence of reading around the subject as well as understanding its particular relevance to the company (donât contact them for details). While it is unlikely that you would use references in such a presentation, for this exercise you must include a separate, full reference list that identifies all of your sources and links to your script and, where appropriate, your PowerPoints.
This single assignment contributes 21% of this moduleâs mark and should therefore be a significant piece of work of between 1,500 and 1,800 words (which is the maximum you could hope to present in 10 mins) and represent approximately 30 hours of work â you really want this job. Even if you donât get into Babcock this presentation could well form the basis for others you may be asked to give in your search for the perfect start to your engineering career.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION â You are out to convince the interview panel why they should recruit you as opposed to all the other similarly qualified individuals they will see over the next few days. Target your presentation at Babcock, be realistic and donât even consider regurgitating notes/sources from this or other lectures including HRL202. Remember your interviewers are looking for something that will differentiate you from the rest of the group and they will also be very familiar with the literature on this subject.
Plagiarism is a waste of time as it is you, not Denis Lock or any one else, that is going for the job. However if he or any other Project Management Gurus start to put words in your mouth you donât get the job or any marks for this assignment!
