I am just wondering; if you are the boss of a project-based company (or if you are one!), and given the choice of 2 candidates, who would you hire?
Someone who have been in 10 failed projects, have been responsible for the failings of some, but others due to other circumstances which he has no control with
Someone who have been in 10 successful projects, some which success are due to him, but some because of other circumstances.
Assume both are equally honest/modest with their failings and successes. What are your thoughts?
ETA: Oops, wrong forum! Can a moderator kindly move to this in In My Humble Opinions? Thanks!
Not really getting what you’re driving at here - usually the best indicator of future success is previous track record, it’s the best thing you’ve got to go on. If the two candidates are otherwise similar in their make-up the successful guy obviously gets hired.
I’ve known guys who have started companies that have failed, in an area where most start-ups failed. They have been very much in demand to lead new start-ups, just from having being through the mill - they’ve got a headstart on someone who is doing it for the first time. Still, they’d never beat out the hypothetical guy who had started 5 successful companies.
So I guess I miss the point of the OP. I’d add that the level of difficulty and ambition of the field you’re in substantially mitigate the meaning of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. I know some world-class scientists in the pharma industry who have never worked on a project that got to market. They have literally worked on the 10 ‘failed’ projects of the OP. If they were laid off tomorrow, mind, they’d walk into a new job within the week. Designing drugs to safely treat human disease is excruciatingly difficult, and it is quite possible to be an outstanding scientist and still fail.
OTOH, if your skills are in toilet seat engineering, and you’ve been on 10 failed projects to make a toilet seat, then questions would need to be asked as to what is going wrong - why are you failing to deliver on an ostensibly simple set of projects?
However, the candidate who had some failed projects needs to understand that you highlight your successes in your resume, not your failures. So even if your prijects failed for heaven’s sake don’t put that in your resume.
As someone who has been responsible for hiring a diverse group of people before…any negativity in your resume should be omitted. Concentrate on your successes…let the interviewer ask you if the projects failed, and if they did be brief but tell them about your successes in a project even if it failed.
As for the intent - so the thread wouldn’t get derailed - I am wondering what to put on my resume, because almost everything I am involved somehow got canceled, delayed, postponed and etc.
I’m not an employer, but I’ve been in a position to influence hiring practices. And hiring the successful candidate for me would be a no-brainer - a resume is a marketing tool. I’d only want to hear about how you handled failure if you reached the interview stage. If you tell me about failure right from the start, I’ll assume that you’re not a good communicator or don’t have sound judgment.
Also, regardless of who was responsible for the failures, it sounds like you’re (general you) making excuses if you indicate it was someone else’s fault or cite loss or lack of funding. Even when those circumstances are accurate, you should never, ever point fingers, especially on a resume or in an interview. It makes you look like you’ll take credit when things go well, but if things go poorly, you’ll find the nearest scapegoat.
One additional piece of advice for this job search is to put some effort into interviewing your next employer. Learn how to ask probing questions to identify stable and unstable projects. Aim for those likely to succeed. By now you should have some indication of what the relevant red flags look like. Also, if enough of those failed projects can honestly be said to have failed in spite of you, consider marketing yourself to a turnaround niche once you have a few successes under your belt. Make the most of what you’ve learned.
[continued hijack]I love that jokes as well. In fact I used it this week to illustrate a point with a friend who was getting too worried about the details. You never really know what the other person finds important/[/hijack]
For the OP, if all the projects you went south, don’t emphasis it, but you must be prepared to answer the whys and do your homework.
For example, if 80% of the projects at your company were cancelled, etc., then that can be cited as a factor. If your particular division was losing money, etc. etc.
Emphasis what you learned out of the process. Unless your organizational or people skills or whatever were the cause of them all, you would have gotten a good amount of experience. And if you were the cause of all the failures, then maybe you should be looking for a job more in line with your talents.
Your proof reader won’t have to do so much. The biggest error that jumps out at native speakers is a subject-verb agreement problem. “Someone who have” should be “someone who has.” Other than that, you “don’t have control over” something, not “control with.” I’ve seen worse grammar from some native speakers…
As others have said, though, resumes should highlight your successes. You’ll want to be honest during an interview if asked point blank questions, but you don’t have to be confessional before then
Thanks for taking my comment in the spirit it was intended, and know that I applaud you: I’m sure you speak English a lot better than I speak your native tongue.
CrazyChop, even if the project itself failed, there must (I hope!) be something you did right!
Example, from my own resume:
(dates) (end client sector). Hired to review QC approach, completely revamped QC design. Streamlined relationships between QC and other modules, mainly SD, PP and MM.
Now, you don’t have to understand what the heck the alphabet soup means, but note that I don’t list any of this:
the project in general was misdesigned and mismanaged. At the time I joined it was in its 3rd consulting firm and 5th year. That was 3 years ago, it’s still ongoing and not expected to end anytime soon. The people doing QC before me in that 3rd firm had no previous knowledge of Quality Control, either within “the program” or in other environments… one of them was from Finance, the other one from Warehousing; they didn’t know the difference between a sample and an electrocardiogram.
I focus on what I did - and did well.
People in the industry have, during interviews, asked the name of the end client (I avoid putting those in the resume and only indicate sector) and when I mentioned it gone “oh my God! That monster?” Having been able to leave with my sanity more or less at the same level as it was before joining is a plus on my scorecard, ever though that project was, is and will be a dump.
I generally tell them it’s confidential unless I feel that it will benefit me somehow.
I don’t feel any particular need to be ‘honest’ on my resume beyond what can be independently verified (ie, employment dates for companies that still exist, degrees, and so on). Half the companies I worked for have been merged or spun off so many times since I left it’s impossible to find any records of my employment. For one, I had to send my employer a copy of a W2 for the background check to verify that I didn’t just make up the company. And most of the people who I worked with have since moved on to other companies.
Basically, you want to portray yourself in the best way possible. For example, for my current job I put down that I manage a team of 4 project leaders. I don’t put down that I sit on my ass all day because our psychotic vice president insists on doing everything herself and never communicates with us.
I am a manager in the IT industry, and have hired technical people from entry level up to first line managers.
Given this assumption, always hire the one with the successes. Anybody who has failed 10 times, even if its not always their fault, has not managed their career well and has walked unknowingly into no-win situations. I want the one who can create success but also spot it in the making.
However, that assumption is rarely true. I have become very cynical when reviewing resumes, and when I see nothing but smashing, raving success I think someone is probably bullshitting me. Some people grossly exaggerate the successes or the benefits of their contributions. There’s a fine line between being positive and outright bullshit.
But you should definitely emphasize the positive; don’t say “I completed all tasks on time on a failed project.” No need to skewer yourself. I have been on a couple of projects that failed due to circumstances beyond my control. In one case, my company was subcontracting to a large company who lost the account with the end customer. In another, my company was subcontracting to a large company on a federal contract that spun out of control until the agency cancelled it. I didn’t contribute to either failure and the work I managed met all objectives. But they do not appear as failed projects on my resume. There is no need to do that, because my own contributions were successful.
In another more ambiguous case, I managed a group developing a prototype system which my management decided to bid it as a critical part of a large contract which we were negotiating. I said, “It’s not meant for production. It’s a prototype. It’ll be months before we even know if it’s feasible.” But of course, they didn’t listen, we ended up deploying it to production three months behind schedule, performance was unacceptable and it died after six months. We spent the next year reengineering it for performance. I’m not sure how I could have created a better outcome. It was a success based on the original objectives of the prototype but it wasn’t such a hot success from a business standpoint. My resume said that we created a fully functional system which we then reengineered to develop production-quality performance. Frankly I had a lot of arguments with my boss as to whether I had been successful or not.
I don’t know if I’d go with either - a straight run of 10 of anything would be ringing all sorts of alarm bells. I guess if the 10 successes are verifiable and the applicant fits the job, then surely that’s got to be the better choice… is this a trick question?
