After a few intensive weeks our state-of-the-art career site, powered by Phenom, is finally live! This marks a big milestone for me as, on this occasion, my customer also happened to be my employer. As a result of that, my role was not only to lead the project team but also move the internal recruitment process from a manual operation into a more digitally advanced solution that will be fully integrated with an ATS system of our choice in the near future. I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved!
I think that when you look at successful project implementation principles, you will be able to find a lot of information quoting things like; user involvement, clear business objectives, skilled resources, using the right tools and executive support. These being some of the most important success factors. I guess it is fair to say that during the COVID-19 outbreak most of those factors were impacted with organizations trying to find the right balance, setting the right priorities and aligning their precious employees into roles most critical for the business. Most of us are now working odd hours, trying to balance family obligations with day-to-day work activities. We are constantly facing interruptions during video-call catch ups either by our kids or our beloved pets demanding our attention.
So how do we make it work?
The thing is – you can’t plan for everything. Heraclitus said: “The only constant in life is change”. If we look back at 2020 so far, it has all been about embracing change and trying to adapt to the new normal way of living. Those of us working in professional services moved into a 100% remote delivery model at short notice without knowing what to expect. Especially learning how we are going to nurture the precious relationships that are so important to us. The only thing we can do is stay focused.
What did we do well?
We communicated! Staying aligned is what ensured our project’s success. We probably ended up talking a lot more than was necessary but those moments together got us closer to the finish line and allowed us to get creative, explore ideas and prioritize upcoming tasks. We had some hard deadlines to meet but the trust we built in our project team allowed us to support and cover for one another if needed.
What we could improve on?
We probably underestimated the creative part of the project and the opportunities it offers. We had a plan and a draft ready but once we started to learn more about the CMS system, and the careers site pages were coming together, we noticed that there are so many ways to present a message that we could have easily extended this part of the project with an additional couple of months just to make it perfect.
My reflection
When you combine smart people with smart planning very little can go wrong. It’s all about having the right team. Even if we surrounded ourselves with the most advanced collaborative tools, we would still fail if the team was out of sync and didn’t know how to communicate effectively.
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