Identify Your Strengths And Skills
One of the main reasons you might not be getting these roles is to do with your skills. Sometimes, these projects need certain skills in people. Take some time to identify your skills and your strengths. Try to do this honestly. What are you good at? What are you not good at? What would you bring to the project team that can help them? What are your skills? Why should they ask you to be on the project?
Identifying your strengths and skills is the first step of working out how to get on the best IT projects.
Determine Why You’re Not Getting These Projects
Now it’s time to have a think about why you’re not actually getting these projects. This could be for a number of reasons, some of them within your control and some of them out of your control. Either way, it is really helpful to work out why you’re not getting these projects.
You could consider the skills and experience of the other team members who are on the project. What skills, experience and strengths do they have that you don’t? Who do they know that has helped them get this role, that you don’t?
Is the particular IT project a high-profile one? Sometimes these projects need certain levels of experience in the field – if it’s critical, they want the most experienced people for the project.
Do they not have the demand for your skills? Depending on the project and your skills, you may not be required for the project. Perhaps it is a .NET development project, and your skills are in Java. Perhaps you’re a database developer, but the database work has been done or is not required. It could come down to your skills that are not required for some projects.
These reasons will depend on your organisation, your team, and the kind of projects that are being run, but this kind of assessment can help you work out why.
Stay Objective, Not Emotional
It’s important when doing these kinds of assessments to stay objective and not emotional. Rather than trying to think negatively of others, or lay blame on some people, try to stay positive and objective. Stick to the facts and the reasoning and leave the emotion out of it. This will help you work out why you’re not on these projects.
Speak To Your Manager
If you have concerns about not getting the kinds of projects to work on that you’d like, speak to your manager. This is helpful because it informs them of your desire to be on the IT project, and can help you identify why you don’t get these roles.
Perhaps your manager isn’t aware those are the kinds of projects you want. Maybe they think you’re happy doing what you’re doing. Letting them know about the kind of work you want to do will help them put you onto these projects.
It can also help to identify why you don’t get these roles. Perhaps your manager considered you but decided not to give you a role on these IT projects. They can provide some feedback or some reasoning about this. If they do, you should try to stay objective and not emotional, as mentioned above. Learn what skills you need or what you need to improve on to be able to move on to some of these projects.
Work On The Required Skills
After you’ve done your self-assessment, or spoken to your manager about these kinds of projects, you should have some idea on what the differences are or what the reasons are that you’re not getting on to these projects.
You now have the opportunity to work on these skills or the traits that are needed to get onto the projects. Perhaps the experience is an issue – this can be improved with time. Perhaps you need to enhance your technical skills, by getting more experience in a certain technology or area. This is something you can actively control and improve.
If your manager has given you feedback, you can use this to determine what to improve on. If you make improvements, and if your manager is aware of your desires, you should be able to get the good IT projects in the future!
By Brumm
