Elizabeth Harrin has an interesting post up at A Girl’s Guide to Project Management called Use your experts. Despite my general lack of understanding of the importance of a good haircut (as anyone who has seen me recently can confirm…) I was interested by the idea of a project manager as someone who knows the right people to ask.

I’m fully on board with this idea, as I think a good project manager has a set of skills around helping people to work together, recognising when expertise is needed, and bringing in advice when necessary.

For those of us looking for contracts, though, we’re seeing a different trend among recruiters. While there has always been a bias towards hiring project managers who have already worked in a specific industry for that specific industry, it seems to me that this is getting worse.

Often I am seeing contracts coming up advertised as project manager positions which seem to be something else. Many of them are starting to really be adverts for a subject matter expert, with a bit of project management thrown in on the side. For example, I recently looked at a position which was asking for someone who could carry out a technical analysis, complete a full network design, and be able to go hands on to deliver it, dealing with all the technical issues along the way. The project management of this was really an afterthought, tacked on to the role.

Now, it’s understandable, with the constraints on funding in all businesses, for businesses to be trying to get this kind of ‘two for one’ type of individual. Many project managers, having come from a background where they did this work before moving onto project management, may indeed be able to fill this kind of role.

Is this a trend away from the idea of a ‘generalist’ project manager, I wonder? Is project management coming to be seen as a set of ancillary skills, something which can be of support in your usual role, rather than a role in itself?

What do you think? Are you an expert who does project management, or a project management expert?