Why We Built PM Talent Partners

When Mark and I started working on PM Talent Partners, the idea was actually fairly simple. We both felt there was room for a recruitment business that understood Project, Programme and Delivery people properly, rather than treating them as one broad category sitting somewhere between technology, operations and transformation.

That came partly from my own career.

I’ve worked across government, defence, Amazon and large transformation programmes, and I’ve spent a lot of time working alongside Project Managers, Programme Managers, Delivery Managers, PMO professionals and people doing jobs that don’t always fit neatly into one title. What has always stood out to me is how difficult it can be to judge someone properly from a CV alone.

Some of the best people I’ve worked with probably wouldn’t produce the most impressive CV in a pile of 100 applications. Equally, somebody can look exceptional on paper but not necessarily be the right person for a particular environment, team or organisation.

That isn’t a criticism of recruiters. Recruitment is difficult, particularly when you’re dealing with hundreds of applications and trying to move quickly.

It was simply something we thought we could approach differently.

Why the UAE?

The UAE felt like the right place to start.

There is an enormous amount happening across the region: major transformation programmes, infrastructure investment, technology projects, government initiatives, energy, construction and businesses scaling at a pace that you don’t necessarily see elsewhere. That creates significant demand for people who know how to actually deliver things - whether it be technology, construction, infrastructure, transformation or any domain for that matter.

We’ve also got a personal interest in the market. The UAE is somewhere I've worked in extensively throughout my project management career, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at and experiencing the market itself not just from a professional and recruitment perspective, but from the candidate side too.

That has given me a pretty clear view of some of the frustrations involved.

You can have solid experience, a decent track record and a background that looks relevant, but still find it difficult to work out where you fit, who is genuinely hiring, what employers are looking for and how to get in front of the right people.

For anyone looking to move into the UAE (or wider region) from overseas, that can be even harder. A vacancy in Dubai can attract hundreds (if not thousands) of applications very quickly, often from people all over the world. For employers, that creates a filtering problem. For candidates, it can feel like their experience disappears into a very large pile.

I’ve experienced enough of that process myself to understand why people get frustrated by it. Our aim isn’t to pretend we can somehow eliminate that problem. What we can do is build a better understanding of the people in our network before a vacancy even appears.

Instead of starting every search with a blank page and a CV database, we want to know who people are, what they’ve delivered, what industries they understand, what level they operate at, what they’re looking for and whether they are already in the UAE, planning a move or open to the right opportunity.

That gives us a much better starting point when somebody asks us to find a Project Manager, Programme Manager or Delivery professional. Building the talent pool first. One of the decisions we made quite early was to spend time building the candidate side of PM Talent Partners properly.

That means speaking to people even when there isn’t necessarily a live vacancy sitting in front of us. It isn’t the quickest way to build a recruitment company, but I think it gives us something much more useful over time.

We now have a growing network of experienced Project, Programme and Delivery professionals across the UAE and wider GCC, many with significant regional experience. Some are actively looking. Some aren’t. Some are already in the region. Others are planning a move and trying to understand what a realistic route into the market looks like.

That distinction matters.

There is a big difference between somebody casually considering Dubai and somebody who has genuinely researched the move, understands the market and is prepared to relocate for the right role. I think understanding that properly makes for better conversations with both candidates and employers. It also means that when a hiring manager comes to us, the conversation doesn’t always need to start with advertising a role and waiting to see who applies. Sometimes the right person may already be in the network.

More Than Recruitment

Recruitment will remain a big part of what PM Talent Partners does, but I’ve never really seen the business as just a traditional recruitment agency.

There are other parts of the employment process where we think we can be useful. One of those is helping candidates present themselves properly.

I’ve reviewed a lot of CVs over the years, both as a hiring manager and more recently through PM Talent Partners, and there are plenty of very experienced people who simply don’t communicate their experience particularly well on paper.

That is why we’re developing services around CV reviews and CV rewrites. Not because everybody needs somebody to completely rewrite their career history, but because sometimes an external view can make a significant difference. The same applies to employers.

Over time, I’d like us to build more services around helping organisations define roles, understand what they actually need and access specialist Project and Programme talent without making the process unnecessarily complicated.

There is also a wider opportunity across the GCC, UK and USA. Dubai and the UAE are our starting point, but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the wider region are all investing heavily in programmes that require experienced delivery professionals.

Expansion has to be sensible, though.

I’d rather PM Talent Partners became genuinely good at what we do in the UAE before putting flags on a map and claiming we’re suddenly operating everywhere.

What I’d like PM Talent Partners to Become

I’m fairly realistic about this.

There are a lot of recruitment companies in the UAE and some very good ones. We aren’t going to replace them all, nor do we need to. What I’d like PM Talent Partners to become is a trusted specialist business within the Project, Programme and Delivery market.

Somewhere candidates feel comfortable having a conversation before they need a job.

Somewhere people considering a move to the UAE can get a realistic sense of the market rather than just being told that Dubai is booming and therefore finding a role will be easy. Somewhere hiring managers can speak to people who understand the difference between a Project Manager, a Programme Manager, a Delivery Manager and the dozens of variations that sit around those roles; and somewhere we can gradually build additional services around that community as the business grows.

We’re still early in that journey. We’ve learned a lot already, changed some things, probably got a few things wrong and will undoubtedly change more as we go. But the underlying idea hasn’t really changed.

Understand the people first.

Understand the requirement properly.

Then try to bring the two together.

It’s not particularly revolutionary.

It just feels like a sensible way to build a specialist recruitment business.