While necessity may drive IT professionals such as Rose S., Al R. and Harry S. into Delivery Center careers, what they experience is something much greater than they ever expected – a blend of elements that creates many positives for both Delivery Center clients and the consultants who are assigned to their projects
Getting the most from Delivery Center careers begins with:
- Acceptance of the new reality that there is no such thing as a permanent job in today’s marketplace.
- Understanding that Delivery Center careers represent stable employment opportunities and, in some markets, offer even greater stability than so-called permanent positions in corporations.
While new recruits often join Delivery Centers with notions of the work being temporary, well-established relationships between Delivery Centers and their large corporate clients typically lead to steady streams of new project assignments with talented Delivery Center consultants seeing long lists of opportunities to which they can be assigned.
Projects Matter. Delivery Center professionals also find themselves being precisely aligned to projects that are both challenging and meaningful.
“The Delivery Center team that supports me is very knowledgeable in aligning individuals to appropriate positions to make the consultant and the project successful,” observes Rose in Kansas City. “I have been placed in a wonderful position that complements my background perfectly. To this day, I have probably told the team I love my job about 200 times a month (and I have been working here for 28 months!).”
Al in Detroit agrees: “The focus is on finding the right fit based on your technical and business experiences.”
Delivery Center clients reap the benefits of alignment and resource-management support by optimizing their project throughput.
Delivery Center careers also offer plenty of learning and professional growth opportunities along multiple vectors, including:
- Industry/domain diversification.
- Exposure to broad arrays of business operating practices among high-performing, innovative global companies.
- Experience working with cutting-edge technology tools and solutions.
- Opportunities to transition from working in small, mid-sized or domestic-only companies to large, global and Fortune 1000 types of organizations without relocating.
- Opportunities for consultants to further their careers through professional development and promotions.
For example, many of the technology consultants recruited into Genesis10’s Kansas City Delivery Center had lengthy career histories in telecommunications industries while, in Detroit, the dominant domain was automotive. Delivery Centers in those cities have provided opportunities for many with long industry or corporate tenures to broaden their horizons and gain cross-industry expertise by essentially importing jobs from other U.S. regional markets and industries. The Delivery Center model also establishes clear career paths, which allow consultants to advance their careers.
Harry S, for instance, notes that he has acquired entirely new skills working in the Kansas City Delivery Center. “I came in with a fairly diverse technical background, but working here has afforded me opportunities to learn completely new competencies, including applications development and process improvement techniques. Working on concurrent projects has enabled me to hone my project management capabilities and to support an increasing array of project types and complexities.”
For Chris S., a former management consultant, the appeal of working in the Detroit Delivery Center comes with driving multimillion-dollar projects and experiencing the many ways in which different people and enterprises design, implement and operate.
“In the past, I have led large and small organizations; I have been an architect and a Program Management Office (PMO) lead,” Chris says. “The Delivery Center gives me a chance to do real work for large-scale clients, while networking and collaborating with strong professionals from a very broad spectrum of skill areas and experiences. I have had many opportunities to see and try new things, which is helping me to broaden my management and solution design background to further drive my career.”
Training and Mentoring. Training and mentoring is another typically unexpected piece of the U.S. domestic Delivery Center success story. Delivery Center consultants experience collaboration and mentoring that is similar to what occurs among big-name management consulting teams. As part of its value proposition to clients, Genesis10 assigns experienced mentors to each new recruit so they can come up to speed quickly on matters specifically relating to their clients. Mandatory and optional training encompasses everything from PMP peer boot camp, ITIL, Six Sigma and much more.
“In my first week,” notes Harry in Kansas City, “I went through client training courses with people I had worked with in the past. This made the transition very easy; with the help of several new Delivery Center colleagues I was able to catch on quickly and become productive in a very short time.”
Other ingredients in the Delivery Center’s ‘secret sauce’ include non-competitive collaboration and success-focused cultures. “Our Delivery Center uses a structured a model that promotes teamwork,” observes Al in Detroit. “Everyone in the Delivery Center supports you and your objectives.”
An idea of getting together — every other Tuesday over lunch — and mentoring consultants for their PMP exams sprang up naturally in such a cooperative environment, says Kandy D. in Atlanta. “Half a dozen of us take turns reviewing a chapter or a particular concept. It helps us to stay sharp and keep our skills up to date as well.”
Informal Network. Beyond official training and mentoring is the Delivery Center’s informal network — essentially a series of practice communities performing the same types of work for the same clients and sharing information and knowledge with each other. A consultant in Kansas City, for example, can put out a question to the network and be answered within minutes by a person in Orlando, Detroit, Atlanta or elsewhere.
“I work every day with a set of my peers that have skills and knowledge across the total technology spectrum,” observes Chris in Detroit. “Many have worked in more than one line of business or gained experience with a tool and are willing to share their knowledge and insights with the group. We are effective both as individual contributors and as a group because we are collectively capable of addressing any technical or management issue. This group has not only ‘been there, done that,’ but is willing to share, laugh and think together.”
An important driver of collaboration, says Kandy in Atlanta, is that everyone in the Delivery Center shares precisely the same goal: project success. “We’re not all competing with each other for the next promotion to vice president.” The upshot is a professional workplace with virtually no politics. “Everyone is focused on completing their projects and securing wins. We all understand that our success contributes to our own personal brands and the brand of the Delivery Center.”
Many Delivery Center consultants have come to see their work as a valid career alternative and choice. Kandy, for one says she intends to stay. “Right now, I have six concurrent projects. I love the idea of being able to do interesting work in a Delivery Center without being a road warrior. Working here allows me to live where I want to live, achieve work-life balance in a job that does not require travel for weeks at a time and to still interact every day with professionals who, like me, have a passion for what they do and happen to be very good at it.”
