Episode 017: Interview with Sabrina Mancini

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Today, the Project Management Podcast is featuring an interview with Sabrina Mancini from 2EnVision, Inc. We are talking about how to turn the search for your next job into a project. With templates, deliverables and all. Contact Sabrina at [email address removed] to receive a copy of the templates. (Note: as of 2007-04-11, her email is no longer working and we have no newer email.)

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks.

Cornelius Fichtner (00:11):

You are listening to the project management podcast. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at pmpodcast.blogspot.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Hello, and welcome to show number 17. I am Cornelius Fichtner. Now this should have been the project management podcast for the 21st of January, 2006. Unfortunately, after moving into my new home and took my internet provider 13 days until the 24th of January, 2006, to hook me back up. So now this is the project management podcast for the 24th of January, 2006. And today you will get to hear the interview with Sabrina Mancini Johnson, about how to use your project management skills in your job search. Let's get started with two announcements and some reader feedback, and then we will move right into that interview. The first announcement is about the schedule. I'm continuing to be a little bit more involved with moving into my new house.

Cornelius Fichtner (01:20):

So the next show is one and a half weeks from today on the 4th of February. So no show this coming Saturday, but Saturday in a week, announcement. Number two is about sponsorship. Does your company have a project management tool, a project management book or seminar to promote, then why not become a sponsor of the project management podcast? Being a sponsor of the podcast will immediately get your message into the ears of thousands of project managers worldwide at a cost that is much lower than what you would have to pay for an ad in a trade magazine. Simply write to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I'll be happy to discuss a sponsorship with you. Lastly, before we move on to the main section of the show, I have some listener feedback for you, which was posted by an anonymous listener on the blog on the website. And it's about my review that I did.

Cornelius Fichtner (02:27):

I think it was in a last show about bark world. They had a, it's a podcast called blogworld.com and they had a show on project manager and the listener writes, the guys at bog world are great and I listened to all their podcasts. However, their podcast on project management for web management was almost useless. They were both very flippant and seem to talk more about using Microsoft project than any formal framework or supporting material that is to say risk business cases, communications, contingency, et cetera. The review, the feedback goes on to say that web based projects now make a clear difference to the presentation and marketing of a company. I would have thought that they would have put more effort into this podcast, but it wasn't near Christmas at the time. If the guys at BlogWorld read this, or of course now hear this, I'm afraid, guys, you missed a great opportunity to sing the virtues of proper project management practice and provide some key tips and methods, especially where consultants are concerned.

Cornelius Fichtner (03:42):

That's about this review that I did on bog world.com. Well, to me, I still stand to what I said. I liked the, the feeling of what they did on that show because my experience as a project manager in web development was that it was always hectic. Always things were falling left and right. So the show that they did actually represented my experience, but it seems that this listener here has a completely different experience about project management in web development. I've been out of it for three years, Bre quite possible that things have changed in there. The listener finishes his review by writing, and now comes the usual slap on the back for you. Well done, great podcast. And by the way, it was me who went on about reading out too many emails about how great your podcast is. So you can skip reading this paragraph loops. Okay. I shouldn't have read that. Well, let's move on to the interview then with Sabrina Mancini Johnson,

Announcer (05:00):

The project management podcast feature interview today with the Sabrina Mancini Johnson, [inaudible] incorporated

Sabrina Mancini (05:14):

Ladies and gents today with me, I have Sabrina Manzini Johnson, and we will be talking about how to turn your career search into a project as you project managers should welcome to the show. Sabrina, thank you very much, Cornelius. Since we will be talking about the job search, let me start out by asking the question that everybody hears in their job interview. Tell me a little bit about yourself to ref back. Uh, my name is Sabrina Manzini Johnson. I am a local Southern California native. I have the pleasure of having two small children and also two wonderful Cocker Spaniels who I call family and a wonderful husband. And we live down here in beautiful Southern California at the same time beyond my family. I've been in the world of it, project management for nearly two decades now, which probably gives my years away to everybody out there in the listening world.

Sabrina Mancini (06:12):

You started with punch cards. I started out, uh, just at the time of punch cards. Let's just say I started off in those cold rooms. And so I'm along with the world of project management and being a full time. Mom, I am also actively involved in my civic interests in my community. And that's a little bit about me as a person. And what about to envision inc? How did that come about? Yes. To envision inc. As the name of our recently formed company, we incorporated as a California company in 2004 to envision inc uh, started off as a company in which after leaving the full time project management and it leadership world. I decided to go back to my consulting roots and create a professional services organization that catered to small enterprise project management, uh, projects, um, out of that, um, my husband and I own the company.

Sabrina Mancini (07:11):

So that's where you find the play on the number two. And we wanted to set up a company that was very forthright within the values of integrity. And so we started thinking of envisioning what we wanted to do. And we came up with the name to envision we've since grown into also having a staffing division that caters to project management. And we're enjoying our second year of existence, but only it project management it and business project management. And you'd be amazed how many requests we get for non it project managers? Yes, that's interesting because the PMI IOC here in Southern California, we have about 60% of it project managers. So is it changing again? There's the need going back to more non it projects? I think that there's definitely a, uh, a margin of project management that caters to the back office back office systems, the HR or the ERP, um, somewhat of the training and e-learning as well.

Sabrina Mancini (08:15):

And we're also seeing that there's a different variance and the interest of project managers by County, Riverside County being very strong with more of your manufacturing, semiconductors, um, and also some of our out of state requests that we get that are also, uh, certainly within the world of aerospace and or other types of industries out of, uh, out of state. How far out of state do you go right now? We have extended ourselves into the Texas area and we're partnering with some business in Texas and we're trying to take it slow and steady trying to have our focus more here in the Southern California LA area, but as the needs arise, we do certainly move into that direction.

Cornelius Fichtner (09:00):

Alright. Okay. So that was a little bit about yourself. Let's move over to your templates. Now, when I first met you, that was at the networking evening that we had on November 16th, I think. And you can give a 90 minute presentation titled project managing your career search. Um, what prompted you to choose that topic?

Sabrina Mancini (09:24):

Well, a fellow peer of mine that was heading up the career nights had asked me to be a guest speaker. And, um, she had really kind of asked me to come up with something that was unique after all. It was the closure of this, uh, experience in this career night. And I think that she was concerned that maybe everybody had heard everything already once or 10 times. Um, so it, wasn't a very hard for me to come up with this concept, being that, as I was speaking to people who were perhaps career searching, I really wanted to cater to something that really inherently hit home. And that was a fact that project managers need to address their career search. Just like a project that you construct with an initiation phase and post execution phase. Right. And I thought we don't do this very well as project managers. We think that there's some other magic to doing projects outside of our day to day world, but there is no magic. And so I wanted to show that you can apply the same methodologies we use in business towards your personal career search, or maybe a project that you may be having in some other capacity in your personal life. I definitely found that it was unique. I mean, I was sitting there. I was listening to you. I was thinking, Oh my God, this is so new. This is so

Cornelius Fichtner (10:48):

Different. That's why I ask you to be here now, do you know, do you know if anybody has actually used them

Above are the first few pages of a computer-generated transcript with all its computer-generated quirks. A human-generated transcript is available to Premium subscribers starting with episode 136.