Shane Hawkins
#BeingACenarist
Every month, our HR team is interviewing a member of our company about its adventure onboard.
In January, Shane, our PMO, is on the Red Carpet!
Can you tell us about your Job @Cenareo?
I joined Cenareo in July 2019 as the Project Management Officer (PMO). My role has 3 elements to it: providing advice and helping to put in place a project management structure, managing the operations project portfolio and helping improve the related processes so that the delivery to the customer is as effective and efficient as possible; that said, the beauty of working for a startup is that tasks, objectives and roles are ever evolving based on the changing need and we adapt using our strengths to those evolving needs.
Cenareo created this role with your arrival, what value do you think it brings to the company and its clients?
The continued success of the company : an increased volume of customers with larger deployments and new product features means that Cenareo needs to scale their operations whilst improving product quality and neither is sustainable without adding customer project management and revisiting the current processes. I think I bring a broad set of skills and experiences along with a strong technical background (very helpful for a SaaS Startup) which are all important factors to making that happen.
You’re English native, do you believe it is an asset or a brake for your daily work?
Ha, ha : I hope it’s not a brake. I think it’s a definite asset, it’s always very useful to work with people who approach things with a different ‘set of eyes’ and from a different ‘cultural back drop’ - the most successful companies employ people from a broad range of nationalities and cultures, at the most basic level it enables teams to benefit from the different focuses that occur during training and schooling; I reap these same rewards as well.
Can you tell us about your previous career path?
Wow, I’ll keep it brief, I started as a technical team leader (Information and communications systems), moved onto being a technical head, then head of a support group, customer manager, followed by other senior roles including Head of IT before I moved into international programme management and then management consulting; all of my roles have required a major rethink of the status quo and had a strong technical and resource management element.
You have a Senior position in a Startup environment. Was it difficult to integrate it? In your opinion, why seniority is an asset for you?
I haven’t really thought about it, I tend to focus on the job in hand, l try hard to listen to and understand what the people around me have to say. My objective is to finish each day having added value and make my life and that of others better in some way - I’m not aware that it was specifically difficult, but that is also a reflection on the team around me, so thank you.
I think seniority helps you step back and consider the longer term as well as the immediate need, it also helps you pick out the nuances in peoples behaviour and understand more quickly what is happening - experience gives you that early warning of problems before they arise; it can help you stay out of trouble.