I know of company that is getting a big project soon.  Current pm staff is swamped, so they decided to look for a ‘technical’ pm.  I didn’t think it would be unusual for a pm to know something about programming or database queries and the like.

They got hundreds of responses to the job posting, but not one qualified by having any technical skills!  The job description was pretty explicit about the expected skill set required for the position.

Why would this happen? 

Are pm’s so caught up in the latest from PMSI (?sp) that they are ignoring the auxiliary skills needed for the job?  How far does that go?  Is using Excel a stretch?

Or are all the current technical pm’s with the skill set satisfied with the current employment.  Again, unlikely.