How to Prepare for a Job as a Six Sigma Black Belt

One of the questions I often get is, “Now that I am a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, How do I Prepare for a Job as a Six Sigma Black Belt?” Another way to phrase this question is ‘How do I convince someone to hire me as a Six Sigma Black Belt.”

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that the company you are targeting has an open posting for a Black Belt, and you are not trying to convince a company that they should hire their first, namely you. The latter conversation is about establishing a company’s Six Sigma culture and requires a different approach. This conversation concerns selling you and your ability to do the established job to a hiring manager.

There are two parts to getting a job;

1. Preparing for success in the role.
2. Preparing for success in the interview.

These are symbiotic traits, but far too few people employ a strategy to do well in both. That becomes a failure to prepare and ultimately undermines a candidate’s efforts.

Today, I’ll focus on preparing for success in the role. Next time, we’ll cover preparing for success in the interview.

Step 1: Build Breadth and Depth of Skills

In this step, we are focused on building a base of skills, accumulating an amount of experience, and developing the gravitas to apply our learnings to both an industry and a profession.

Depth

Working as a certified Six Sigma Black Belt is not for novices or those new to the workforce. Become great at your current job and be known as a go-to person in your field. Master a rare and valuable skill set. Become known as a dependable resource. Learn one area inside and out.

For example, if you are a software developer, be the best software developer you can be. Focus on good practices and delivering to expectations. Be a model employee. Stretch your leadership muscles and learn to build good teams and to make others better.

This focus allows you to pattern-match issues you’ve seen in one area to others. One great benefit is that you can do great Six Sigma work in that field. In the future, you’ll be able to relate issues and patterns you saw in your field with those in another field you will not know.

If you were a star player in a particular field, becoming the Six Sigma Black Belt running projects in that field would be easier.

Breadth

Become well-versed in your industry. Become a T-shaped employee. Going back to the software developer example, you should know your discipline well and the field in which you are applying your skills. You should know about the other players and disciplines essential to your company’s success in that industry. Perhaps you are making financial software – you should learn about finance, the suppliers, the consumers, and the entire chain. If you build software for HR, you should learn about Human Resources.

Sin Six Sigma terms help you understand an industry’s context and allow you to visualize the whole enterprise. If you have a good knowledge of an industry, know how all of the pieces fit together, and have expert knowledge of one discipline, a hiring manager will feel better about selecting you to work on projects in that industry, even though you might not have direct, first-hand knowledge.

Project Management

Work your way into a project or program manager position. The table stakes for success as a Six Sigma Black Belt is the ability to deliver projects successfully. There are so many variables to a project that the ability to manage the execution well is itself a rare and valuable skill. You don’t want to learn project management skills while first trying to deliver Six Sigma projects.

Hiring project managers is a difficult process. It’s one where the hiring manager can never be sure how you’ll fare if you don’t have a track record. But obviously, everyone has to start somewhere.

If you can establish a track record as a successful project manager, it will be one less thing that the hiring manager will have to work on.

Step 2: Learn about Six Sigma

We’ve covered this before here, so I will not go into detail again. You need to master the various concepts in the associated Bodies Of Knowledge (ASQ, IASSC, and/or Villanova) and take the applicable training.

I firmly believe that a person could do the job of a Six Sigma Black Belt without a certification. I also believe there are many people who have certifications who cannot do the job. On balance, I’d prefer someone who showed the dedication to measure themselves to an established standard and proved they had the passion and determination to achieve certification. I prefer the ASQ Black Belt certification because you must sign an affidavit proving you completed real Six Sigma Projects (compared to others that do not).

Regardless of how I feel or how you feel, each hiring manager is different and has different expectations. This is one avenue you can control. It would be prudent to make the most of it. If you are studying, be sure to see my article here – it will better position you for exam-day success.

Step 3: Gain Practical Six Sigma Experience

By now, you have extensive experience running Six Sigma projects. Now, the goal is to become great at the job of being a Six Sigma Black Belt – even before you are ‘officially’ in it.

Black belts are asked to do several things repeatedly: projects, mentor greenbelts, and teach others. Become experienced in each.

Project Work

Never stop doing projects. Document your projects – both your successes and failures. Be able to describe each project quickly using the SMART framework.

What did you do? What were the results? Who knows you were responsible for achieving those results?

I mentioned it earlier, but it bears repeating: become a great Project Manager. Perhaps pursue additional PM certifications (the journey, not the certification, is what will help you.)

If you have trouble finding Six Sigma projects, check out my guide here.

Teaching

Few people recognize it, but nearly every position in your career involves teaching others. Take the time to become good at it. If your current position does not afford you the ability to develop this skill, try the options I have listed here.

Mentoring

A significant portion of success as a Six Sigma Black Belt is the ability to mentor others. You will be expected to shepherd colleagues through Green Belt learnings. (Be sure to brush up on the Villanova Green Belt Body of Knowledge and the ASQ Green Belt Body of Knowledge.)

Be able to answer who you have mentored and how. What were the results? Try to relate the stories using the SMART Method.

Step 4: Master the Soft Skills

This is the time to develop your professional presence and poise. Learn to be able to give great presentations and crisply communicate your ideas. Becoming a master of the A3 sheet or the 10-20-30 rule is a great idea.

Work on your negotiation skills. The ability to give and receive advice is essential. Master the fundamentals of influence.

In this article, we covered how to best prepare for a career as a Six Sigma Black Belt. The next article will cover how to prepare and win the interview.

What steps have you taken to prepare for success as a Six Sigma professional?

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