Transcription
I have been a project manager for 11 years already. So, with all these insiders knowledge and experience, how would I become a project manager if I had to start it all over again? And I assume that just like me at the beginning you don't have the dedicated project management education or any relevant experience. So, here's the first tip.
I would choose a company where to grow my career. You see, getting a promotion to a project manager is much easier than getting the first job as a PM without prior experience. That's why before you start searching for job opportunities on the market, make sure you have depleted all of the options in your current company. The idea is that you need to build good relationships with people who can promote you. You show your skills and talents to them and you proactively express your desire to take a leadership role as soon as possible. If you can put yourself under your manager's radar, if you found a way to communicate your relevant achievements you already have some project management talents and we project managers understand that, and here's a critical insider secret. Good leaders never force you to take a leadership role. Instead, you must express your desire to become a leader yourself. So, now, you just need to ask for an assistant project manager, project coordinator, or junior project manager role. And, again, you don't wait your manager to notice you and give you that promotion.
Okay, here's the second tip. I would run micro projects continuously. You need to gain initial experience relevant to a project manager's role, but what should you do if your current role has nothing to do with project management? And here's what I want you to understand. Projects are everywhere. In its simplest form, project management is just doing some work in an organized way. There are no size or complexity criteria to call something a project. So, it's a matter of positioning something as a project. A micro project is your initiative to improve something within your current role, but you do it as a project manager would do it. For example, you work in a call center or you are support engineer. You do your daily responsibilities, but you are always on lookout for inefficiencies and things you can improve. So, there might be a bottleneck in the workflow. Communications might be inefficient, or a tool or a reporting system takes too much time to use, or you don't use some cool features of that same tool, and actually I have more examples for you. I'll leave you a link in the description to a resource where you can get a list of 20 possible micro projects. I'm sure you will find several of these opportunities in your current role, but you don't fix the problem right away yourself. Instead, you communicate the problem to your manager and colleagues. You brainstorm ideas. Then you get approval from the manager to solve it. Again, you do it the way a project manager would do it by engaging stakeholders and your team members. In general the idea is to organize the work of others without authority or title, and believe me all recruiters and interviews accept these experience as something relevant for the role of PM.
So, let's summarize the micro projects approach. You perform your everyday responsibilities and you found an inefficiency. So, you decide to resolve it proactively. First, you communicate with your manager and colleagues. Then you organize their work. Finally, you become their leader without title and authority. Ultimately, you generate some value for the organization by saving or making money. You see that's exactly what a project manager does. For an entry level role it's a perfect experience. You simply need to describe it as a small project and you do it following these same seven steps.
That leads us to tip number three. Again, right from the start, I would create a separate CV for the role of a project manager. Here is another insider secret. Your previous unrelated experience means nothing to recruiters. You can have 10 years of experience as a software engineer or you can have experience in multiple roles for two decades. It doesn't matter. Recruiters will select candidates whom they can match to the job description. It means your CV should contain only information about management, leadership and communication. And I almost hear you say, but my CV will be blank at the start. And that's true, but this approach gives you a roadmap to develop your knowledge and skills. Now, think about it. What would it take to ethically write down that you know the basics of project management in your CV. On an entry level role, reading a book or taking a course is quite enough. And by the way, in the process, you will learn about risk and stakeholder management on a theoretical level. Put it on your CV as well. Now, how can you prove that you have leadership and communication skills? Bonus point to you if you thought about micro projects. So, do some micro projects and you can add those skills to the list. Moreover, you can put the same micro projects as your achievements in your experience section. And by the way, I still have some cool micro projects on my CV from my initial years as a project manager.
Now, if you have lots of professional experience, most probably you don't even need to do these micro projects. You simply need to review your experience from a different perspective. So, rather than talking about your responsibilities and technical skills, think about leadership and management, even if it was a short period during, for example, three years of work as a QA engineer. This tiny leadership and management experience is more valuable than all your unrelated responsibilities. I think you got the point. Start from a blank page, build up your CV only with information that highlights your leadership, communication and management skills, and if you don't have the experience to fill in the project manager CV right now, nothing will help you to get your first job as a PM. So, don't spend your time and effort on endless applications and interviews. Instead, spend the next three to six months doing micro projects, reading books, or watching tutorials on YouTube. As a result, you will be able to land a normal junior PM role, rather than some intern position with a miserable salary. So, framing your leadership and management experience is everything. And by the way, I'm open to this discussion. Do you think that your unrelated experience matters on your CV? Let me know your thoughts and insights in the comments below. Let's discuss it.
Moving on to tip number four. I would think about my career roadmap right from the start. So, for example, in the software development industry I followed the following roadmap, support engineer, junior, mid-level, senior project manager, technical delivery manager, technical program manager. Now, the challenge is that you need to learn and train your skills one step ahead. For example, you need to know the basics of project management and leadership before you become a PM. The same applies to a program manager role. Again, you need knowledge and some practical experience at least in some areas of program management before you can get a normal opportunity. If only I knew this whole roadmap in the beginning, I would focus on learning for the roles that lie ahead, rather than honing and perfecting only project management skills.
But for you, the biggest takeaway is that you need to learn the basics of project management in advance. And that's my tip number five, but let me warn you. There is a huge gap between theory of project management and practice. Theory can help you systemize knowledge further down the road, but you need practical knowledge and skills to pass an interview and get your first job as a project manager. And moreover, you need project management skills to run micro projects, then to use correct terminology in your CV, and then to show that you are an aspiring project manager and leader. That's why you need to watch this video next, and you need to watch it until the end. In 35 minutes, I'll explain everything you need to know about project management, and I am sure you can pass an interview for a junior PM rule with only knowledge from this video. So, click on the video and I'll talk to you there.