This weeks question comes from Mr F.A;
I’m a project co-ordinator with 4 years experience and looking to take the giant step to becoming a project manager. Any tips/advice please?
The project management career ladder can be a funny old thing, ask many project managers around today how they became project managers and many will tell you that they fell into it – or were in the right place at the right time – when a project needed managing in their organisation but the marketplace didn’t really recognise project managers as they are today. In today’s market things have got a little tougher; there seems to be an abundance of fresh project management talent available; all shoes polished with an arm full of accreditations and qualifications. So how does a project co-ordinator join the ranks of project manager.
There are a number of things you need to do;
- Take on more responsibility in your current role as project co-ordinator
- Complete the competency framework for project management and understand where your skills gaps are
- Address the skills gap through formal and informal development (courses vs on the job)
- Take on more responsibility
- Find a project manager mentor in your current job
- Look out for opportunity within your current organisation
- Look out in the marketplace for Assistant Project Manager, Workpackage Manager, Stage Manager, Workstream Lead and even Project Co-ordinator roles
Of course, you could just be lucky and be handed your first project on a plate but until that time you need to be thinking about your career plan. One thing that is quite difficult to do is find your first project manager opportunity on the open market. This is generally because organisation’s like to develop their own first time project managers from their own inhouse staff. The last bullet point specifically features the Project Co-ordinator role again because you could be looking for another project co-ordination opportunity with a new organisation that is known for developing its staff for first time project managers. You should also keep an eye out for project co-ordination roles that feature project delivery as one of the tasks. There are quite a few more senior project co-ordination roles which will include some stage managing; especially if the organisation’s project management community is quite small and the expectation is a good project co-ordinator is capable of delivering smaller projects.
The aim of your career development plan is to addresss the age old problem of “you don’t have experience so you won’t get the job; I can’t get the experience without doing the job”. The project co-ordination role is a well placed role for getting that valuable experience without having the title. You just have to be patience, go over and above the call of duty knowing that the extra (often unpaid) responsibilities you have picked up will be rewarded in the future when you finally land your first project.
Image © Pink Sherbert Photography and used with permission.
