- Welcome back to the second episode
of the PM Perspective YouTube channel.
I'm so excited to be here with you today.
Just a reminder this month, for the rest of this month
and the month of April we're talking about
how to get a project management job.
You maybe be looking for your first project management job,
you may already have one or you're looking
for your next one.
If you're in either one of those scenarios we're going
to have lots of great information for you
this month and next month.
In our last video we talked about how to determine
whether or not project management is right for you.
Hopefully you found that useful.
If you didn't see that video I'll put the link to it
in the upper right hand, right, nope my right, your left.
Upper left hand corner of the video.
You may want to click that, go watch that
before you watch this one.
This video today is all about compensation.
Hey when you're looking to get into project management
or into any profession you'll want to talk
a little bit about what is the earning potential.
So we'll get into that today.
I'm going to apologize to my viewers who
are not in North America.
The information that I have for you today
is North America specific and I have no idea
how it translates into other markets.
So for those of you who are not in North America
I apologize, this information may not be relevant to you.
For those of you who are, then let's get right into it.
Today I'm gonna talk a little bit about,
I'll give you sort of an overview of what the range
of what people get paid as project managers today
as of the filming of this video.
Then we'll talk about some of the factors that factor in
to whether you're at sort of the upper end of the range
that I give you or if you're at the lower end.
In order for me to explain how project managers
are compensated we need to break it down into the,
there's different job levels typically out there
in corporate America, different job levels
for the project management profession.
It starts with the project administrator which is more
of any entry level role that people can get into.
Then there's the junior project manager,
then there's the project manager,
the senior project manager, and now I'm seeing
a lot more executive,
we call them like delivery,
executive delivery managers.
Or even program manager.
So those are the bands.
Project administrator, junior PM, PM, senior PM,
and delivery executive.
The PA, or project administrator I typically see them
getting compensated between, check my worksheet here,
between I want to say 40 to 60K, depending on
a couple of factors, but PA entry level job,
somewhere between 40 to 60K is what I'm seeing
them get compensated for, typically.
The junior PM you would expect to see most jobs fall
between 60 to 70K,
That's really what I'm seeing on offer these days.
PMs between 70 to 90K, senior PMs 90 to 130K
and the executives, 130 plus depending on the level
of executive we're talking about and the size
of the project involved.
So that sort of general overview of the salary bands
that I'm seeing out there in corporate America.
What determines whether you fall higher end of that band
or the lower end?
The obvious thing is experience.
That is one thing.
But there is other factors.
There's things such as industry, right?
So I think the smaller mom and pop shops that maybe
less than 100 people they're hiring project managers
full time they typically, not even actually in the band,
they're usually below.
So I see the smaller shops hiring PMs, like full fledged
PMs, not junior PMs they're advertising them for
maybe $50,000 to $60,000.
Where I typically see the junior PM being compensated.
But the cool thing about those smaller shops is
they're easier to break into.
So if you don't have a lot of experience, they're more
willing to look at you.
They understand, they're not being very competitive
where they are but they do need a project manager
to help them do whatever it is they're trying to do.
The mom and pop shops typically are not even in the band,
but below the band.
I find that retail and service industries fall
towards the bottom of the bands that I just gave you.
Technology and teleco companies also unfortunately
more often than not are falling at the bottom
of those salary bands.
Finance and insurance are usually in the middle
to upper end of the band, depending on which one
you're working for.
Consulting is either all the way at the top
or maybe even outside on the positive side of those
salary bands.
And of course the reason for that is, those consulting firms
when they hire a project manager they're usually very,
very senior and they're consultants as well.
They're fully billable at a astronomical rate.
Makes sense for PMs in those organizations to get paid
a lot more than some of the others.
And then I also find that energy and utilities,
they tend to pay, not on the high end but even
outside of those salary bands.
Generally the kinds of projects that they're into
are tremendously huge.
I mean, upgrading electrical infrastructure and
doing things like building oil platforms in the middle
of the ocean.
I can only imagine what that would be like.
These are very specialized roles and for people who have
experience doing that sort of thing they usually get
compensated very well for that.
Government I find is it depends on whether it's local
government or federal or state or provincial,
it varies wildly.
But what I find is when you get in to the provincial
or federal or the state and the federal the salaries
are typically in the higher end of the bands and
sometimes they fall up and above some of those bands.
That's kind of what I'm seeing as far as salaries
and the different levels and the different factors
that influence.
Before we end this video I want to take a minute
and talk about what makes project management so unique,
especially when it comes to how you're compensated.
I think the cool thing about project management is that
you have an opportunity to earn a significant amount
of money in a very early stage of your career,
if you're good at what you do.
I find that things like years of service,
degrees, those kinds of things are less of a factor
when people consider you for promotion and when they
consider putting you on bigger projects.
The only thing that really seems to matter in
the project management world is whether or not
you can get the job done.
Whether or not you're a problem solver, and whether or not
you can be trusted to make good, sound business decisions
with the amount of money they're entrusting you with.
If you demonstrate those things, nothing else matters.
They want you and they want you now, to manage the projects
that they want to deliver on in this fiscal year.
If you're good at what you do and you learn very quickly
you can earn a large salary fairly quickly.
I earned six figures well before I was in my mid 30s.
It's not a hard thing to do.
The other cool thing about project management and it's not,
it is related to salary and compensation,
but it's a little unrelated, and it's,
even a junior PM might manage a project that's in
the $250,000 to $500,000 investment range.
That's not a small sum of money.
Typically your executive sponsor for something like that
would be maybe a vice president.
A junior PM could be somebody who's in their 20s.
They're just getting started in their career,
they were a PA for a few years, they now are a junior PM,
and they're sitting across the table, as part of their job,
from a vice president, and they're interacting
with that person, learning from that person.
And they're involved in conversations around investments
and business decisions and things that typically
people don't actually get to see or even experience
until much later in their careers.
If you were in a finance role or a marketing role
or an HR role you would have had to worked your way
up the ranks in order to work that closely
with a senior executive.
The project management profession is really cool
in that if you're good at what you do and you're passionate,
and you're a problem solver and you make good, solid
business decisions,
you can move up quickly.
You can make a lot of connections,
and you can make a decent living.
That is in a nutshell what I have to say about
compensation.
Hopefully that helps you understand what the landscape
looks like.
The final thing that I will leave you with,
because this always comes up
in the compensation conversation, is the whole
full time employee versus contract employee conversation.
This comes up a lot.
At some point in your career you'll be working
alongside another project manager who was brought in
on contract and for whatever reason you discovered
oh my goodness, they get paid a heck of a lot more
per hour than I do.
Maybe you're making $35 an hour and they're making $65,
or $75 an hour.
And you think, how can I get a piece of that action?
The one thing I would say about that is, you really
have to think, and maybe this is a whole other video,
but you have to think long and hard about what you want
out of your career.
I've been on both sides, contract and full time,
and I've made the decision, actually I like being a
full time employee better than I like being a contractor.
Although I earned a significantly more as a contractor
than I have as a full timer.
We'll talk about why I like being a full timer later.
As a contractor, one thing you have to be very aware of,
is although it seems like it's a lot of money up front,
unless you're very shrewd with your money and you've set
your corporation up correctly, and you've got
a good accountant, you can end up actually with
a lot less money in your pocket if you're not careful.
You also could end up in trouble if you don't
know what you're doing.
It isn't all rainbows and butterflies for the contractor.
They do have to go look for their next job, there may
be some down time between different jobs although today,
if you're good you probably won't have a problem.
It's not always apples to apples when you look at
the compensation.
And as a full time employee you also get benefits,
the contractor does not.
There's that to consider.
But there is a lot of earning potential for those
who are experienced, they're good at what they do,
and who are contracting or even freelancing.
There's my project manager compensation chat.
Hopefully that was informative and it's helped you
understand the landscape a little bit.
If you liked this information or if you find that
this information was helpful and you think other
project managers would be able to leverage
this information, please interact with this video.
Give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down and please
leave a comment.
Tell me in the comments, what did you think
of this information?
Does it align with what you're experiencing right now?
Did I say anything that maybe was surprising to you?
Please, leave me a comment, would love to hear from you.
So that's it for this video.
In the next video we talk a bit about
let me take a look at my schedule here,
classes.
I get asked a lot what classes a person should take
when they're starting a career in project management.
So we'll talk about that in the next video.
With that I will leave you.
I think we've gone on long enough.
Goodbye and we will see you next week.