- So you've decided you want your first project manager job
and you're trying to figure out how do you break in.
It's a bit of a catch-22.
Every job description you see
says you have to have experience.
But how you can get experience if you can't get a job?
So in this video we're gonna talk about two ways
that you can break into the project management industry.
Stay tuned and I will give you the advice
that I've been giving people for a little over 10 years now
to help them land their first project management job.
(lively music)
Okay, in our last video we talked
a little bit about classes and degrees
and what you should be looking for
when you're just getting started out in your career.
To continue with our theme for this month,
which is getting your first project management job,
we're gonna talk today about how do you
break in if you don't have any experience?
I'm gonna share with you my story
about how I got started because I feel like
it might be helpful for you to hear
how I made a career change and got into this,
oh, so many years ago.
But before we do that, a little announcement.
At the end of the last video
I told all of you that I was
opening up the doors to a pilot
for a new class that I'm putting together.
Over the last 15 years I've been training project managers,
and there's some very simple basic things
that I noticed that project managers struggle with
as they are first getting started out.
In fact, I find that even experienced project managers
are struggling with some of the basics.
So I'm putting together, I used to give
a classroom training for project managers.
It was often a three-day course.
Sometimes I would compress it down
and we'd go through everything,
from how to assemble the team,
how to establish yourself as a leader,
how to get the project scope fully fleshed out
with a work breakdown structure,
how to put together a full network diagram
so that you actually have an awesome analysis tool
to help you manage your project as you go forward.
How to get everything into Microsoft Project,
how to resource level,
how to make sure that you're getting
the right updates from people,
how to have killer project status meetings
that aren't the same old typical boring thing.
And in the end, how to become a most valuable player
in your company by doing all of these things
that most project managers struggle with.
I gave this course for many years
and it was very well received,
but I always did it in person.
I do love giving it in person,
but the beauty of the internet is
is that I have an opportunity
if I can package it right to impact more people.
So I'm putting together all of my curriculum
in a format that I can deliver to people online.
And I have my project plan for this.
I'm aiming for June 1 for it to be ready for a pilot.
When it's finally released,
I think I'll probably charge somewhere
in the neighborhood of $250 in tuition to join.
It's looking like it's gonna be 17 or 18 videos
with templates and a bunch of other really great stuff.
But before I release it to the masses, I have to test it.
So I'm gonna open up on June 1 an opportunity
for people to join in a pilot.
If you're interested, I'm gonna put a card
in the upper right-hand corner
that you can click on to join.
It basically adds your name to the wait list for the pilot.
And for those of you who would like to join the pilot,
if you're on the list then you can join
when I finally open it up for only $5.
It's a token amount.
Actually, I'm just trying to test
all the systems on the backend for financials,
but I'm also trying to weed out people
who are just not even gonna take it seriously.
I actually want people to take the course,
tell me what they think, give me feedback,
even give me a little testimonial
if it really made a big difference for them,
and I know that it will 'cause it has,
it's made a huge difference for a lotta people.
So if you're interested in the pilot
and you wanna join for only five bucks,
and you're serious about going through the material,
giving me feedback, please click the card
in the upper right-hand corner,
get your name on that list.
I'm gonna shut down the list on May the 18th.
So if you're not on by that time
then you're no longer eligible to join the pilot group.
So get out there right away,
as soon as you're done with this video,
and join that list if you're interested.
Okay, so let's talk about how do you break in
to a project management career.
I think there's two ways, really, to get in.
And in both scenarios you're gonna have
to do something you might not wanna do
and that is to take a step down
to take a step up.
A lotta people will be in a career,
whether it be technology,
or marketing, or what have you,
and they'll think to themselves,
you know what, I wanna make a change.
I wanna change over to project manager.
And they may be making a certain amount of salary
'cause they've been doing that job
for a certain period of time,
but you're now gonna do something new.
You're gonna try and build a project management career.
And so given the fact that you don't have
a lot of experience, you have to expect
that you're gonna need to start
in some entry level positions.
There are two ways that I see that you can do this,
and both of them have their own unique
pluses and minuses to them.
The first way is to find a very small company
and to join that company as a junior project manager,
or as their project manager.
I'm talking companies around 20, 30, 40 people.
You know, they may have within their organization
people who wear many different hats
because they're small,
but usually they're small, but mighty,
and they're filled with really awesome people
who are really trying to make a difference
and who are building something cool and exciting.
And so those environments come with
a lotta really, an interesting dynamic,
and you actually can get a lot of experience
in a lotta different areas.
You also get exposure to everyone within the company,
so it's not like the larger companies
where you may never get to interact
with some of the more senior people.
Chances are you're in a company
that's 40 or 30 people strong,
you're gonna be interacting directly
with the president and the CEO
on quite a regular basis.
A second way that you can get your start
in a project management career
is to look at larger companies,
and I'm talking companies with 10s of thousands of people.
Companies in the finance industry.
Insurance companies.
Companies that have large
project management offices, or PMOs.
Those companies will have many different job positions
in the project management field,
and they'll have a lot of what I call
entry level positions for what we,
the entry level job position
is either called a project administrator,
project analyst, project control officer.
And there's a few other names
that these organizations give this entry level position.
The position typically pays, in North America,
if you're in a major metropolitan area,
somewhere between $40,000 to $60,000.
And you can find these positions
on offer for a little less and a little more than that,
but generally between $40,000 and $60,000.
If that's something that you can handle,
if you can handle moving into a job that pays at that rate,
then you can make the transition really quite easily.
So before we talk about the pros and cons
of way A, which is to find a small company
and join that company as a project manager,
and way B, which is to find a large company
and get in as an entry level PA, let's talk about,
I wanna tell you a little bit about how I got started.
My career took a very long and winding path.
I already told you a little bit about my education.
And right after that I did a lot of
the jobs you might expect a person to do
when they first leave university.
I was a security guard.
I worked at a retail,
I worked at Radio Shack for a number of years.
I worked at fast food places, pet stores.
Often I would do two and three jobs at once
because they were all part-time gigs.
I did a lotta work and then I started to get into sales.
And I found a job one day
where there was a small computer company,
it was a computer reseller.
They were looking for a sales person
and I said, well, I probably can sell something.
Let me give it a try.
As it turns out, I was actually pretty good at sales,
which was very strange because I started out
as a very shy individual who didn't like to talk
and didn't like to do public speaking.
But you know what?
I broke out of my shell.
I figured I need to do this.
I need to find something that will make more money
than the average minimum wage job.
So I started selling.
And it started working very well for me.
And then I got into computer distribution.
I worked for Merisel,
which is a computer distributor that no longer exists,
and I sold for them.
And I did that for a while until around the dot-com crash.
And when the dot-com crash happened,
a lot of the people who were buying
the computers and all the wonderful stuff,
little buy dot-coms and all the other stuff
that doesn't exist anymore,
they stopped ordering, obviously,
and like hundreds, if not thousands,
of technology sales people just like me
were laid off or let go,
and we all hit the street looking for jobs
in a market that just wasn't buying.
So I wondered what the hell I was gonna do with myself.
And I was actually making
a really great living as a sales person,
but I had no idea what I was gonna do.
So I ended up working for a temp agency.
And I was back to sort of the remedial jobs
and I was filling in for secretaries
on switchboards while they were on vacation.
I even worked at a HoneyBaked Ham store
in Newport Beach, handing out HoneyBaked ham
to people on Easter.
I really felt like I had crashed and burned,
and I wondered what the hell I was gonna do with myself.
And I got a temporary job in a small company.
It was about 40 people.
And it was a small mortgage banking firm.
And their receptionist was away on vacation
and they needed somebody to answer
the telephones for a couple of weeks.
And when I arrived, I knew that I wanted
to make a career change.
And when I arrived and I looked around
and people seemed pleasant,
they seemed happy to be at work, it was a nice environment.
And you know what?
I was just happy to be working in a nice environment.
And I decided I wanted to stay.
And I looked around and there were computers,
and there were servers, but there was no IT guy.
Now, I had no experience in IT,
but I decided right then
I was going to be their IT guy.
Don't know how or why,
or why I thought this was even possible,
but I decided that this is what I was gonna do.
And I remember as people came through the door
and they first saw my face, you know,
I wasn't the regular person at the front desk,
they would say, hi, I would say, hi,
and I remember one person coming by,
she introduced herself and I stuck my hand out
and said, "Hey, I'm Jason Dodd.
"Really nice to meet you."
Turned out to be the vice president of the company.
And Debbie, if you're watching, I love you
'cause you gave me an excellent start
to my second career.
She said she decided in that moment
that she just liked me.
And when that assignment ended,
they brought me back to stuff envelopes.
Their marketing department was putting out a campaign
and they needed an envelope stuffer.
And again, because I decided,
that I had this crazy, wild idea
that I was gonna be their IT guy,
I was gonna be the best damn envelope stuffer they ever had.
And then they brought me in to do data entry
and a few other things, but I stuck with it
and eventually they brought me in full time.
And because it was a small company,
I pretty much was able to make whatever career I wanted.
As it turned out, the president of the company
had a friend who lived very far away,
a couple of states away, actually,
and he came occasionally in to maintain
the servers and the desktops.
And that individual took me under their wing,
taught me everything that I needed to know
to be an awesome systems and network administrator.
As the company grew, because I was their IT guy,
I started to hire staff and I built a team.
We opened up, I think, around 12 offices
across the United States.
I flew out to all these different states
and implemented the infrastructure and the VPN
and all this other stuff.
It was an awesome time.
And during this time I started to manage projects.
Any time the company had to do something,
and it didn't have to be IT,
I would end up being the guy.
I would be the guy who had managed the projects.
So I was able to create whatever career
I wanted in these small companies.
All you need is the desire and the willingness to learn.
And so I believe wholeheartedly
that if you're in the same position that I was,
and you wanna make a career change,
why not go the small company route?
Get into one of these smaller organizations.
Sometimes they're scrappy and they're just trying
to make a name for themselves,
and if you believe in them, they'll believe in you.
And you can pretty much create
whatever career you want in a company like that,
but you have to be willing to do whatever it takes.
I went from making a six figure salary
as a sales person to answering phones at the front desk.
But I made something out of that situation, right?
You know what they say, when life gives you lemons.
And you can do the same thing too.
There are a lot of smaller companies out there
that are trying to build up their teams.
They can't afford to hire the high-powered
six figure project manager to help them
open offices or build their next piece of software.
And you might just be the right person for them.
So go looking for those organizations and try to get in.
And an easier way, another really good way
to get into those small companies is through temp agencies.
And don't just look for project management jobs.
Explain to your recruiter at the temp agency,
I'm actually looking for a company
that I can make myself important to.
It's not about the actual job,
so help me find the right company to get myself into.
And they can, right?
Nobody ever thinks about that.
They never think to tell the recruiter,
actually, I want you to find me the right organization,
as opposed to, no, I need you to find me this specific job.
So think of that as an option.
It's the option that I took
and it worked very well for me,
got me a lot of varied and different experience
that I was able to bring forward,
and then I was able to create the career that I have today.
The cool thing about going option B
and getting into a large organization
is that you get to learn
from a lot of really experienced people.
So when you go route A, you're kinda winging it.
You're learning as you go.
You're building the airplane as you fly
and it can be very stressful.
And you may spend a lotta time
while you're doing that thinking,
oh my god, I feel like an imposter.
They're gonna figure out I don't know
what the hell I'm doing.
You know, if that doesn't sound like fun to you,
then maybe option B, which is going
into the larger organization, is the better choice.
Because if you get into a large PMO
in one of these entry level positions as a PA or a PCO,
you get to then work side by side
with not one, but many different project managers and PAs.
You get to interact with many different executives
on various different projects,
and you get really great experience
and a lot of really great exposure.
I really wish that I had the ability
to work alongside other senior project managers
earlier in my career.
If I could have done that, oh my goodness,
the things, the mistakes that I could have avoided.
It would have been awesome.
So I see a lotta people start in those entry level roles
and they build awesome careers because
they see it for what it is,
an opportunity to work with lots of different people.
They take from those people the things they like,
they leave the things that they don't,
and they build their own set of tools
that they bring with them into their career.
So it is an awesome opportunity.
I recommend it for anyone.
I've seen many people be very successful that way.
So there you have it.
You've got those two options.
You can get into the small company and fight your way
into and building the career that you want.
And it can be exciting, but it can also be stressful.
Or you can get in an entry level role
at a larger organization and get exposed
to a lotta really great people.
And if you're open to learning from these people,
then you can see your career take off very, very quickly.
So that's my advice.
If you're willing to take a step down
and start at the bottom, so to speak,
and work your way up,
then you absolutely can do it.
And by the way, in neither of these scenarios
do you need a PMP, right?
A PMP designation requires project management experience.
On the small company side,
you probably don't need even a CAPM,
although it could be helpful.
The CAPM is a bit more of a prerequisite
for those entry level positions
in the larger organization,
so I recommend you get one if you wanna go that route.
But even if you don't have it when you get hired,
often PMOs, if they really like you,
and they think you'll be a very valuable person
to have on a project team,
they'll bring you in and then they'll say,
well, within in the next year why don't you get it.
In some of those larger corporations,
they'll help fund the training for it,
and they'll be very supportive
for you to get the certification.
So look into that, by the way,
if you're interviewing with companies
who are looking for entry level PAs.
Just say, hey, I would like to get my CAPM.
Is there anything available to me
to assist me in that endeavor?
And oftentimes they'll say, yeah
we got a program, don't worry about it, right?
So ask, don't forget to ask.
So if you like this video,
if it was useful to you,
please interact with the video.
Give me a thumbs up.
Give me a thumbs down, below.
As project managers, we are notoriously bad at social media.
I don't know why it is,
but we don't interact with things
like the video, leave comments.
If you don't do that, this video will never rank,
and other PMs will never find it.
So please, if you think it's valuable information,
please leave me a comment below.
I'll give you a question.
Which of the two options,
if you're just getting started out in your career,
which of the two options are most appealing to you?
Let me know.
Option A, small company, option B, large company.
Which one would you like to do?
If you already have a career
and you've made it this far in the video,
then share with the other viewers.
How did you get your start
in your project management career?
This is a really valuable space for everybody.
If we start to share,
we'll be able to help each other out,
which is what this video channel,
what this YouTube channel is all about.
So leave your comments below.
Give me a thumbs up or thumbs down,
and we'll see you in the next video.