Career advice needed! Project Managers or Information Technology

[ToBeyond]

I am 45, single parent to 3 children age (5, 7, 10) and need to carve a career. I have been in low paid jobs for a long time and I am interested in project management or IT. I tried coding and could do tutorials but didn’t really click with it. I can get through html but not excited by web design. project management sounds interesting. I have no previous experience in PM or IT but if I could gain a qualification, would it open doors to a real career? Is azure difficult to understand? Is scrum easy to master? Would Prince2 foundation be worth doing? Would beginner courses in those help land a good starting salary of 28K plus?

Please can you guide me to exams/professional qualifications I need to get into the industry? I really want my DC to have a good role model and if I can achieve this, it would help them in so many ways.

The best project managers and analysts I’ve worked with (I’m in a closely related field) are organised, good problem solvers, create good working relationships, have excellent communication skills etc.

I agree with this above also. In my experience it comes down to the person and their ability to manage relationships, ability to gets past (many) technical, political & practical hurdles. Also knowing how to carefully convey messages (change management).

I would happily take on a junior role. I am worried that a junior role would ideally be given to a younger person rather than someone my age?

@ToBeyond I can recommend NHS Digital. Great pay and lots of analyst type role opportunities. Start at band 4 / 5 so around £23k plus. Depends where you live though. They have offices in Leeds, Exeter and a small base in London.

OP, your age is irrelevant, at least to any half-decent employer. In my experience if you get a foot in the door at a relatively junior level and show a desire to learn and get on it will soon be picked up.
If you do go this route, you do need to be able to demonstrate office working skills, and experience in Microsoft Office will be an expected, certainly Excel at the very least.

At the moment age is less of a barrier for women than it is for men ime. Lots of people in their fifties and sixties in IT, plenty of time yet I'd say!

The only thing you might have to steer clear of are the actual graduate roles, but junior roles are much more diverse in terms of age I think, especially if they are linked to women back in work programs. As others have said, attitude, skills and aptitude are what employers are lookin for. There are lots of "women back in work" groups on LinkedIn and a quick look through just now shows many who are in or have been in your position. May have some practical advice or specific roles to look at?

The other thing to consider is location.

Where do you live? Are you close to a major UK city?

Small firms don’t tend to have large Change Delivery departments, so you’ll be looking for big companies which can be quite city based.

I know plenty of project managers that can work from home, maybe travelling to London once a week or once a fortnight.

I don’t think this is a way in for somebody starting out in the industry though. PMing from home is generally for somebody with experience.

If you live close enough to the jobs, then definitely go for it!