how can i get into Project mangement?

[Feelingsensitive]

I have been off work for a few years but prior to that I had a career in a science related subject. I have had a good look at my transferable skills and think PM maybe the way forward. Can anyone advise me on how I get into this. I don't want to work within the IT field but not sure where to focus. Do I need to be looking for a particular job title (project co-ordinator?). I have applied for a few jobs but got no where - one was for a charity and the other for a publishing related company. I have tried to slant my CV to PM and have the following subtitles on my 'skills' list : time management, communication, budget control, reporting, maintaining quality, supervising and mentoring. Anything I am missing?

They will be looking for PM skills in the field you are applying for. So for example a charity that deals with x vulnerable group, will want you to have experience of working/managing teams in that area - generally speaking.

It will be the same for publishing.

Thanks. That sounds off putting . Not sure where to go from her. I guess I need to narrow down the industry and take it from there.

I've spoken to H about this (although he's a programmer, so works in IT), he says it's pretty much the de facto standard qualification that UK employers require from their PMs: www.prince2.com/ - or some international equivalent. without quoting him directly, he says that people at his place are taken on as "trainees" after their degrees for their PM roles, and they study for the quals whilst they work/learn the ropes. BUT that is for a national office of an international software company, so definitely a more rigid HR process/hiring process than, say, smaller organisations or charities. SO that is a route in, but i'm pretty sure it's not the be all and end all, if you look at more flexible sectors/organisation types. i don't have any experience of public sector departments, i'm afraid (neither does H, he's only worked as a contrator in a few for a very very brief amount of time - and he says he can't remember what their PMs had for training, sorry!)

Have you thought about getting some Project Management training?

I was going to post the same as emy. construction project management is totally different from, for example, managing a project with vulnerable adults around horticulture! I think you need to focus on what sector you'd like to work in, see if you have the relevant experience/skills and apply.

Volunteering is a good way to get additional skills, certainly in the community sector.

Agree that in the main you will need Prince2 or some equivalent accredited training. I am a project manager managing procurement resourcing projects for the automotive/aerospace industry, and that is what i have.

Mind you, I fell into this by way of being an engineer - I started managing projects and my employer paid for my training as an afterthought. To be honest even though the Prince2 methodology is helpful, it is my no means essential for my line of work. That said, everyone I know who is a IT PM have Prince2 and works very much aligned with that.

You do need extensive knowledge of MS project - that is not really something you can learn easily on a course, it is far better to learn on the job, as what you are managing depends on what modules you use.

To be honest I think it qwould be very difficult to go blind and apply for a PM job in a sector which you do not have extensive knowledge of.

Sounds like you have some really good transferable skills.

A good way in for business change project management is to start in a programme/project management/support office as a project co-ordinator / project analyst type role.

Expect lots of humdrum admin but also the opportunity to support project managers and hence learn project management practices. Often in large business projects other opportunities come up to then take on junior project management responsibilities.

If you want to get some training, Prince2 is a reasonable way in and the Prince2 Foundation certificate is pretty easy to get. It helps with the terminology at least. No formal training alone will get you a PM job though it may help prove your interest to get a role where you can learn on the job. Particularly when agencies are filtering out CVs. Also look at APM foundation level certificates or PMI.

Skills you need in a PMO role - organisation, planning, meeting facilitation, risk and issue management,budgeting, ability to deal with conflicting and changing priorities, often need to be slightly flexible in working hours as deadlines loom.

In more middling PMO roles the interpersonal skills become more and more inmportant as you spend time trying to influence people a lot more senior than you to do their boring reports right and adhere to the standard processes!

Good MS Excel, Powerpoint, Word skills are a real advantage. Likewise MSProject. I love finding an excel formula and macro whizz in a PMO team as so many things you end up doing revolve around collating, analysing and presenting information to various mgmt audiences.

My background: I started in IT but moved swiftly to more business oriented programmes. Now a freelance PMO management / project management consultant mainly in financial services but also have done public sector, telecomms, defence. I'm not techie at all but I can understand and work with techies! Most of my programmes have an IT element but we would employ people with much more specific skills for IT project management roles.

Hope that helps. I have to go on a conference call right now but if I remember I'll post some sources of info that might help.

Be aware that project management can mean very different things to different sectors. Take each job ad on its merits.

Thank you. thank you, thank you. This is why I love mumsnet!

I am thinking of trying to get into interior fit out PM. It appeals to my interest in interiors but also my organisational side.

"Skills you need in a PMO role - organisation, planning, meeting facilitation, risk and issue management,budgeting, ability to deal with conflicting and changing priorities, often need to be slightly flexible in working hours as deadlines loom. " I have all these skills as in my last job I managed projects (but were called something else) from beginning to end.

I am going to look into Prince 2 foundation training next.

Ok I confess I'm completely clueless about interior fit out PM. My post was very much written about the environment I'm familiar with and I don't know how well it applies to what you want to do. Hope someone else can advise you.

Prince2 foundation will fool a recruitment consultant, but I don't know any project managers who think it equips you for anything other than getting a job interview (I've never worked in an organisation that actually uses Prince, you see).

There are three broad authorities for project management training/certification:
The Association for Project Management - British PM professional association, lots of construction trade membership.
The Project Management Institute - US professional association, but very widespread internationally.
Prince2 from the UK government OGC.

The first two cover all the skills needed for project management including the people / soft skill / communication / psychology stuff.

On your skills list, you might want to consider risk management - identifing and mitigating risks; stakeholder management - keeping people sweet; and conflict resolution or problem solving.

Good luck! It can be really interesting work.

Prince2 gives you a methodology. E.g. "at this stage you need to produce a document called X with sections 1,2 and 3 in."

So it depends. If you want to learn about project management, go with PMI or APM. If you want a piece of paper to get you an interview, go with Prince, just because more people in the general UK job market have heard of it.

Just to say I agree with MildredwithTwins re the relative merits of Prince2 and APM/PMI training. I'd say even public sector organisations where I've worked that say they use Prince2 actually use PINO (Prince2 in Name Only!).

I was just going to post that prince2 certainly within IT is sniggered at.

Sorry for hijack but I wonder if the other PM's on here can offer me advice as well?

I've got my Prince2 foundation and practitioners but took them both coming up to five years ago.

I'm getting made redundant in March and my practitioners qual requires resitting in April but I won't have an employer to pay for it and can't afford it myself.

My old company would have overlooked this given that I'd passed once, but are most places like this or do most require you actually do the resit every 5 years?

I am a PM and agree that certification, while useful to have on your CV, does not really help in day to day work, at least in my experience. I have PMI certification, and you have to get into a PMI mindset to pass the exam - pretend you are in an ideal PM world where there's lots of time to plan, tons of resources, and everyone follows the process - ha!

There are some useful elements but they are commonsense really - though it's easy to say after the fact if you've been doing the job for a while, as I have. A bit like passing a driving exam when you already know how to drive. And I do plan to study for Prince2 next year to tick it off the list. I do enjoy the job and hopefully it's a portable one but every industry has their own quirks you need to learn.

My background is engineering but I've moved gradually into PM over the years. My employer has supported this but much has been self taught and working with some good (and not so good) PMs. In the past few years there has been a push to getting everyone certified as customers expect it but see my comments above...

Agree with earlier suggestion to get involved with project organisation/admin side, you'll pick up a lot of knowledge and opportunities to take it further will arise. Aim for part of an actual project team (preferably a large multi year project) not a central admin team managing several projects. The key attributes I think are being self-sufficient (resolve things yourself as much as possible but escalate where needed) and communication with all team members so everyone is aligned.

The other comment about MS Project rang a bell -- I hate MS Project, it's the most user-unfriendly piece of software... you spend ages entering data and getting the timeline bars to line up then you move one date from Thurs to Mon and it goes amok with arrows pointing all over the place. Ugh. So you spend hours getting the report to look right when you could actually be managing and doing something productive instead. I find many times a simple grid in Excel with day/week columns and activity rows lets you focus on the actual work at hand. Fortunately my customer feels that way too . So all this to say don't let MS Project scare you off doing a PM role.

Bigbarn - not sure about Prince but certainly for PMI you first pass the exam (not easy) then need to accumulate 60 points (1 point = 1 hour of approved training) and register these over the next three years, otherwise you need to resit the exam. Then the clock restarts for another 3 year etc.

So I'm scrabbling for courses. The really interesting ones that give you 20 points at a time eat up a whole week (which is difficult to manage around current projects, duh) and are invariably three hours drive away - which I cannot do of course as I am constrained by childcare hours.

I am picking up little 2-3 hour segments here and there. I even recently sat in on some Microsoft marketing dude extolling the virtues of the latest version of MS Project for one interminable hour.

Just wanted to say thanks to all again. I have changed my job search on the job sites for project co oridinator and project assistant so fingers crossed something comes up. I fear the fact I have had 3 years at home along with my previous job (They are probably wondering why I would want to leave it ) are putting them off. Has anyone got any suggestions on how I can make myself appear more appealing for these roles.

Hi bigbarnfarm my Prince2 Practitioner has expired. Can't be bothered to pay for the resit since there's enough on my CV to get me work without it. I put it under the training section on my CV i.e. as course I attended rather than claiming to be on the current list of PRince2 Practitioners.

I keep considering doing APM/PMI qualifications to get the tick in the box but as CultureMix mentioned there's the ongoing training requirement and with one small DS and another on the way my priority is to maximise my billable days in my current contracts and not spend the £ on courses unless they are essential. I may think differently if I struggle to get contracts on my return from my next maternity break. All clients so far have been more interested in my experience and MBA. The bulk of my experience was gained before Prince2, PMI and APM quals were quite so popular and when everyone I knew just learnt on the job... might be showing my age!

Other thoughts feelingsensitive - you may find it worthwhile approaching agencies direct and people may keep you in mind for suitable opportunities. See which ones are advertising project management jobs in your area and get talking to them about routes in.

Just to add, I make sure I am familiar with PMI and APM terminology and books of knowledge so taht if quizzed I can answer questions confidently and cover off not actually having sat the exams.

Thanks gingerwench. I will do that next week.

As an aside, on the PMO front, this is an incredibly misunderstood role. I am a PMO, and I can assure you I do no admin! If you want to read up on it, there's a new qualification (P3O) that sits alongside Prince2. I agree that, on their own, the PM and PMO qualifications are not vastly valuable, but they do provide a good grounding in the basics.

Gosh, I could go on about this all day ....

Babypowder I take your point, sorry clumsy wording on my part. I was trying to express that there are a number of more routine tasks that go on in a programme/portflio/project management office. Agree that the recent move to professionalise PMO work is to be welcomed. Are you a fellow PMOSIG member?

Thanks for raising it because it reminded me that I generally use admin in a perjorative sense for the more menial and repetitive office tasks and internal bureaucracy, which is wrong of me. The broader meaning of administration - "the universal process of organizing people and resources efficiently so as to direct activities toward common goals and objectives" (thanks wikipedia) - actually seems to me to be a pretty good way of summarising the difficult job of a PMO!

I'm an NHS PM and have just been recruiting PMs actually. The market is flooded and a lot of people tbh are nowhere near as good as they think they are.

We are also PRINCE in name only (although I am PRINCE qualified) and we work more around the principles of programme management (Office of Government Commerce has all this stuff).

When interviewing, we asked tell us what projects you have delivered. Very, very few could say I reduced X by 10% or saved #1.2million pounds. And for me, that is the key thing in PM - what do you deliver, please don't describe endless process to me.

I agree with babypowder, PMO is very different. The best place to start is project support officer, which is often described as admin/co-ordinator type roles. Very adminy but surprisingly interesting if you are a spreadsheet geek like me. Good people are exceptionally hard to find.

It is very unlikely we would recruit someone, even is a support role, without experience in this economic environment. I would do a voluntary project (school, local charity) and manage something - could be a bidding process, setting up a service etc.

BTW I'm not a member of any professional organisation, some of my colleagues are not formally PRINCE trained. However, we all have practical, shop floor experience of delivery, read widely and use lots of LEAN techniques. I now am at the stage of doing lots of interesting things like redesigning surgical theatres and building a new Emergency Department. PM is about common sense and getting things done, that is what I would look for in a recruitment process.

Sadly, I too could go on all day...

Thanks again to you all. I have a nursing background so perhaps NHS PM would be an option for me as well. I am going to sit the Prince Foundation exam just to put something on my CV. Also going to call agencies to get some help there.

Might also look into doing an MS project distance learning type thing as I have never used it.