Any Project Managers on here?

[BeachBun]

Hi, I'm looking for some career advice please.

I have a background in languages/ project management within translation industry. In recent years though, I've had children and I've pivoted into work in secondary education. It's not "me" however, I don't feel a great amount of passion towards it and I'm certainly not interested in training as a teacher.

I really want to change my career path and make some decent money at last. My mind went to Project Management but it turns out what I was doing before was a different type of PMing..! I never came across PRINCE2, Agile Scrum/ Jira - these are all completely new concepts to me.

So, my question is - can you recommend any good PM courses? And share your story of how you got into Project Management? Any tips would be much appreciated. I can't afford university degree but I'm certainly willing to learn/ train and put hard work in.

Many thanks!

Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to do a free Skills for Life course in project management, funded by the government - check out the Skills Network for online ones though I think you might be able to do in-person ones too. They guarantee you an interview at the end of the course which is quite good.

Thanks so much @MaryBoggintonTrotterSmyke , that sounds almost too good to be true... I'll look into it asap! :-)

There are loads of good online courses out there which will cover all of this. https://www.trainingbytesize.com/ is one of them. Also check out the training body standards website e.g. APMG. Agile is the buzzword of the moment (including Scrum etc). FutureLearn and the OU micro credential courses do some courses on PM as well.

Just avoid the Knowledge Academy - totally inadequate and poorly put together courses. Avoid the trustpilot reviews and I suspect they pay to get the bad ones removed.

if not there are loads of providers around who offer Prince 2, Agile etc - find an accredited provider and a method that works for you (distance learning/in person).

Look on YouTube as well as there are various videos that give an overview of what each qualification covers.

You need to think about the industry you want to go into too and whether some experience in a particular field would help - PMing is a generic skill but can play out differently in different industries. One option is PMing in financial services, but that’s going to look very different from managing projects in the building industry for example, and I’m not sure about translation or education.

In financial services a route in could be to get an entry level job where you gain an understanding of products, customer processes and the regulations and maybe get involved in a change project or two etc, and then move into a back office PM job.

Association of project management may have some good advice on careers

Thank you @Guineasrule. I'll look into this!
Are you a PM yourself? What industry if you don't mind sharing? Are these tools extremely technical/ difficult to learn?
Thanks for the recommendations. There's so much stuff online and I'm never to keen to trust the reviews. So it's great to hear some real people's take on it :-)

thanks, @Heroicallyfound - yeah, I gathered that PMing varies greatly between industries.. So I guess I would have to choose my preferred industry first, then train up to that specific role. Would gaining experience with Prince2 or other platforms be relevant across all fields or not necessarily?

Thanks @Evasmissingletter, I'll add that to my tabs as well!

As PP have said choose your industry. I work with many PM's and have done it myself in the past.

Engineering is still inclined towards PRINCE. IT is very much Agile now, we have constant sessions and training on it whether you are in IT or not (I am in engineering).

Agile is pretty easy tbh - just lots of acronyms to remember.

Take a look at job descriptions for an industry you are interested in joining and see what they are asking for. Certification is gaining more importance these days.

I don’t think Prince 2 is necessarily relevant to all fields, plus it’s a methodology so not all workplaces might use that methodology. Agile is a different methodology. Some workplaces want both. Some are more focused on Agile now. If you watch the YouTube overview videos you’ll understand more about when each method might be more suited.

this is an unbiased website

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/business-consulting-and-management/how-to-become-a-project-manager

Also look around at job ads in your chosen field / possible local employers, as that will give you a better idea of the specifics needed.

@Guineasrule and @Heroicallyfound - that's very helpful, thank you! You've given me plenty to read and consider.

PRINCE II is still the baseline approach for most public sector projects, IME (until 3 years ago I was a PM with a Big 4 consultancy), and Reed is the agency that most of the contractors I knew seemed to use (I'm sure there are others, but most of my stuff was Home Office/MoD). As others have said, Agile is much more prevalent for pure-play IT projects where what matters is the stages of developing a product, testing it, rolling it out.

To be honest (and cynical) about it, I think a lot of it is horses for courses - you use the skills and techniques that work for you. There are certain baseline things that you need regardless of the formal approach - project outline, plan, risk register, budget etc - and I've seen as many different approaches to them as I've seen projects, though all of them would probably claim to have been using the same approaches!