A Transferable Skill to Enhance your Career Path

Mike has more than 12 years of project management experience spanning a variety of industries. He has acted as a consultant for federal, state and local government agencies; set up a PMO and managed strategic projects for a major automotive company in Australia; and currently is a Senior Project Manager in the Northern Colorado financial industry. Mike is PMP certified, a veteran of the USAF and has an MBA in finance and accounting.

  Career Development   Manufacturing  

Is project management a career path unto itself, or is it an adjunct to other careers? It can truly be both. Project management skills transfer to nearly every vocational arena: finance, construction, information technology, manufacturing, engineering and so on.

All of these career areas need project management skills. You know it and I know it, but still most employers don’t think primarily in terms of “we need a skilled project manager.” They think more along the lines of needing an engineer or software expert first. Then it it’s, “Oh, yeah. Project management credentials would be nice, too.”

A purely project management-centered career might reside within the project management office (PMO) of a large organization or governmental agency. A typical trajectory would progress from project coordinator to project manager to senior project manager, then on to a program or portfolio manager position.

Along the way, advancement in certification levels might be expected from the CAPM designation to PMP and on to PgMP. To achieve such a career path, one would likely need to find employment with an organization large enough to offer room for advancement. While this is certainly a fine road to advancement, remaining within a PMO for the entirely of a career offers but a narrow slice of the real world opportunities one might otherwise encounter…

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