How Can I Obtain a Project Management Position With No Professional Experience In The Field?

Question

I am still a student. My formation and my personal thirst for knowledge led me to learn a lot of different things:

• Programming experience in several languages (low level ASM to higher level JAVA)
• Professional experience as network/sys admin
• Participed in SCRUM like projects for 4 years
• 1 year teaching experience in network and programming
• Self taught: security, project management

What I want to highlight here is that I have a variety of knowledge and experience that I would like to use in real life to the fullest. The problem is this: Before getting to any project management interesting position, I am expected to have some years of professional experience in the same field.

My goal is to get to a position where I can use all of these skills, learn and face challenges, and without passing by the coder phase. I don't want to do something that any coder can do, I want to be able to express myself and supervise others.

What to do in order to achieve this goal? I need a fast and efficient solution. What career path to follow and what competence do I need to acquire now? I am really willing to learn anything that can lead me there, I just despise doing something that I know I can do (coding, maintenance, ...), it would kill my motivation.

Thank you for helping me make a very important decision.

PS: I am sorry if I am off topic, I think this is the best choice to ask here since you may relate to my story and help me with your experience as project manager. Project manager is not the only job that would motivate me though, but you might be able to help me still.

EDIT: I really appreciate all of your answers, you seem to have so much to say about it and every bit of information is precious to me. Thank you !

EDIT2: I earned a badge through this question and I would like to add a few more details on my new experience and how I can relate to the answers given.

I accepted David's answer because it matches perfectly what I experienced for the past 2 years. Managing projects is a big word, well it was, I used to be the shadow guy who actually articulated a few key projects following rough guidelines from my manager. We actually worked hand in hand, splitting tasks and raising issues to each others as the project went on. Although he is a PMP, we had no time to actually plan and execute the project, we had to dive in something new and deliver quickly. It involved training of frontend/backend teams (finance, sales, IT, Support, etc.), adjusting the systems, ordering improvements, raising bug defects, testing, etc.

All this to say, my way into PM was that of necessity, I helped until I became an unofficial PM and as I write this now I am leading alone a project scaling on several countries. Visibility and recognition happens naturally as we interact with our colleagues and communicate on achievements. I feel much more involved and I am deploying my own vision for the direction to take from now on many fronts.

What does it take for going to PM? To me: - Competent HR and managers - Impeccable and accurate communication - Dedication, passion and hard work - Commitment to the success of the company - Curiosity and engaging everybody - Deliver and be "Impactful" (>relevant, >successful) - Communicate during reviews with your management your will to evolve - Stay very well organized, empower yourself (OneNote, Outlook rules/config, Excel skills, presentation skills, organization methods, etc)

I look back and feel that I was too focused on my own job and on my own technology to evolve in my previous job. I came to this one with an open mind, a learner mind and my curiosity made me a candidate for the internal leadership program in HR to groom future leaders of our company. I am continuing my road with great achievements and rewards. Thanks again to all who answered here, this helped me go through that process and grow.

Answer 1

Before it became a "profession," it was a job function. Many still argue it is still a job function and not a profession at all. Personally, I'm more in that camp, but that's not relevent here.

Whatever you are studying, go get an entry-level job there. As you climb, you will either continue down the track as a technologist, becoming more of a subject matter expert, or you will break off and join management. So just enjoy the ride and figure it out as you go.

There are entry-level PM roles, but these positions are more around project controls, like EV schedulers, or risk managers, or HR managers. Typically, I find these people getting stuck in project controls. Well, "stuck" is kind of harsh. I think many enjoy it.

Projects come in levels. All of us have been managing projects since we were kids. You could find yourself as the named PM of a small task as an entry-level whateverroleyouendupwith.

Answer 2

You mentioned that you're still a student. I don't know what you are studying, but I assume it's Computer Science or Software Engineering.

If you are not involved in internships or side jobs that involve programming, maintenance, and/or software development, then this is a great way for you to gain more experience as a programmer. Most organizations will not hire you for a management position unless you can prove that you have experience in the area where your expertise will be needed.

You mentioned you've participated in scrum projects and have worked on several programming projects. Were these paid positions or internships? If not, you'll need to demonstrate that an employer actually hired you for a paid position or internship in exchange for your services.

In addition, I strongly advise you to look for project management opportunities. It's tougher to find paid positions without experience. So in this case you should look for volunteer opportunities or volunteer to take on part of a project management role. Having the experience and references can help you obtain the position you seek.

In conclusion, you must also understand that experience is something that is only obtained from actual experience. So if you've never actually worked a role where there was a project management component, then you have no experience even if you studied project management.

If you don't have 3 to 5 years experience in a professional environment, then employers may be hesitant to put you in a position of trust until you first prove that you have the skills needed to understand how software is developed. Don't get discouraged if your first job isn't exactly what you're looking for. People switch jobs all the time, and once you have more experience under your belt, you'll be in a better position to bargain with your potential employers.

Answer 3

jmort253's answer is already very good in my view. Let me add a little.

Why do you want to supervise others? The answer to this question may not be as easy as you think. If it is just for the sake of it, I would recommend don't go there. Leadership is much more than supervision or being the boss of someone else.

In my experience you need a large amount of skills and experience to be successful, most of these are soft skills. Although it doesn't hurt to have technical skills as a leader in a technical environment at the end of the day you work with people. Your team consists of human beings and not of computers.

Being able to work with people to understand their strengths and weaknesses, making use of their strengths while helping them to improve or mitigate the weaknesses, dealing with difficult people within your team but also outside of your team, conflict resolution, and more are soft skills you generally don't learn at university.

Add to that the occasional lack of enough sleep, time zone differences, angry customer calls, impossible deadlines, an unreasonable boss, a political board of directors, ... Are you up for all of that?

I don't want to scare you away. These things don't necessarily happen (at the same time or at all). But they can happen. Can you handle them? How did you handle situations of extreme stress and pressure in the past? Now ask yourself again, why do you want to supervise others?

Answer 4

Experience as a member of several project teams is an absolute must. Experience is to project management as location is to real estate. Experience, Experience, Experience.

You will set yourself up for failure if you are able to jump into a position without adequate experience. ( Note this is true in many fields -- if you want to own a restraurant, you must work in a restaurant as a waiter, cook, etc for at least three years before you own one. ). In every field there are tricks of the trade that make the difference between success and failure, and you will not find the important tricks in any textbook.

This is why so many businesses fail.

Answer 5

There is what we call the "transferable competences" concept in human ressources management. You have a job experience that is not the one requiered, because it was not in the same field or not exactly the same work. You have to be able, then, to prove to your new potential employer that some or more of the tasks you were doing in your previous workplace can apply to the new one. You "transfer" your competence from a field to the other. It is much simpler than it looks. But it is a question of trust and selling yourself and your abilities, proving you can do the job as anybody else. But the most important points to succeed in any job is judgment, dedication and the sense of responsabilities. Those you can't buy or be trained to get them. You have them or not. It is part of your personality, of who you are. Having new and innovative ideas is a good points too, if your new employer is open minded.