How to Become a Project Manager - Get Your First Project Management Job Without Experience - YouTube

How to become a project manager without experience - three methods coming up! Hey team I'm Stuart Taylor  

from Influential PMO. You've decided to pursue a  career in project management  

the problem is - and you may have already noticed - everybody's asking for experience. You can't get experience without  

having the job and you can't get the job without  experience! Well here are three routes that you  

can follow to get that first role in project  management.   

The first route is certification. Basically you go and do a course get yourself a qualification that says you understand project management.

A good example of this is PRINCE2 where the foundation level demonstrates that  

you have the understanding to operate in a  project management environment. The pros and  

cons are that you'll learn the language and the  jargon. That's really important for being able to  

understand what's going on around you on day one. You'll understand the underlying concepts better  

than most and certification gives you transferable  knowledge; as well as the evidence that you can  

dedicate your time to study learning and retaining  knowledge. Following this route demonstrates  

proactivity and a willingness to invest in  your own future and a dedication to continuous improvement.

The cons include that you still  haven't demonstrated experience and you might  

still have to overcome that challenge at some  point in the interview process. You'll find that in  

practice project management is quite different from  the theory. You won't get any understanding from  

doing a course on whether you'll actually enjoy  doing the job. And finally it can be expensive to get the certification

The next route is reframing your lived experience.

What this involves is turning your historical life experience into  projects. In my case I had a few things I could leverage.

I'd worked on website designs, I'd worked  on setting up offices. At no point whilst I  

was doing these things did I realize I was working  on projects. They did have a temporary lifespan and a  

very definite set of objectives so it was easy to  transfer those experiences into being projects.

The pros are it's easy to do. All you have to do is remember  a task that had a definite start a definite end  

and a set objective to achieve at the end. Almost  anything like that can be explained as a project.  

Also because you're talking about an actual  lived experience you'll be accessing memories  

when you're talking about it rather than  imagination and it'll give you the ability to  

answer questions about the task a little bit more  easily. The downside is the experience is limited  

and you won't have worked with governance, you  won't have worked with reporting and project  

controls and all the things that get attached  to formal projects. If you're getting value  

from this don't forget to hit the like button and  definitely don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future content.

The next route is that you start to create projects. You start to turn ad hoc  

tasks and assignments into projects. If you're  already working but you're in a non-project job  

try to find the tasks that nobody wants to do. See  if it's possible to turn them into projects.  

If you can identify that the task is temporary and has  a specific set of outputs you can easily convert  

these tasks into projects, you actively treat  them like projects. Tracking costs, benefits, risk,  

you build a plan you start obsessing about  quality. You start engaging with stakeholders.  

If you work at an organization that's got a  project management service or a PMO you can start  

reaching out to their project managers for advice  and to use their templates and their approaches.  

This is a great way to get recognition and to  move easily from being in a non-project role  

to a project role. Any PMO and project managers  that you've been engaging in this process  

will remember that you've got the knowledge the  skills and the hunger to do the role and the next  

time that they find that they're under resourced  you might find they reach out to you.   

The worst case is even if you don't move roles hopefully your  extra efforts will be recognized and you'll get  

a bonus at the end of the year! The difficulties  with this is that the tasks may not be immediately  

available for you to start turning into projects.  You'll also probably need to have your line  

manager's support and you may find that by taking  on all these extra tasks it doesn't leave a lot of  

time for you to do your regular day job and that  could cause problems in itself.  

Any of these routes will help to improve your chances of getting the experience and getting the recognition you need to  

get that first project management job. But your  best bet is to try to do combinations of them.  

If you can do two or even three of these things  that sets you up for success. Question of the day -

can you think of any other route that someone with no experience can find their way into their first project management job?

Okay, go and get to it and let me know how it goes! Good luck!