Step 1: What Are Project Management Jobs All About?
Gantt chart
AKA: Program Management
Overview: Oversee both short-term projects and long-term programs, making sure they run on-time and within budget.
Example project: Manage the progress of an engineering team against launch deadlines.
What you do all day: Plan projects, set-up tracking systems, hold regular check-ins with all stakeholders to review progress, provide updates
Roles: Project Manager (manages short-term projects), Program Manager (manages a portfolio of ongoing projects)
What they look for: People with exceptional organizational skills - including project management technology (e.g., Gantt charts, Scrum)
Example job: Program Manager, Google
Step 2: Would You Be a Good Fit for Project Management?
Ask yourself if you'd love doing these kinds of things all day:
Setting up organizational systems
Planning out projects in minute detail
Delegating tasks and holding peers responsible for task completion
Facilitating project status meetings
Communicating progress with executive stakeholders
If your answer is "Yes" to the majority of activities, you'd likely be a good fit for Project Management jobs.
Step 3: What Skills Do You Need for Project Management Jobs?
For each major activity, I've listed the most common keywords from across dozens of job descriptions, as well as a sample resume bullet:
· Setting up organizational systems
o Keywords: project status tracking, bug tracking, task tracking, JIRA, agile development, Scrum, Asana, Visio, waterfall development
o Sample Bullet: Established an agile development system wih a kanban board to organize daily standups, reducing time to ship by 20%
· Planning out projects in minute detail
o Keywords: planning, project schedule, timelines, budgets, complex projects
o Sample Bullet: Managed multiple project plans and budgets simultaneously, ensuring all three products launched on-time and within budget
· Delegating tasks and holding peers responsible for task completion
o Keywords: cross-functional, on-time, on-budget, engineering, alignment, relationship-building skills
o Sample Bullet: Was responsible for the timeliness of all engineering and design deliverables; never missed a ship date in five years on the job
· Facilitating project status meetings
o Keywords: project status meetings, standups, create visibility, identify blockers, escalate issues
o Sample Bullet: Initiated daily standups to identify and solve blockers, taking a project that was expected to ship three months late to an on-time delivery
· Communicating progress with executive stakeholders
o Keywords: manage expectations, stakeholder communications, communicate status and risk, cross-functional planning meetings, collect data, prepare metrics, senior leaders
o Sample Bullet: Represented the team's progress to executive stakeholders, earning additional investment based on consisten on-time, on-budget performance
Step 4: What Project Management Training Do You Recommend?
Option 1: Skills Training
If you want to brush up on any of these project management skills, check out Mauricio Rubio’s Agile Crash Course course on Udemy. I like two things about this course in particular:
It puts Agile in the context of other project management methodologies so you can better understand why this has become the preferred approach in tech.
It includes non-IT examples of Agile so you can understand how this methodology can be applied to just about any project - marketing, people operations, etc.
Option 2: Interview Training
If you want to specifically focus on project management interview skills, check out Exponent’s Ace Your Program Management Interview course. Led by top-notch project and program managers, here’s why it’s my recommendation:
Seeing > Listening. While anyone can tell you how to be a better interviewee, Exponent actually shows you - through hours of mock interviews where you see real hiring managers and candidates go through the same exact questions you’re about to face!
Interviewing Requires Emotional Support. To do your best in the interview room, you need to know more than frameworks - you need to know you’ve got the support to face down this daunting challenge. And so the fact that Exponent’s course grants you access to a Slack community full of folks in the same boat who can empathize with the challenge and help you prep with mock interviews is a big advantage.
Live Coaching When You Need It. Sometimes you need more than a course to make it to the promised land. So that’s why I like that Exponent scales from an inexpensive online course to offer full coaching packages, complete with a roster of coaches from Google, Amazon, Etsy, etc. Plus you can always request a coaching session a la carte!
Disclosure: I’m an affiliate for some of the 3rd party courses listed on the site, which means I may earn a small fee if you choose to enroll (which I use to keep Break into Tech running).
Step 5: How Do You Actually Get a Project Management Job?
To help you convert your passion and skills into an actual job, I've put together a step-by-step course that covers how to:
Design a resume that will mark you as an insider to tech recruiters
Make sure you find every single great tech job across multiple sites
Get a referral at just about any tech company - even if you don't know anyone directly
Prepare for every kind of tech interview question with point-by-point formulas