You Have Several Certifications, But You CANNOT Land a Project Manager Role

The secret to boost your possibility to get a PM job

3 Myths & 3 Practical Tips

You are a student, or you have been working for 3 to 5 years. And you decide to transition to a project manager role; start investigating the strategies to achieve the objective. You would see, no matter on Facebook groups or on LinkedIn groups, many people encourage you to get a relevant certificates to help you boost interview opportunities.

You abide by their suggestions, pay the money, get several certificates, and begin submitting your resume. However, you find there are almost no interview invitations. Even worse, the interviewers look down on your performance because you don’t have any project management experience before. You feel frustrated with the result and have no idea where to go. Stay in the current position or keep trying?

To put it simple, I conclude 3 primary myths most people might ever have about certifications.

1. If I had the certifications, I should be considered for the PM role
2. If I had the certifications, I can well-manage a project
3. If I had the certifications, they are lifelong valid for your career

In my opinion, EXPERIENCE MATTERS. Certifications are just support. They might become a minus if you don’t make good use of them to emphasize your project management skills. I was once a software engineer, a scrum master, and became a technical project manager. So I really understand the traps you might step in along the transition journey.

In this article, I am going to provide you 3 practical tips to help you land a project manager without any certifications, as below.

1. Join a bootcamp
   Instead of spending money on certifications, I would prefer you to join a bootcamp, and learn how to develop a project from zero. Because in that scenario, people would actively learn how to collaborate with each other and contribute their abilities to get things done. You would gain hands-on experience from within that.
2. Discover your PM experience from current work or in school
   Everyone is essentially a project manager, no matter which stage you are in, a student or an employee. For example, if you are a student, I bet you have some experience of working on group assignments. How do you allocate the tasks? How do you organize the group meetings to achieve meeting goals? How do you manage your time when there are many assignments?
   See? Those are possible project management experience I could extract from your backgrounds, not from those certification courses. If you wanna seek a project manager role, try to take hours to think about your life experience, no matter in work or in school, and write them down on your resume.
3. Cultivate PM experience from within your team
   If you are still working and are ready to transition to a project manager, please cultivate your experience right now, just right in your team. You could progressively help your manager facilitate meetings with stakeholders, arrange tasks to maximize time usage, or understand how to kick off a project from zero. You need to seek the opportunities to grow yourself, not for money.

Once again, EXPERIENCE MATTERS. That does not mean you cannot land a PM role if you are a student or are not serving as similar roles. Instead, you should discover the potentials from within yourself and show them on your resume and interview.

Let Me Help You

I hope the content could give you some insights and reflections on taking certifications as well as landing a project management role. I am currently preparing an online course about agile project management, to help those who have worked for about 3 to 5 years, and would like to land a project manager role.

If you still have other pain points, now I provide an 1 on 1 free online consulting service. You just need to reserve for a web call. I would answer your questions as possible as I could.

👉 Book now: https://calendly.com/uragilecoach/consulting
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🎁 Anyone who reserves for the web call would be rewarded with a secret gift that helps you grow on project management skills.

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