Project Management Careers
Project management careers require education, hard work, flexibility, creativity, and discipline. But a project manager career can be exciting and rewarding -- even lucrative. There are several paths that one can pursue for a career in project management.
Industry specialization is one project management career path. Construction, software development, human resources, event planning, and philanthropic fundraising are all industries that are principally a series of projects; project management skills are of paramount importance in all of them. As you might imagine from looking at this brief list, the level and formality of project management education required in different industries can vary greatly.
You can take courses in industry-specific project management for small-scale things like wedding planning. Basically, such training is the memorization of an algorithm, a specific list of steps to follow to achieve a completed project that's essentially the same as every other project of its kind. The skill lies in attending to every detail scrupulously, and in the creativity required to customize each step. Such courses generally take a few days or weeks to complete.
More flexible project manager careers can built around more complex types of projects, such as construction or IT project management. Your project management training is still focused on one industry, but within that industry are innumerable different project results to be obtained. Training tends to take a broader, more theoretical approach to project management principles.
A "pure" project manager career is industry-independent. The principles, knowledge, and skills of project management are highly transferable across numerous industries. It is not uncommon to find a project manager in charge of an IT project who has no degree or professional experience in IT. But he's a highly trained project management professional, and that qualifies him to manage an IT project. Of course, the software programmers on the project may not agree with that rationale.
Specialties within the broad field of project management offer rich project management career opportunities, too. Estimating, scheduling, logistics management, and other functions of project management are job titles and career paths in their own rights.
The broad applicability of project management activities to many industries makes a project management career a relatively secure one. A generalist project manager can usually find work when more specialized workers cannot. Pay scales vary depending upon the industry in which project management careers are found. Upward mobility is usually greatest in large construction and IT consulting companies.