This training video with Jennifer Bridges provides you with useful advice for advancing in your project management career.

In Review: 5 Tips for Boosting Your PM Career

Jennifer knows what it takes to rise up in the field of project management, with over 20 years experience in the field and more as a trainer and consultant. She shared five pertinent tips on how to take your career to the next level.

• Reignite your passion. Enthusiasm is contagious, and nobody ever promoted a sad sack.
• Expand your network. Broaden your reach among professionals who know your work and can recommend you. You never know who might be involved in the hiring process.
• Invest in yourself. Allocate time and money to learn new technologies, methodologies, certifications, trends, etc.
• Enlist advocates. Get career-supporters who can help you when they hear of upcoming opportunities.
• Value your reputation. Live up to the fourth side of your professional portrait, which also includes knowledge, expertise and skills.

If you work on all of these point they’ll not only sharpen you skills, but cement the foundation of a long and integral career.

Pro-Tip: Recruiters are constantly trawling LinkedIn for new recruits, but they don’t call if you don’t appear to be looking for work. Even when you’re still gainfully employed, you can subtly put your hat in the ring by elevating your LinkedIn membership to Job Seeker, without raising too many flags with your current employer. 

Another thing LinkedIn is great for is community building. Join the conversation at our Project Manager Community.

Thanks for watching!

Transcription

Hello. I’m Jennifer Whitt, Director of ProjectManager.com.

Welcome to our white-board session on “Five Tips for Boosting Your PM Career.” I get so many calls from people wondering, “How do I get ahead of the pack? There’s so many people in project management, how do I find myself ahead of the pack so I can get new opportunities?” Or people in general are like, “How do I get to the next level of doing something I love or going to different projects that I want to pursue?” Here are five tips that I found helpful for me.

Number one is, Reigniting Your Passion. Enthusiasm truly is contagious. I’ve had opportunities come to me just because I get excited about what I do. If I find something and I do what I love, I get excited about it. I can get others excited about it. Sometimes people will come to me to offer me opportunities just because they know I’m going to see their vision, I’m going to embrace it and I can get the other team excited about it too.

A part of that is, people are like, “I don’t know how to get excited about what I do.” Number one, stop doing the things you don’t like to do anymore. As we continue projects, or age, or get experience in our field there’s certain things that we’ve been there, done that. We don’t necessarily want to do anymore. Stop doing those. At some point it gets old and the truth is we punish and depress those around us because we don’t want to do it, so we take it out on them. Stop that.

Number two is, Expand Your Network. Our network is one of the most valuable things that we have. Expand it both online and offline. What do I mean by that? Online is through social media channels, there’s Facebook, there’s LinkedIn, there’s Pinterest. There are others that you can subscribe to, but get online and subscribe to some of the groups and get in there and collaborate with them. You will meet connections all over the world and you’ll learn tips and tools and techniques. You’ll see trends coming, opportunities that you might want to be involved in.

Offline is person to person by networking. Get back in touch with people you haven’t seen for awhile. Meet them for coffee. Give them a call. Text them. Keep in touch with people. It is truth. There’s a book that’s written and there’s a phrase, “What got you here, won’t get you there.” It’s true. We have to begin looking at, what are the things I need to learn? Who are the people I need to surround myself with? What are the tools I need?

That’s the past.

The new is, been there and done that. We need to find people who have been there and done that for what we want to do and get in touch with them and make connections with them. Pick their brain. Ask them questions. How did you get there? What did you do? Where did you go? Where did you learn that?

How can I position myself? Those are the greatest people to connect with.

Number three, you’ve got to be willing to invest in yourself. Not everything is free. We have to invest time and we have to invest budget, we have to allocate time. I literally go in and on my calendar I schedule time. You can pick. You want to schedule time during the day, on the weekends? Do you want to take a week off, or weekend trips? How do you want to do it?

There’s so much to learn about new technologies, trends going on, methodologies. There’s agile methodologies, there’s all kinds of methodologies. There’s certifications. There are things going on in the industries, new industries. There may be other industries that you’re appealed to learning more about and transitioning into.

Mentors and peers. Sometimes we can meet up with our peers or mentors, but not everyone is willing to do that for free. Be willing to invest in them. Invest in a mentor and pay them to participate in a mentor program.

Number four, Enroll Advocates. I found my advocates have helped me so much along the way and all I do is periodically connect with them. I let them know what I’m doing. Where am I, what am I doing, what am I trying to do because those are the people who know me, they’ve worked with me, they trust me and if they hear of other opportunities, they can either put me in contact with other people who may be involved in what I want to pursue, or they may have opportunities themselves. They are the best people to keep in touch with. Let them know what you’re trying to pursue.

Number five is, Value Your Reputation. What do I mean by that? In your current role, or your current position, whatever you’re doing today, we have to be able to deliver results. If we have a lot of knowledge, expertise, skills but we can’t actually deliver results, then we’re not really valuable and that’s going to hurt our reputation. We may be the smart one but we’re not the one who can get it done.

Then respect people. If we respect people and value them, whether it’s our clients, our team members, our stakeholders, then if we deliver results and we respect people, they become our biggest advocates and they can help us boost our career. If you’re looking for a tool that can help you boost your PM career, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.com.