Shannon Bradford ⋅ Lakewood, OH RichWorkZone ⋅ 25 years experience

Wow, Angelica, you have some really impressive experience!

It sounds to me like you are doing everything right. Do you know what kind of project management you are interested in? It might help you to do some advice interviewing with people who are in project management jobs that are similar to your interests.

If you are not on LinkedIn, now would be a great time to set up a profile and start networking. There are several project management groups that you can join and then start networking and asking questions.

I hope this is helpful, and please let me know if I can clarify or help you further!

Good luck with your program and job search.

Richard Stamets ⋅ Skillman, NJ AIG ⋅ 25 years experience

Good morning Angelica -

Thank you for your service to our country!

You mentioned you've been working with Small Businesses, which are great. In experience, I find that it is rare for small businesses to afford formal project managers. What I find is the larger corporations have the capital and resources to formally fund projects and hire full time project managers. I work in the financial services industry. The company I work with has a team of project management professionals who work with our business leaders to lead / facilitate the projects of our organization. Many of our peer companies have robust career web-site, making it fairly easy to determine if they are hiring for this type of position.

Have you considered consulting companies? Their business model sells services to their clients, normally lead by a project manager. So, project managers are an integral part of their value proposition and critical to their business model.

Please feel free to reach out if I can be of further assistance.

Omar Sultan ⋅ Elk Grove, CA Cisco ⋅ 25 years experience

It seems like you have a lot of practical, relevant experience, even if its not formally as a project manager, so make sure your resume calls out the underlying skills (ex. managing people and resources, dealing with unforeseen circumstances) that will be relevant to your career going forward. That real-world experience paired with a PM cert should help you get started. When you get to the interview stage, have a few anecdotes handy that demonstrate how you can bridge you experiences into the role you are pursuing.

Good luck.

Ric Osuna ⋅ Norcross, GA Macy's ⋅ 19 years experience

I would suggest hiring a resume writer. It is a certain skillset to write a resume, one that even professional writers do not posses. I have more than 20 years experience in project management and I am currently a senior program manager at Fortune 500 company. The quickest way to break into the industry is to start at a small to medium-sized company, which may not pay top dollar, but will afford you the experience. After two years have passed, you can easily jump to a corporate giant, typically in a junior PM to PM role. Two years later, you can jump again to a Sr. PM role.

As for the education, I recommend Regis University. They are a tier-1 school and offer Masters of Science w/ minors in Project Management. They have a couple different programs and offer the flexibility of online (or traditional brick-and-mortar schools if you are in Denver). They are over 130+ years old and are not very expensive, but offer the prestige of a Jesuit school.

Good luck with the career move!