Repost of Episode 288: Optimize Your Project Management Career - Part 2 - Mid Career (Free)
This is the second of three interviews in which Dev Ramcharan (LinkedIn Profile) from AROUCA Career Coaching helps you to optimize and boost your career. In this interview we focus on the mid-career phase, which starts about 2-3 years into your life as a project manager.
In this interview you learn that there is an early mid-career and also a late mid-career, and that both require a different optimization approach. We talk about when and how often you should update the Career Optimization Package and how to perform a career risk assessment.
As part of this interview, Dev also recommends the following two books:
My recommendation is still the same: To get the most out of this you should listen to all three interviews in sequence, no matter if you are currently in your early career, mid career or late career. And don’t forget to get Dev’s Career Optimization Package from The PM Podcast website. Just go to www.pm-podcast.com/career and download the free version first.
Episode Transcript
Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.
Podcast Introduction
Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to Episode # 288. This is the Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com and I'm Cornelius Fichtner. Thanks for coming back.
This is the second of 3 interviews in which Dev Ramcharan from Arouca Career Coaching helps you optimize and boost your career. In this interview, we focus on the mid-career phase which starts at about 2 to 3 years into your life as a project manager. My recommendation is still the same: To get the most out of this, you should listen to all 3 interviews in sequence no matter if you are currently in your early career, mid-career or late career. And don’t forget to get Dev's Career Optimization Package from The PM Podcast™ website. Just go to www.pm-podcast.com/career and download the free version first.
In this interview, you learn that there is an early mid-career and also a late mid-career and that both require a different optimization approach. We talk about when and how often you should update the career optimization package and how often to perform a career risk assessment.
In this interview, Dev also recommends a couple of books and you can find links to these books in the show notes on the website.
Are you ready? Enjoy the interview.
Podcast Interview
Female voice: The Project Management Podcast’s feature Interview: Today with Dev Ramcharan, Founder and Lead Coach of Arouca Career Coaching.
Cornelius Fichtner:Hello, Dev! Welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™!
Dev Ramcharan: Great to be back. Thank you so much, Cornelius, for having me.
Cornelius Fichtner: So this is interview 2 in our series of 3 about career optimization. The first one, we talked about the benefits of a career in project management, some key factors that you have to have as a project manager that will help you in your career and we talked about the career optimization of our fictitious project manager in her or his early career. Oh yes and we also looked at the fabulous template that you have provided for us.
You sort of ended the early career by saying when do you actually, how can you figure out that you're ready to move on to the next level and this is what we're going to do now. We are going to move on to the next level which is the mid-career and the mid-career, you broke it up into early mid-career and late mid-career. Why did you break this up?
Dev Ramcharan: It's a good question. Cornelius, the reason is the mid career can be an extended period of time. When I look at my own career and the career of many of my colleagues through the years, being a project manager and a senior project manager and then moving to that early stage of management within project management, where you weren't just a virtual manager but an actual manager of resources who are accountable to you and who you had the accountability to develop and to do performance management for, that took a few years. You worked so hard in your early stage to get to the mid career. When you get there, you kind of build out in a way negatively and positively become comfortable, develop depth of proficiency and so on in that extended period of time. Does that answer the question?
Cornelius Fichtner: Absolutely! So let's begin with the early mid-career. I have been called project analyst, project coordinator so far. I have just been promoted. What am I now?
Dev Ramcharan: You're probably a project manager at this stage of the game. It's something you're really happy to tell your mother. She still doesn’t know what a project manager is. You know it's like telling your mother that you are a career coach. She thinks what kind of sport is that?
A project manager is something that's a little bit mysterious to moms and dads of a certain generation. You're a project manager or you're a senior project manager. There are certain things that you probably want to focus on in optimizing your career at this early mid-career stage. Once again, you would use the 2-year rule. Don't go beyond 2 years in a particular area as a project manager without doing a stock check.
Now let me just be very clear on that. That does not mean that in months 18 or 19, you start giving that desperate feeling that you need to move by month 24. That's not what it means. It means you take stock. You work out. At the 24-month mark or close to it, have I learned enough to move to another role or another organization or is it more than I can contribute and more that I can learn?
Now, I want you to frame in your mind in your career the following: You are not somebody who is at the mercy of your organization who sits there and says your organization is doing things to you or not doing things for you. You're not that. You're a business owner. You are partner in a partnership.
What's the business that you own? You own the business of you. If it's my friend, Cornelius, it's you own the business of Cornelius Inc. for instance. But you're in partnership with the organization that you work with. As long as that partnership is good for you both mutually, you stay in that partnership. When you are in the partnership, you give everything you have to give. It's not halfhearted. You do not stinge. You give everything that you can to the organization to make it a strong, as effective as it can be.
Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.
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