If 2013 sees numbers even close to those of last year, cleared service members interested in project management careers are looking at better than average job prospects.
Project management skills have consistently been ranking among the top 10 in-demand skills for more than a year. They’re the guys who juggle the key elements of any project – resources, time, money and scope of work. The need to hire them is a trend that’s likely to continue as businesses struggle to keep up with technology advances while trying to go global.
For veterans, this is extremely good news, according to Mark Langley, CEO of the Project Management Institute. Featured this week on Fox Business News, Langley took the time to specifically mention project management as a sound career path for transitioning service members. He says you may already have the experience. You just might know it by another name.
To explain, Langley said “mission-related” usually means “projectized”, with the government and the military both being “highly projectized environments.” In his view, project management is a logical transition.
Look at the fields in which the majority of project managers are being hired; IT and computer programming, business management, construction and engineering. Now look at the range of companies that hire them; corporations, government, defense contractors, technology firms and financial companies. These are sectors that either require a security clearance or covet the candidate who already holds one. Coupled with military skills and service, this puts veterans in great positions to compete.
Langley’s advice? Take a skill sets inventory. Translate those skills out of military acronyms and into corporate speak – words generally used in the job description anyway. And take a hard look at the companies and sectors that tend to work in a project related manner. He cites construction, aerospace, defense, infrastructure and management consulting as those heaviest in need. By the way, construction now tops the fastest-growing list.
Getting those jobs will mean crafting the art of translation. You’ve got the clearance. And if you’ve done it in the field, you have the skills to do it in the business sector. You’ll just have to “projectize” the lingo.
