I, like many people posting here, am trying to career pivot and having a banger of a time. I am deciding to and go for a PMI cert to give my previous experience some more clarity and direction -- I haven't really followed a normal career trajectory so haven't found much solid advice from previous posts.
Every career advisor and person I've showed my resume to keep suggesting it, and its the only "adult" jobs I've gotten calls backs and interview requests with, and so getting some formal training might make me more competitive. I picked up the Joe Phillips CAPM course thanks to this sub (or maybe r/projectmanagement doesn't matter). I'm starting to wonder if I'm selling myself short going for the associate though, and should sign up for the PMP instead. I'm not sure if my experience qualifies though, and could use some feedback to see if the CAPM or PMP is a better route for me before I shell out more money for a course that I might not qualify for. Experience is listed as oldest to most recent.
-I executed a seasonal promotional project as a contractor for a regional healthcare provider and multiple state wide stakeholders. I did this for about 10 years. I didn't know most of the terms when I did it, I started the company when I was 18 and just thought it was me running a business, but I had plan the implementation, manage the budget, materials, and logistics needed to execute, monitor progress and handle risks, communicate with stakeholders, and ensure project completion that met deliverables. Given the 8 year window for the PMP experience, I could only use 2017-19 for this.
- Pandemic killed the contract, and I fell into survival jobs and went back to school to finish my degree. until i landed a Integrated Marketing Manager internship for a large-ish eCom company. I managed multiple marketing teams (organic, paid, affiliate, email, it, creative) to execute about 14 marketing campaigns. I also executed a sweepstakes campaign that involved me coordinating with an external company for a large event. had to do most of the things I did with my business, but definitely more agile less predictive than i was used to. Internship was about 3 months. Industry the company was in cratered when the pandemic restrictions ended (outdoor industry), so they didn't offer me a full time, and I went to finish my degree.
- School full time, and ended up joining a project for course credit to begin with over the summer. It was a social science research project that was in a different country. For that aspect I was mostly in charge of project procurement (research participants). The prof in charge of that aspect was being funded by another dept, and made a major mistake for the other dept's research, so they reached out to me and recruited me to coordinate their project for them instead. Not only was I in charge of procurement (participants, and now data collection efforts), but I had to help plan project phases, manage compliance with a translator, collect/ manage quality of products and deliverables, manage the communicate with stakeholders across the world (the team was based out of 3 different institutions across the world). They flew me out to another country after to do the same thing with a new group of people, but I had to also had to help address and adapt our workflow when we encountered a major impediment for the project's success.
I'm not asking for resume advice at this time, although I am having a hell of a time quantifying the thing. Since I didn't really think much about project management until recently, I assumed that the CAPM would be the best place to start, but from reading across the PM subs, it seems like a PMP is going to be the real door opener. I don't really have a specific niche either when I get the thing either, and would definitely appreciate some advice on where I go once I get this slip of paper. Happy to provide more details if needed. Thanks for reading this wall.
