Organised? Single-minded? Fancy bossing people around for a living? Excellent. We may have just the career you’re looking for: project management. And with companies predicting an increase in project-based work in the next ten years it’s a role that could make you stand out as more talented than the best of the rest.

“Project management is about taking a clearly defined piece of work and ensuring that it is delivered on time and to budget,” says Anthony Dent, the head of utilities consulting at SD Partners, an IT and utilities consultancy. Nothing stands between a dedicated project manager and his or her goal, whether that’s installing a new computer system or turning a nice idea for a new product into fact. “If there’s one thing that I compliment project managers on – and criticise them for – it’s the attitude that their project is the most important thing in the world and that nothing else going on at that time will get in the way,” says Andy Moy, the IT resource and development manager for project management at Nationwide.

Enthusiasm, natural leadership and a willingness to get down and dirty are vital traits, says Susie Kay, head of professional development at the Association for Project Management (APM), the discipline’s professional body. “They are up to their necks in muck and bullets.” The right mix of detailed preparation, flexible on-the-ground creativity and a mind for multi-tasking helps too, says Caroline Spacey, a project manager at Atkins, a consultancy. “When you start you set a plan but projects never run to plan,” she says. It’s then a matter of assessing what needs to be done to ensure that the project is not threatened and making sure that team members – some of whom may be more senior than the project manager – the customer and stakeholders (those who will be affected by the project) are all kept up to date. “You have to like to talk to everyone at all levels,” she says.

Project managers work in a wide range of industries, from IT and construction to finance and pharma. Employers’ degree preferences and work experience requirements vary – for example, Dent looks for people with an IT and/or business background and a willingness to work in a hybrid role incorporating other tasks, Moy will take on new graduates with general degrees but tends to prefer those with several years of relevant experience while Spacey studied engineering at university – but however you begin you can expect to keep studying throughout your career. Earning professional qualifications and maintaining ongoing development are also a compulsory part of membership of the APM.

Project work can make gaining experience relatively smooth, Dent says; newbies can start out under the wing of an experienced manager or perhaps run a relatively small project before building up to handling million-pound deals. The majority of project managers earn between £30,000 and £60,000; more than a quarter of programme managers (the next rung up) earn at least £75,000 while nearly 20 per cent of top-level managers earn more than £100,000.

www.apm.org.uk

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