What’s Next? Navigating Your Project Management Career

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Charting a smooth and successful path—it’s what project professionals do for teams and initiatives. But what about doing the same for their careers? How do you know when it’s time to make a move (and what move to make)? How can you ensure that you’ll succeed in a new role? We’ve got answers. Whether you’re aspiring to advance or just striving to improve, this episode is for you. 

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified^®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

Careers in project management aren’t always linear. Some people gradually advance from one position to the next, like moving from project manager to program manager. But others hop around—perhaps starting in a field other than project management, or taking their project expertise from one industry to another. Today we’re looking at how to manage your career—just like a project—from evaluating when and where to aim next, as well as which skills, experiences and certifications you might need to help you hit your professional targets.

There are lots of resources to help you chart your course, ranging from mentors and career coaches to tools such as PMI’s Career Navigator. You can take a self-assessment about your aspirations and formative experiences, get an action plan, and track your progress. You can check that out online at PMI.org/membership/career-navigator.

Today we’ll chat with a couple of project leaders who have made bold career moves. They’ll share their secrets to a successful transition. First up: Inês Machado Vaz, a portfolio manager at financial fraud detection software company Feedzai in Porto, Portugal. Inês tells Projectified’s Hannah LaBelle how she’s thought through her career moves, and how she’s used those transitions to identify ways in which she could grow and improve.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE
So Inês, your background is in engineering, but you kind of found your way to project management by helping one of your colleagues. What spurred you to continue in the project management profession?

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
I started as a programmer. But at the beginning, I must say that it was lonesome work, and that was something that I actually didn’t like. Fortunately, I did have a colleague that was needing some help, and he was asking me some questions just in terms of actual time management. At the time, I did not have any formal training in time management, for example. So, by helping this person, then I caught the eye of my line manager at the time, Nuno, and he did say that he needed an extra hand in a project. And so he decided to take a chance on me.

Initially, I worked 50/50 as a programmer and then as a project manager as well. What I loved in project management, coming into it, was the fact that I could have conversations with people of different backgrounds, different teams, that I could always be learning something different every single day. I didn’t feel alone anymore, and I gained a sense of purpose in my role in the company. Fortunately, I think he saw the spark, and he decided to take a risk and make me a project manager full time. And I did make sure that I did not waste that chance.

HANNAH LABELLE
That’s great. So you became a project manager when you worked at Bosch. You made a few career moves while you were there—making that initial jump from engineer to project manager and then becoming an industrialization project manager. How did you decide when it was time to take a new position? 

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
It was really important for me to have a mindset of looking for windows whenever I saw closed doors. Actually, some of those transitions I could not control. For example, for my first transition to the second transition, the company had an internal restructuring, and that meant that I had to be let go. And this was something that was really impactful for me because regardless of my good work at the time and even the relationships that I had with everybody, the good feedback that I got from my work, that was completely irrelevant for my change. This was something that really took a toll on me. But I do like to look at it as a good nudge, a positive nudge that I had to go for my next opportunity. And there I actually had the chance to be even more mature and to face even more challenges that I actually at the time did not think that I was able to handle. This was very positive for me.

HANNAH LABELLE
These career moves also included a sector switch while you were at Bosch. Was this a planned move? Did you talk with mentors or colleagues to help you decide if you were ready for this change?

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
I felt that I was already too much in a box. Saying that, this was in the same company, even though it was two different opportunities, two different sectors. And so I wanted a change.

From my perspective, it was really important for me to not be as comfortable as I was—it was really important to just have a go at something different. That is why I wanted to focus more on the service sector. Here it was really important for me to speak to my line managers. Fortunately, I have to say that the managers that I had along the way played a pivotal role in my changes. They were always very supportive, regardless if it was my choice or if it was due to external factors. I always had someone that tried to mentor me as best as possible to face whichever situation I was looking at. To me, it was life-changing, knowing that I had someone with which I could have that level of trust whenever I was in a different situation. And I do consider myself lucky. I have other colleagues, other project manager friends that do not have that same feedback in terms of direct managers or even the opportunity to have a mentor to guide them. So I see this as something that was really key during my transitions.

HANNAH LABELLE
Was there ever a time when you tried to take on a new role and it didn’t work out? What did you learn from that experience?

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
A couple of years ago, I decided to proactively pursue a portfolio management role in another company. At the time, I had an image of myself that I was clearly better prepared than everybody else around me.

And reality just came in, came rushing in. This was very humbling for me because during that process, I was faced with my mirror. I was seeing, “Okay, you thought you were great dealing with these kinds of clients. You aren’t. Okay, you thought you were great at budget managing. You aren’t. You thought you were the master of Gantt charts. You aren’t.” I’m giving these little examples, but it was the humbling experience that I needed to just keep my head down and continue working. Because I thought that I was already in a stage where I could perform that transition, but I wasn’t ready.

It was good for me. It was good for me to just continue on the work, to focus on listening even more, to pursue other types of training that I wasn’t considering at the time. For example, one of the trainings that I decided to pursue was strategy. It wasn’t really in my radar to begin with. And then I saw that having a different perspective, learning from other people that did not have a project management background per se, that gave me fresh eyes to deal with other problems and projects with which I was dealing with at the time.

HANNAH LABELLE
I think that’s really relatable—thinking that we’re ready for a move, then realizing that we still have some things to work on. With that, I want to talk more about upskilling. Was there another time when you found you needed to work on some specific skills to move your career forward? How did you go about developing those? 

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
I always tried to get feedback from the people around me. How is this connected? One of the feedbacks that I got was the fact that I was a little bit harsh whenever giving feedback or that I was too straight to the point, and that this wasn’t coming across as something positive for several colleagues of mine. Proactively, I decided to look for trainings where I could focus on negotiation, communication, just to be more at ease in dealing with different personalities. And this was one of the first things that was also positive for my growth, let’s say, in more of a soft skill approach.

Whenever I went for hard skills, I actually reached out to other colleagues that were a little bit ahead of me in terms of career path and asked them, “Okay, what did you do?” Or “What would have you done differently if you were in my shoes right now?” And here it was pivotal to go for the PMI certification. PMP^® [Project Management Professional^®] preparation was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, [one of the] more challenging things. At the time, my mother was at the hospital. And so in terms of managing your own feelings, which also affect the way that you work, the way that you study, the way that you prepare for an exam like that, for me, it was really important. I feel really proud to be able to overcome something while under really harsh and heavy circumstances. Fortunately, everything went well. My mother’s fine. I passed the exam, and I was really happy to be able to train myself to control myself under those harsh expectations, harsh environment.

The fact that I had to prepare in terms of soft skills due to feedback from my colleagues and even from some clients, the fact that I had the possibility to invest in hard skills through the PMP certification, that all prepared me in terms of mental toughness and grit to strive in a portfolio manager role in which I am currently in Feedzai.

HANNAH LABELLE
As we think about career transitions, what’s one thing that you know now that you wish you would’ve known when taking on a new role?

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
One thing I would say is that we shouldn’t be shy when asking for help. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. The fact that you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position, showing to someone, “Okay, this is something which I need help [with],” or “I don’t have any kind of visibility or I don’t have any kind of experience.” This is not a bad thing. A bad thing is continuing to work in our ignorance. So the thing that I do think is really important is for us to check ourselves, to check which are our blind spots. Even though I always enjoyed working with people, I never liked asking for help. And looking back, I can see that really slowed me down in so many situations unnecessarily. People are usually very willing to help. So if I could say something to a person starting out, I would say, don’t be afraid to seem foolish because there are no questions that are foolish. Foolish is not asking questions whenever you have them. It’s really important to gain clarity, and that’s good for our clients, for our team, and for ourselves.

HANNAH LABELLE
Inês, we’ve covered a lot in this interview. Is there anything that we haven’t discussed that is important to mention?

INÊS MACHADO VAZ
Yes. I think that regardless if we’re pursuing a transition or not, it’s really important that we do not forget to invest in ourselves. Meaning, pursue that certification, pursue that training. Even if you see that it’s not going to have a direct impact in the next two to three months or even the next two to three quarters, it could have an impact on your next opportunity. Luck comes to few, but you have to be ready for those lucky opportunities that arise. And I do think that the fact that I transitioned to a portfolio manager role was due to the fact that I was continuously preparing myself for a role that I knew that eventually I would want to pursue. And it came a little bit earlier than I expected, actually. However, I had already prepared in terms of strategy trainings, negotiation trainings, trying to understand what’s happening in the actual industry, and trying to read more and to discuss with peers that also have a thirst for knowledge in a sense. And try to understand what is happening and what will be the next changes. We need to prepare ourselves for whenever those lucky opportunities arise. If we are not prepared, those opportunities will not materialize.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Some job moves are more challenging than others, such as when you’re making a global move or changing industries. Stalin Ramirez Valenzuela has done both. He’s an executive portfolio manager in the innovation space at Bayer Crop Science in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States. I asked Stalin to share what he has learned about evaluating and making the most of potential career opportunities.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Stalin, let’s begin with how you think about career moves generally. Do you wait for frustration to arise, or do you actively look for your next challenge even while you’re happy in your position? What’s your North Star in terms of figuring out which new roles to pursue and also when to do so?

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
When I think of transition, the first thing that comes to my mind [is] time. What is the right time to make a move from one state to a new state? And from that perspective, I have transitioned in the past from one role to a different role. And also, I had the great opportunity in my career to transition from one industry to another industry, which is really [exciting], because when you transition from one industry to another, you can bring the learnings from a successful career from a particular industry and implement those learnings in the new industry.

At the beginning of my career, I just wanted to learn like any young professional. And I was hungry for knowledge and looking for new experiences. And I was full of ideas and [had] a big appetite for success. Today, I’m still hungry for knowledge, but I’m more interested in learning from people and looking forward to build the right network according to my career path. And when I think about transition, I always put [it] into perspective—as a project, program and portfolio manager—the risks associated with a transition. Every career move [has] a risk, but also a reward. And as a project, program and portfolio manager, we are experts in that area. So when I’m considering a transition, I try to apply a transition plan, which is part of having the right questions. Consider what are the variables and the key drivers for doing that career move. And understanding the reward.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
You mentioned you made an industry-to-industry move. What does that look like? Give me a sense of that risk register when you’re making a jump from telecom into healthcare.

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
The telecommunication industry was where I started. It gave me a great sense of rigid and traditional set of knowledge. Because the telecommunication industry, it’s driven by technology. There was a time that certain opportunities came up in the healthcare industry when I moved from the Caribbean to California. There was a great, great opportunity. Something that I needed to do was to adapt to the new stakeholders. In one aspect, in one industry, I was dealing with consumer customers. But on the other side, we were dealing with patients, right? And we were dealing with health. The levels of quality and satisfaction are different, and I needed to update to the common language of that industry. I needed to update to the new standards, and I needed to update myself also to the new expectations from those stakeholders. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT
So with that move, you didn’t just switch industries—you also moved to a new country. Tell me about that side of the transition, going from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. What kind of challenges or change did that bring? 

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
For me, in particular, in the professional side it was not that challenging at all because I happened to work for an American company, Verizon. The standards in the industry are pretty much the same when you deal with telecommunication. That was great for me.

I would say the part that definitely I needed to adapt was the cultural shift. I was very fortunate to belong to a network of professionals that were in similar situations. They were expatriates from different countries: people from Brazil, Canada, Switzerland. And we built a great network of professionals where we share different perspectives on how to develop ourselves and incorporate into the job market. And we realized in that network that we have a lot of skills, and we have a lot of strengths, and we learn from each other how to promote those into the job market. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT
What’s an example of a substantial challenge or two that you’ve had to overcome in the midst of these job changes? What’s one that you saw coming, and what’s one that you didn’t? 

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
When I transitioned to a big project in California, specifically for the energy industry, we [had] the responsibility to build a smart city within the telecommunication framework. I was new to the market. I was very new, but I [had] great experience in the industry. So, this was a new territory to me. But once I started interacting with the team, a great group of professionals, I started experiencing, I would say, a language barrier. That was one thing. The other one was the engagement with the team, and the other one was the level of responsibility of each of the roles that we are going to deal with.

At some point, I [started] gaining different types of responsibility based on the outcome and the successful implementation that we had. One of the challenges basically was time management, because I was originally hired for one particular role, but I was assigned more. And for me, it was very challenging to deal with the time and not being able to say no. But I took it as a challenge to demonstrate [to] myself I can balance the capacity, based on my capabilities. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT
I want to expand on this example of thriving in one role, then getting a new opportunity with more responsibility and higher expectations. How do you think about that: when an unexpected but awesome opportunity comes up, and you’re excited about the role, but you also have to make sure that not just your skills, but also all the circumstances around you are setting you up for success? 

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
Something that I will tell myself is speak up, right? [Just] because you’re taking more responsibility does not mean you cannot communicate back to stakeholders and say, “Hey, I have this situation,” and open yourself for a brainstorming session with them and try to come up with some ideas on how to maximize the level of responsibility and the outcome that they are expecting. That is something that I do these days. Just be transparent with your stakeholders, be transparent with your senior managers and senior leader. And just talk about balancing those requirements with your capability or the resources that you have at the moment. I think that it would be very beneficial for both sides to be efficient and effective.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Another part of moving jobs is what you bring to your new role—I imagine confidence, experience and some sense of how things should be done. Yet, potentially, you’re working with a new team. There’s a lot of value in listening and learning, taking in the culture of that team and how they’re comfortable working. So how do you work out the balance of bringing your own sense of good practices to a new position while also being ready to discover new things?

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
As a project management professional, these days, we need to be willing and able to have multiple ways of workings, either if it is agile at scale, either if it’s lean, or if it is traditional, waterfall. It will be key to be able to merge as a key member with the team, being able to work as a leader coach. To be able to guide them when it’s needed, but also give them the flexibility to make the right decisions of the work that they are going to do and collaborate. So it’s all about doing the right decision as a collective team to maximize the time that we need to deliver those products or services, right? So, how can we, as a team, have a winning situation of improving the ways of working and delivering the product faster? And that means that we are also going to experience some failures. We’re going to experience some roadblocks. You need to be able to guide the team to remove those blocks and also reflect on “How can we improve as we go?”

STEVE HENDERSHOT
How would you suggest that a listener go about cultivating the self-awareness and the confidence not just to succeed in a role, but to be able to accurately assess their readiness to make a transition?

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
When we talk about confidence, we need to think about how we can remove fear. Because fear is on the opposite side of having a confident mindset. So I think the first thing that comes to my mind, it’s to understand what the fears are, in terms of technical or emotional. From that perspective, try to eliminate those blockers from your mindset. Understand that fear will limit your potential. What is the goal, and what is your aspiration, in terms of skill set or character that you want to develop? What is the mindset that you need to get to the next level? And understanding that will help you a lot. 

You need to invest time and effort to reach the next level. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a journey. You need to have a dream, and you have to have a plan to execute that dream. Break down those goals into manageable tasks and activities on [a] daily basis. If you have a goal that you want to achieve in the next three months, or 90 days, you just need to have an actionable plan on a daily basis on how to achieve those objectives. Try to be able to define what success looks like at the end of the three months, and try to be able to measure those little gains as you go. But it’s key to have a plan. It’s key to break down into manageable tasks. And it’s key to execute it with self-discipline and with the right effort every day.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
As we wrap up here, let’s take a look back at your career. What’s something that you know now that you wish you could have known earlier when taking on a new role?

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
Just be yourself and try to invest the time and effort to face any challenges in the organization. Another thing is try to do great networking. Because something that I learned along my career is that, as a project, program and portfolio manager, you will learn from others. You will learn from listening instead of talking. Sometimes, as a project manager, we need to facilitate a lot of workshops and meetings, and we are always talking and talking. But we learn a lot when we listen to others, when you listen [to] your stakeholders, when you listen [to] your customers, when you listen [to] the team. And, also, no matter at what point in your career you are, be coachable, because at any point, we still need to keep learning. We need to keep improving [ourselves]. And we need to keep growing all the time.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Stalin, thank you so much. This has been great.

STALIN RAMIREZ VALENZUELA
My pleasure. And thank you for this great invitation. And thank you so much to this fantastic team.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
And thank you for listening to Projectified^®. If you like what you heard, you can listen to more episodes on your preferred podcast platform or visit PMI.org/podcast. And please subscribe to the show and leave a rating or review—it’s always great to hear from you. Hope you can join us next episode!