The Digital Project Manager

The Retro: Designing Your PM Career for More Pay and Purpose

• Galen Low and Kelsey Alpaio

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Navigating a career in project management today means wrestling with more than just Gantt charts and stakeholder standups—it means making high-stakes decisions about your salary, your specialization, and what brings you meaning at work. In this panel episode, Kelsey Alpaio brings together PM thought leaders Ben Chan, Mackenzie Dysart, and Elizabeth Harrin for a candid conversation on how to design your PM career with both pay and purpose in mind.

Together, they unpack fresh data from DPM’s 2025 Salary Guide and tackle some of the most pressing questions PMs are facing right now: Should you specialize or stay a generalist? When do certifications actually help? Is it ever too late to take control of your career? And how do you make confident moves when AI and automation are reshaping the role in real time? This is a jam-packed episode full of tactical tools, honest reflections, and grounded advice for anyone looking to take the reins of their project career.

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Kelsey Alpaio:

My name is Kelsey Alpaio, I’m the Executive Editor for The Digital Project Manager. And today's session will focus on Designing Your PM Career for More Pay and Purpose, and we'll be speaking with some of the top voices and thought leaders in this space. We have Ben Chan. Ben is a project leadership coach, speaker, and facilitator who's helped hundreds of project managers lead with confidence and purpose. With over 15 years of experience across industries and multi-million dollar projects, he brings a practical, humorous approach to project leadership that's earned him a spot as one of LinkedIn's top 3 PM creators in Canada. He's also the host of the podcast, the Organized Chaos Café. We also have Mackenzie Dysart, a PMP and CSM certified Project Manager with over a decade of experience. She's a bit of a unicorn as she actually chose to be a PM as a career path. And she is currently a Delivery Principal for Thoughtworks leading one of the largest accounts in the Americas. And we have Elizabeth Harrin, an award-winning blogger, author, and speaker with 20 plus years of project management experience across IT, finance and healthcare. Her book Managing Multiple Projects was a 2023 Business Book Awards finalist. She speaks globally on stakeholder engagement, careers, and productivity. And you can learn more about her work at rebelsguidetopm.com. All of us, at some point in our careers have probably asked ourselves some version of the question, "Am I on the right path?" Maybe you've thought about switching industries, maybe you've considered getting certified, or maybe you've even considered moving cities to help you earn a higher salary. So I wanna get into some data at the top here. For example, according to our 2025 Salary Guide, PMs in software and IT are making about$23,000 more than PMs in Media, Marketing, and Advertising. In the US, certified PMs are earning $13,000 more than their uncertified peers. And if you lived in New Jersey, for example, you would be among the highest paid PMs in the US. So some of those moves could help you earn more, but that's not an easy decision to make to change your career path. And with the role of project management evolving so fast, it's getting harder to figure out where to focus. Do you specialize? Do you stay a generalist? Do you chase titles? Or do you chase meaning and purpose? That's what we're diving into today, how to design a career that works for you, one that grows your paycheck, but also your purpose. Let's start with the big picture here. I threw out a lot of stats there from our 2025 Salary Guide that showed that PMs are earning significantly more depending on their industry, certifications, and location. I'd love to hear what our panelists have to think about some of this data. So what stands out to all of you? Elizabeth, do you wanna start us off?

Elizabeth Harrin:

Yeah. I look through the data and it's really interesting to see the variability within the project profession. Entry level jobs, there's very senior jobs. There's space for everybody in lots of different industries. But I think that makes it harder for us to plan our careers purposefully, potentially.'cause you've got to take into effect so many different categories like geography, what benefits come with the job, the gender pay gap. All of those things can really influence your salary.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, absolutely. Mackenzie, what were some of your initial reactions to this data?

Mackenzie Dysart:

You and I have had separate chats about this and I went deep on it. If you read the review, lots of quotes from me, so you'll see my face. I have feelings, but I think the most interesting piece is of course, gender pay gap. I always find that really fascinating, but also to me, it doesn't surprise me that jersey's high paid because Jersey very close to New York, cheaper to live. People are trying to figure out how best to optimize their money. And I think given the state of the economics globally, we've all kind of seen a bit of a tightening of belts. And so I'm not surprised, but I do know that there's ways to make it work for you. And I think the more we talk about salaries, the more we talk about these things, the more equality and equity there will be, and we can just, these conversations are important for everybody's growth.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, definitely. Go check out the guide. Lots of great quotes from Mackenzie in there. And Ben, what are your initial reactions to this data?

Ben Chan:

Yeah. I think right now especially, we're seeing a lot of volatility in the market and all sorts of different industries that we've never expected. Overall, I'm thinking, man, I got, we gotta work on Canada's salary. That's what I'm thinking. But I think at the same time there's the variability in terms of the different industries is we're seeing a rise of a lot of different industries that didn't exist a long time ago. We heard about how meta poached, I think. One of the AI engineers for a huge sum of money. I'm probably misquoting it, but I thought it was something in the range of like $200 million. And so there's all these other rising industries, while we're probably seeing some other ones start to go and collapse, right? Like in Canada, we've had one of our biggest retailers of Hudson Bay Company where they've collapsed and they used to have a huge footprint in so many different areas. And so these changing times reflect how I think. Even though we might have an average, I'd be very interested in seeing what is the high and the low points, what is that range looking like? And the numbers behind those ones as well. It's where statisticians and things dive into it and you can pull out some really interesting conclusions.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. We are gonna talk a lot about salary today. As we unpack the report, but I do want to start by acknowledging that it's not all just about the money, and I get it that it can feel like a hard thing to say right now given the economic climate, but the reality is that we spend a huge part of our lives at work and it's fair to want more than just a paycheck. So how should we be thinking about balancing those two pillars of pay and purpose and. When you're facing a tough career decision, how do you weigh one against the other? Mackenzie, do you wanna get us started with this one?

Mackenzie Dysart:

Absolutely. Balancing this purpose is such a great word because it's not just necessarily your values or are you just happy at work? Is it making you feel fulfilled, and that is a piece that makes the working easier and more enjoyable. I am a big proponent of trying to do work for companies that you work for, if you can. I had the opportunity to work for an agency that was primarily supporting nonprofits, and that was a really great space to be for a while, but at some point the work wasn't as fulfilling, so I needed to make a change. Now I work with a lot more for-profits. My client is a for-profit organization, but I like their culture and what they stand for, and if you can find places that align with what's important to you on top of a salary, that makes sense. That's really important. So some of the areas that I think I look for when I am looking at salaries considering the next role, is what is the total compensation? And I come at it from a Canadian lens. So healthcare, I know that's a benefit for our folks in the US. For us, it's more like what are those extended benefits look like? Am I gonna get additional massage, physio mental health coverage? My company right now has a great extra bonus for mental health coverage. Is it enough? It's never enough.'cause mental health care is expensive. But we have that extra bonus. And then what are the other amenities? Is there a flexible work schedule? Do you have to be in the office all the time? If you are in an in-office place, is there still the flexibility to work from home if you've got things going on in your life because there are family, there are other needs around your life. And if you can have that work life balance in a sense of, yes, I'm usually in the office Tuesday to Thursday, but this week I've got a plumber coming by on Wednesday. I need to work from home. And that not being an issue and that just being par for the course. That's really important. Looking at how the policies that are available. Is parental leave available to both genders? Is it available to people who are looking to adopt as well? Like how does that all factor in? And anything else that's really important to you? Are there days for volunteering? Is there professional development, budget available to you? All of these little pieces that can actually make your work life a little bit better. We have some great rituals at ThoughtWorks that pertain to just building community. It's called Gather. So every once a month we have a thing in our office in Toronto, but we also allow it at hubs around Canada so that people can get together and just have a meal, share a drink, share a moment together to build that connection so that you're. You've got a little bit more purpose and alignment with the people that you're working with, and those pieces of community and team building can be really important. I'm a really social person, so for me those are really important. But if you're someone who really doesn't care to meet the people that you're working with, you just wanna get your job done, do the thing. Also totally realistic. Finding a place that aligns with that is also really good. So it's. Doing the research and understanding all the different aspects of what makes you happy in your day to day, and finding a way for that to fit together.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, absolutely. I love thinking about it from the benefits perspective too, where those things add up to how you feel at work, even if you aren't as connected to the work itself. So that's a really interesting way to look at things. And I had the same reaction as Crystal, which is. Should I just move to Canada? Like when I found out some of you have like massages that are covered in your health insurance, I was like, maybe I should move to Canada. But yeah. Elizabeth, how would you describe balancing that pay and purpose aspect when career planning?

Elizabeth Harrin:

I think it's easier to get the balance when you've already got the base pay that supports the cost of living and the lifestyle that you want. It's better if you can find an industry that supports your values as well. So I moved from financial services to healthcare. I didn't really know what I was getting into when I moved into healthcare, but in financial services, in insurance, we sell products and you make money when people don't use them. And in healthcare people on their worst days. And projects that I do as a project manager help our clinical staff deliver the best possible patient care. So there's a very different touchpoint with the end result of the projects that we're working on. And I felt so much more fulfilled in healthcare. I didn't take the job in healthcare 'cause I thought it aligned to my values, but I ended up there and actually it was a really good move for me 'cause it really felt like it was a much better fit. And the job has purpose, but it's very easy to feel worthy and say it's all great about values. If you're being paid enough to feed your kids and pay for childcare and do that, so that does have to be a bit of a balance. Working out how much do you need to live? What's your basic, what do you want to be paying into your pension? What do you need for your healthcare if you don't get massages included, but you want to have one every month, and then you can start to think, okay, so am I going into an industry where it's going to be more highly paid and it's still going to meet my personal goals and my values?

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. And Ben, I was wondering if you could chime in with this next question, which is, are there, tools, exercises, frameworks that you've used or that you use with your clients that can help PMs clarify, what they want from their career? What are the things that matter to them? How do you make these tough decisions? What are your thoughts around that?

Ben Chan:

Sure. No, that's a great question.'cause I think. When we try and process it in our head, it can be very difficult. We have all these numbers and things, and you're like maybe this one's better than this one. And so one tool I love being able to use is something called a decision wheel, right? And so pay and purpose can be some parts of that decision, wheel or pie, whatever you want to go and call it, right? But then it's looking and understanding what are all the other factors that are contributing to you making a decision. So whether this is about your career or anything else, you can use this, but specifically for a career decision, it could be, again, the pieces of remote work of benefits and all of those start to add into pieces of the pie, right? Of pay and purpose and adding those ones on. And then you have to go through and rank them and say, which ones are most important to you? Is it pay? Is it culture? Is it perhaps the location? How far it is from your house? All of those things have. Different impacts on you, and you rank all of them. Now as you come forward with other options that come up, say there's a career decision to make. Do I leave to this other one or do I stay at this one? Then you go ahead and rank them, go through those ones, and it then becomes just a simple, almost multiplication exercise to go and say out 10 pay is a 10, and this one ranked as a three, so it's 30 points. And then you can actually see how each of those different pieces of the pie, you can actually even color it in. And see how it all looks. So you can do almost like a graphical view as to what your decision looks like, and you'd be actually surprised of how sometimes you might overran something or maybe you actually find your priorities are different than what you thought it was. Once you see those decisions coming out, and it's always good to make sure as well to consider your status quo of what if I just stayed where I am right now? Maybe that's the best decision as well. You don't have to make a decision. So the decision wheel tool is something that I like to go and use to help better define and quantify what some of these intangibles are.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, absolutely. Mackenzie or Elizabeth, do you have any other like frames or tools that you've used in the past to help you make these sorts of decisions?

Mackenzie Dysart:

I went through this exercise similar to what Ben mentioned, but actually I went through it with my therapist. And it can be done. This exercise, it's like a values waiting situation where it was just cards of what values mattered the most to me, and some of them would be like honesty versus transparency or honesty versus someone showing up on time. It was an exercise that we would go through the cards and it was, which one's the most important? And I had to pick one every single time, and it narrowed you down to all of a sudden I had this top 10 list of core values that were really important to me in the workplace. And that allowed me to sit and understand why I was feeling the way that I was feeling at a job in my past. And it had a huge aspect to do with the fact that there was. Misalignment with my moral values and what was happening. And there's a term that kind of goes around in the industry called moral injury. It's a little bit different than burnout in the sense of it's when you and your company aren't jiving, they aren't matching for whatever reason. And that's where I was in a place of, but it took me, going through this exercise to truly understand honesty is not what isn't to me as important as transparency. Just being upfront that, Hey, I can't tell you this, but this is going on. Or yes, I understand. But X and just giving that extra information, that context is really important to me as a person, as an employee. So that allowed me to understand, you know what, this is time where status quo doesn't work for me anymore. I need to start looking for the next thing because this is just, I can't get out of this in this current role because of the misalignment and values, and I think. That helped me really make decisions.'cause otherwise I'm very bad at just giving everything the same or like equally high or equally low measurements on some of those other scaling things. So this really forced decisions and I found it exceptionally helpful. I'm sure there are ways you can do this online. There's probably online tools that I don't know about, but highly recommend for all aspects of your life.

Elizabeth Harrin:

We did something similar at work quite a few years ago now, and it was like a questionnaire. You tick various different options and then it gave you your motivating factors and working in healthcare, we went around the room and everyone was like, oh, I'm motivated by caring. I'm motivated by doing a great job. And mine was, I'm motivated by money. I think if you, whatever you do, whatever exercise you do, you have to think is probably just a contextually driven position at any one moment in time, because I reckon if I did that now. Probably would have different values. I'm at a different place in my life and maybe my motivating factors would be more like a flexible working and being able to be at home with the kids and stuff like that in a way that they weren't in my early thirties. So I think just bear in mind that if you are going to use these kind of tools that they don't define you in just kind of one position, you could probably will end up finding that while your core values that you'd like to think will stay the same, maybe there'll be a little bit of movement as you grow into your career in some way.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. I think that's a great point. The next question I have here is for accidental PMs, so I forget Mackenzie, I know we said you intentionally chose the PM path. Elizabeth and Ben, would you consider yourself accidental PMs or is this the career path that you chose for yourself?

Elizabeth Harrin:

This is the career path that I chose for myself. Admittedly, being at university, I didn't even know that project management was a job. As soon as I got into the workplace, quickly identified that this was a job and other people were doing it. Something that I felt like I wanted to do.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Ben, what about you?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, for me, I would classify myself as an accidental pm I think I had my first exposure of project management in university as part of my computer engineering degree. I probably fell asleep through half of the classes, so it's ironic that I'm, now deeply into that area. And it came along with the job when I was doing consulting. To better manage delivery, right? Delivery of the value that we're expecting out of the different engagements that we're having, and making sure things get done on time. And I'll tell you that a lot of the consulting companies, when they go in there, sometimes they don't necessarily have that as top of mind, right? If you have to extend the contract or whatnot. That might actually be good for them yeah.

Kelsey Alpaio:

This next question here is, we hear a lot from our community I didn't really plan this path, I just ended up here. So what advice do you have for PMs who feel like they've drifted in their careers and kinda wanna take back that wheel? Ben, do you wanna start us off since you, you accidentally became a PM.

Ben Chan:

Yeah, I think part of it is, these are gonna sound a little bit fluffy answers, but it's like you have to really understand yourself of what do you want? And the key question in asking yourself is, what do you want? Do you want to be a pm? And that also means that if you want to take control of that wheel, you have to really be able to understand where do you want to go and drive? Then when I talk to people and they're leaving their jobs, a lot of them are running away from their job. They know what they don't like, but what are you running towards? That's usually the harder answer that people aren't able to answer because they're just like I just don't want to do what I'm doing right now. I don't like where I'm at. Great, so where do you want to go? And that becomes a lot deeper introspection to understand again, what are your values? What are the things that you do value? What do you want to go and strive towards? And if you're missing that compass, and I'm guilty of that as well, right? I was bouncing around from different companies. I was spending my time checking off the boxes of what I didn't like, but not towards what I wanted to strive towards. And honestly, like I am over 40. I probably didn't figure this out until maybe five years ago, so it's never too late. You can always go and do it, but it is a long journey.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, absolutely. I love that kind of perspective of people running away from their jobs and what are you running towards? I think that's such a. I feel like it's a realization probably people will have if they're job hunting or looking for something new is not realizing that's the reaction that they're having. But yeah, thank you. And I think that does lead us into. Kind of the second part today, which is I wanna get into some of the ways that PMs can take control of their career paths and start to make those decisions for themselves. So of course, one option is shifting industries or choosing to specialize in a specific area. Both of those things can open doors, but they also do come with trade-offs. I think particularly right now, there's a lot of buzz around things like technical PMs, ai literate PMs. So what do you think about these paths and how do you think about the trade-offs between specializing versus staying more of a generalist? Mackenzie, do you wanna get us started with this one?

Mackenzie Dysart:

Yeah, absolutely. I am a bit of a generalist. I don't think I've truly specialized. I hop around all the time. For example, right now I'm running privacy programs, which. Now I'm considered a privacy expert within my client, which is hilarious because I work with the lawyers all the time. I've been doing it about a year and I've learned a lot of really neat stuff. But I'm also running the developer experience team now for their platform. And I'm learning all about Kubernetes costs and a bunch of things I've never done before, but it's a team. I can help them organize and deliver and plan, and that is my skillset as a general come in and help and deliver. And that piece to me, I, this makes me an absolute generalist. I have worked across industries, I've worked finance. I'm working in tech right now. I worked for a nonprofit agency where I did every, and it was mostly websites supporting healthcare, a bunch of nonprofits. So I've done a little bit of everything. So I am truly a generalist and I think there's aspects to it that make me really helpful, but there are a lot of rules and especially job descriptions that you will see that are very specific and looking for specialists. I'm gonna hit on the e-commerce businesses right now. They are always looking for someone who's already got five to 10 years of e-comm experience. Doesn't matter if. It's an entry level job, but they want people who have only ever worked in e-comm before. And so there are limitations to being a generalist, just like there's opportunity and I think it's. It's one of those things where it's it's really nice 'cause I have hopped industries. It gives me a lot more flexibility for which kind of company I work for. I work in consulting right now, so it makes it also quite easy for us as consultants to staff me to different clients because I haven't gone too deep in any vertical. But at the same time, there are certain industries that aren't gonna want me there. For example, healthcare, because I don't have that healthcare background, they don't wanna have to bring me up to speed necessarily, and that's not necessarily accurate. But there is that fear of having to catch you up that if you can't prove that you are a fast learner or that you can grasp and apply those general practices in a very effective way, some of those hiring managers may not see it right away. And that's the trade off that I think comes into play a lot.

Kelsey Alpaio:

When you say ecomm, do you mean on the tech side or the content side?

Mackenzie Dysart:

I was thinking mostly the like. Retail spaces that have their own internal teams. So it could be either side, honestly, places like Lululemon or Nicks or those kind of companies where they have a technical platform where they will have in-house teams who are building their websites, building their backends, building all of that, payment processing and all of those things in-house. Also the side that's doing content management that front as well. But so either side of the e-comm space. Those companies who have their in-house e-commerce solution and are considering it that way. That was what I had top of mind.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Elizabeth, how do you think about all of this? You have experience in several different industries. How are you thinking about specialization right now?

Elizabeth Harrin:

I still consider myself to be a generalist because like mackenzie, I've done business change projects, data protection projects, technology process improvement, all kinds of variety of things. But I would struggle if you said, okay, off you go build a car park or work in heavy engineering work in space, work in oil and gas, that they are too different from my area of generalism. But I also think that it's, as you get more senior, you have to be more generalist. So if you want to start out specializing, great. But if you want to become a program manager, or if you want to lead a team, you've got to also be able to demonstrate that you've got a wide pool of interpersonal skills, management skills leadership at a different level because you. You are less in the detail, the more senior you get. So that's worth bearing in mind if you are thinking about your three-year plan or your five-year plan about where it is that you want to end up.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. I do think the other trend we're seeing is that despite pay staying pretty flat, PMs today are expected to wear more hats than ever and really be generalists and know everything. Ben, can you chime in here? What's your take on how the PM role is evolving and how that should impact career planning moving forward?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, that's an interesting question because I think sometimes it depends on who's actually doing the hiring and what their thoughts are of what the PM role is, right? There's so many job postings that I see and I'm looking at it and going, that doesn't look like a PM role. They have you going down the weeds and doing coding and all these things, and I'm like, I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. So some of it is understanding, what's their perception on it. But I think as well is that the way the PM role is evolving is that we have to be able to work with people a lot more. As much as there are the technical skills of the frameworks and methodologies we all have. What they really want to be able to have is how are we gonna get people to go and deliver the value we want right at the core of it. And sure you have all the different constraints around it, but the more that we can think about our position as being less of a manager of doing things, and more strategic as a leader of how are we impacting the larger picture, that will start to go and shift how people will perceive you as a PM and your capabilities to hopefully open the door to. More larger contracts or different pay.'cause I know just for people on the call here, for me, I'm a contractor. I'm a mercenary for hire to go and get things done if needed as a project management consultant. And I've been doing that for over 15 years now. So it's always jumping from client to client in different industries. And the more that you can show value as well, at least for me, from a generalist perspective of, I wanna say cross pollination. Of breaking some of the biases and seeing how we can apply it to really add value. That's what I've noticed a lot of clients appreciate.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. So just a little bit more data from the salary guide. One of the big findings in the report was around certifications and how they can positively impact your pay. For example, 78% of respondents to the survey with a certification said they believe their cert has positively impacted their careers or salary in some way. So I do wanna talk about this as an option for folks who are trying to rethink their careers or figure out what's next. Of course getting certified takes time, money, energy. So how do you know when it's worth it and when it might not be? How should you make the decision to move forward with a certification? Mackenzie, do you wanna get us started with this one?

Mackenzie Dysart:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first piece is do your research to figure out which certifications apply to the jobs you're looking for and the roles and the companies in the industry, because it does vary. Depending on the industry you're gonna look for. I'm gonna use banking for example. Generally they're looking for the PMP, right? That's a, it's a staple thing that a lot of folks have been, it's been around for a while. If you're wanting to go into like construction or mechanical, that's PMP. Again, a little bit more structured. If you start to go more on the software agency side of things, you might start to see a few more roles that are looking for CSM, any sort of scrum certification, scrum alliance, any of those, product owner, that piece. Finding out which ones you're starting to see listed in the job descriptions is super duper helpful. The next piece is, especially early on in your career or if you're trying to shift to a new job type, it can be helpful because it gets you over and past that initial control f that all of our, those tools are doing to find out whether or not you've got the letters in your resume. I was a recruiter in my very early career, and that's how I found out about being a project manager. I was like no, I wanna do that, because I was very bad at being a recruiter. But one of the things I did learn is how recruiters look at resumes, and I would just type in keywords from the job description and acronyms to see how many people, how many resumes would show up and use that to filter through. So when I first started looking for my jobs in project management. Even though I didn't have my PMP, I made sure to say working towards my PMP on my resume, just so it wouldn't remove me from the search. So that's my little cheat code there. But I do think it really depends on if you've got the time and if you've got the money.'cause these aren't cheap certifications. So just figuring out what you're seeing from an industry perspective in the companies or areas that you're trying to work with to figure out which makes sense. And then. I'm not gonna say they're not valuable, but they're not things that you really put into practice a lot. It's really just a thing to help you differentiate or align yourself with what they're looking for a little bit more. This is less of an issue. If you're at a place in your career where your network is around, you can reach out and you've got people who can recommend you to other jobs. For example, my current role I got, because I had a friend who worked there and they referred me in, so I at least got the interview and got past that first step. So that's the piece where it depends on where you are at in your career and in your community and in your network, what you're going to need to help you find that next role.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, absolutely. I love the working towards PMP piece of advice. I also included that in the salary guide 'cause I was like, that's golden. So I just have one more question. It's moving on from the certifications, but it's around ai and I think with AI it feels like we're at a bit of a crossroads. There's a lot of uncertainty and I think it can be really tough to make intentional career moves when the future feels so unclear like it does right now. But it also isn't the first time the PM role has evolved. I would love to hear from any of you about if you've navigated a major shift like this before and how did you approach making career decisions in the middle of all that change? Elizabeth, what are your thoughts on this?

Elizabeth Harrin:

If I show how old I am, but I was working before, we all had virtual work and remote working with a thing, and I remember doing a talk at an event in London, I think it was about 2008, saying, we should, we all, we should all be using collaboration tools and afterwards, couple of. Old men, older men came over, was like, oh, I hadn't really thought about this before. Why would you do this? Talk to me some more. And if you roll that forward, and now we all use collaboration tools, don't you? It's exactly the way that work should be done. So there's always been these big economic or software driven or environmentally driven or technology led change that project managers have to adapt and work within. We don't have crystal balls. We don't know what it's gonna look like in 10 years time, but this is where we're starting to see jobs like AI Project manager maybe in 30 years time for the career entrance of today. It's just going to be embedded in the way we do it. No one's gonna be an AI project manager. You'll just be a project manager. But I would say don't stress about it. You've just gotta think, let's look forward at the next 12 to 80 months or a roadmap of career progression that you can manage and see, and then make decisions based on what's right for you at that moment in time. Otherwise, you'll tie yourself up in not thinking about what's the world going to be like in 15 years and where am I going to be? Really, none of us know what the future's going to bring for any of us or our families. So I would say it's great to have long-term goals, but also think about short-term horizons.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, I think that's really helpful. Ben or Mackenzie, do you have thoughts on this?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, AI is coming at us fast and hard, and it's one of those shifts where it really. I think puts a lot of doubt into the people in the market of what am I supposed to go and do? If I look at, for me, and I'll probably be dating myself as well, is when they started going and outsourcing a lot of development out to offshore into the India area, and I was like. I am not a good enough developer to keep up with those guys. What am I gonna do? Because I went to school for this for four years with another additional year of internship. I've put five years into this. What am I doing now? Because I don't think I'm gonna make it very well as a developer. And that kind of got me into consulting. And so I think part of it is don't be afraid to go and experiment, to go and try a few different things here and there to run these areas and understand what is it that you like again? What are you searching for? What is it that you're looking to get out of it so that you can move forward? And also at the same time, don't be afraid to try and use some of these tools more effectively. Now, I think the biggest part is if you're pivoting industries it's probably not as hard as you think. The hardest part is probably maybe now getting into project management, because so much of the AI right now is taking up a lot of the, we'll say lower tasks, right? That around, let's say minute taking, right? Or around some of the project coordination pieces, which used to be the entry level job, but now a lot of the tools have AI built in to be able to go and do that. So how are people going to get in to do Project Mansion to understand how it is and gain that experience? So that's a new factor that's been introduced I think that people need to consider, especially if they're coming out of university or and going into the job force or just getting into PM from scratch.

Kelsey Alpaio:

I think that entry level piece of this is so interesting and it's another thing we do talk about in the salary guide. I believe Mackenzie has some great quotes about entry level roles diminishing and what that means for the future of pay. So check that out as well. So I do wanna get into audience questions. We have about 15 minutes left. How do you position yourself as a valuable asset as a senior generalist project manager? Does it help to grab more certifications? Are there certain verticals that are more open to this? Anybody have initial thoughts there?

Elizabeth Harrin:

I would say it probably doesn't help to grab more certifications, because if you're going to be senior, then the senior role is more people influencing all the stuff that Ben was talking about earlier about, leading from the front, the soft skills and. Influencing of people, the stuff that AI can't do for us. And that's what I think they'll be looking for. So there could be, once you've got your entry level or a certification, and I think the salary guide bore this out, didn't it? That there was, once you've got one certification, your salary jumps it, it makes a difference financially and adding on more doesn't necessarily equal more money or an employer to consider you in a different night. So maybe it's a consideration if you are changing industries, because you might want to get one, as Mackenzie was saying, that ties in with the field that you want to move into. But positioning, I like to think I'm positioning myself as a valuable asset as a senior member of my team because I'm the go-to person who knows how the processes work, who can do the governance, who's good at internal networking, and building up a range of skills like that.

Mackenzie Dysart:

I was gonna say a similar thing if you're trying to change industries. Or prove that you can do a bunch of different things, like if you're trying to go hard on demonstrating the fact that you are a generalist, getting a few random certifications more so out of interest than necessarily like career driven. So for example, like I mentioned, I've been working in privacy for the last year and a half. I actually find it pretty fascinating and I think it's like being on the good side of technology right now. In a little bit of the, a weird space for ai. We're understanding it. How to better protect. People's data is a fascinating space for me. So I've done our privacy champions training internally and I'm considering doing a privacy designation just out of interest, more than a specialization. And it's not something I would necessarily call it and say, oh, hey, this is this is why I meet the requirements. But in that space of your resume or where you put like additional interest or shared things, that's where you could be like, oh, I'm interested in privacy. I've done this designation, I'm interested in accessibility, and I've done this designation or got this certification. Or any other way that you can call it that you're still learning. I do think that's a piece that it does benefit. So if you're doing trainings to develop your leadership skills in any way, shape or form, make sure to identify those as well as you're looking into more senior roles. That can only help you in proving that you're trying to evolve, you're trying to adapt, and you are continuing to grow as well. But overall, I don't think getting your CPSO is gonna change anything when you're looking for a. Principal or senior level manager role, it's gonna be more your people and your soft skills for sure.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, absolutely. We did get a somewhat similar question from a few folks about switching to different industries altogether. People are asking how does one prepare for that and better position themselves in their experience to potential employers. There's also concerns around, the current job market and. Employers seemingly have the upper hand and are only looking for candidates that have very specific experience. So how can we be thinking about this? Ben, I don't know if you have any thoughts on this one.

Ben Chan:

Yeah, so for me, I've been jumping around to different industries all the time, right? Financial industries, credit cards with credit unions, FinTech, and then software development, field logistics, all these types of different areas, oil and gas, whatever it might be. And I think part of it is if you want to be able to go and show how you can move or pivot into another industry, whatever it might be, is see how can you build upon the foundational frameworks that you already have within your mind, right? Of how is this similar to something you've already done? Because from a project perspective, a lot of it is probably fairly similar. How they do their business is a little bit different. So understand their business research a little bit, and then draw the parallels you can of your experience and how you can go and apply it. I think there was a question in there about biases and things like that, right? One, one client that I was able to go in, win their trust on was they were very accustomed to doing things in Agile, right? Everything's in Scrum and whatnot. But when it came to their user experience management and things, they had a lot of difficulty for it because, could they be able to communicate every two weeks on it? And so I talked about how the waterfall methodology could be used to be able to help. From a hybrid perspective, frame up how your sprints are going so that when you're communicating to your users, you're not stuck with that. Change fatigue, right? Think of your creative solutions that you have of different experiences, how you can use it to go and add value to what they're doing. All in all businesses are there to make money at the base of it. If they're saying We need a oil and gas supply chain PM expert, it's what do you want me to be an expert in oil and gas or supply chain? All of a sudden you start to narrow it down a whole lot, but as they start to go and understand a little bit more of. Your thinking process. How do you think, how do you make decisions? How do you make good decisions to drive value in the organization and organize their teams in a good way, as well as the stakeholders managing the stakeholders. I know I'm saying a lot here, but how can you condense that into really good stories that you can go and tell to be able to break some of that barriers? Along with that, I would say is go and network. The AI pieces and the a TS systems, they may block you out. The more you can go and talk to real people, make those connections, you never know what kind of doors are gonna be opening up for you.

Elizabeth Harrin:

And I think we need to remember that we are the experts. We're experts in project management, and we bring our skills and skillset. So in your example, Ben, they must have in the industry, hundreds of people with supply chain experience in oil and gas experience. That's not. Why they're hiring you. They're hiring you because you have the skills to be the glue that joins everything together. That creates a team that will deliver whether you are, whether that's Scrum or any other kind of approach that they want to use. And if we can bring it back to what do we have to offer employers, that's what we have to offer. If they didn't have somebody who could do that, then they wouldn't be hiring in the first place. So don't ever think that because you don't have particular experience, it's not worth applying. You can always apply anyway. And like Ben says, try and reframe the experience you have got. To match what it's they're looking for and ask those questions.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. Love this. We have another question I'm sure a lot of folks are, can relate to right now, unfortunately. Do you have any advice for a PM who was made redundant, struggled to find a new role and secured one seven months later accepting an 18%. Six months into the role, it's going great. But now thinking about the money, should I stay and be loyal or think about the money and look for another role? And Courtney has the opposite experience where she said, I like my current salary, but I don't like the work I'm being assigned to. So how can these two folks be thinking about, is it time to make the switch or do I stay because I have one of those pillars, I have purpose, or I have pay. Mackenzie, do you have thoughts on this one?

Mackenzie Dysart:

Many thoughts I think at the forefront. And the most important piece to this is understanding whether or not what you're looking for is available to you at that company and in your current place for I can't remember the name, whoever was happy with the salary or not happy with the work. Does the work you even like to do exist? If it doesn't, that makes the decision a little bit easier. If there is work that you're seeing, oh, you know what? This other person on my team keeps getting assigned to these really like interesting projects. I wanna do more of that. I keep getting put on. I'm gonna use my web agency experience. I kept being put on retainers and I get, didn't get to do any new site bills. I was just doing the maintenance thing over and over again. How do I get assigned to that? Then that's a conversation with your manager. That's a conversation. Even with the person doing that work, maybe you can reach out and make that connection. Say, Hey, like I've noticed you get to do this kind of work. How'd you get into it? How come you get assigned all the time? Like how do I learn that so that I can shadow and maybe take on some of that work? I'd like to get into that space for the salary piece. It's an unfortunate reality of the state of the economy over the last two, three years is there were layoffs, there was a lot of people looking for work. It was the hiring managers, it was their time to shine 'cause they could. Negotiate and so many people were looking for work, and it's an unfortunate piece where now you have to kinda look and say, okay is there more salary available? Hopefully you work for a company that has salary bands published. Not all of us do, unfortunately, but do the research. Try and find out what the salary bands are, understand where you fit within the organization, and then you'll understand where you fit and if what you're looking for is even feasible. Then it's having that tough conversation of saying to your manager, whenever financials come around for us, we do it once a year. So it's usually easier to just tie it into that conversation. If you're at a performance review, they're saying, you're doing great. You've done all this great work. We're so happy to have you. How do we keep you here? Or any sort of you're doing good. We're so happy you're here. And it's that's great. I took a pay cut to be here. Industry norm is here, is all this data. I'd like to be brought closer to the mean and whatever that is. And I know I saw a question in the chat somewhere about what do you do when someone, when they just refute the data'cause they don't agree with it. Find more data if you can. I usually try to come with at least two data points before for any negotiation because it's helpful to have more than one, so you're not having a totally bias just, oh, I liked what this data was showing me. So I think it's important to find, have your research, have some numbers to back you up. Especially if you're seeing stuff like, oh, the sellers that are posted on Glassdoor for this company that I work for are higher in range, that's publicly available. They should do something about that regardless because the optics are there. So I think it's a lot about doing the prep and understanding what's possible within your organization, within your industry as well. Some industries just don't pay as much, but you might get more value out of the work. For example, if you're working in nonprofits, generally they don't pay as much, but you're probably getting a lot more of that purpose and you're enjoying the work for a different perspective.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Yeah, I thought that question too, around bringing data to, your hiring manager, whoever it is, and them saying, eh, I don't know about that. I agree. Like of course we love our salary guide, but bring as many data points as possible. Use PMI's salary calculator, use Glassdoor. Find the data that you can and use it to back you up. There's another great question here about career break. So this person said, I have been on a career break and I'm looking to go back. I'm thinking about scaled agile certifications and would like to know what will help me to go back into financial services where I worked before my 18 month break. So essentially, when ending a career break, how can you think about planning for your career? Should you get certifications? How can you brush up on your skills? Elizabeth, do you have a perspective on career breaks?

Elizabeth Harrin:

Yes, I do.'cause I think that from a parenting perspective, taking a career break, we know that there's a motherhood penalty in salaries. So it's really important when you're going back that you're asking for as much money as you possibly can to catch that up. If you feel that's going to affect you. In terms of what certifications would help you become more relevant and get back into the industry more quickly? I would echo what McKenzie said earlier, which is look at what job descriptions are asking for and make sure you can tick those boxes before you want to go back. Check out a few jobs in financial services or the industry that it is that you want to step back into and see what they're asking for. And if Scaled Agile is where it's at, then put some time and effort into getting that so that you are meeting the bare minimum requirements before you're applying. I also think there's plenty of other things that you can do with your time or that you can use to help you feel that you're fitting back in. Even things like LinkedIn learning or listening to podcasts, or being part of the DPM community, all these things will help you stay up to date with trends so you can talk knowledgeably about them at interview.

Kelsey Alpaio:

I love that advice. So a couple people were asking about hiring right now. So Diana asked, how much is it really who you know versus what you know? Especially when AI recruiting is so daunting, and Ryan added, AI modules are baked into these ATS systems. So who you know is more important than ever now? Ben, what's your perspective on this?

Ben Chan:

Yes, I would agree with that. AI has, you people are generating AI resumes and then AI is evaluating the AI resume, right? So what's the differing point on there? And the differing piece is gonna be the relationships that you can go and build. For me, actually, like I haven't really formally applied for a job or a contract position type of thing for over six years. Maybe even longer, I can't even remember because I just work and talk with people to understand what their needs are. And it bypasses all of those areas. So as much as it's great to go out there and people want to go and hire people they know, people that they trust, and that's really what I think is the bottom line for it. They go through the interview process to understand can they trust you? Can they trust you to be able to go and get the things we need to get done? And if you can build that up earlier, all the better.

Kelsey Alpaio:

Absolutely. Thank you to our panelists for volunteering their time today. Panelists, this was so much fun. It was so insightful. So thank you for sharing your expertise with us today.