The Digital Project Manager

How to Start a PM Career When Generative AI is Replacing Entry-Level Roles

• Galen Low and Kelsey Alpaio

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The entry-level project management job isn’t what it used to be. With AI automating many of the classic coordinator tasks, the ground floor seems to have disappeared—leaving aspiring PMs wondering how to even get started. In this episode, Galen Low sits down with Benjamin Chan, Founder of CLYMB Consulting, to unpack what this shift really means for junior PMs, hiring managers, and the next generation of project leaders.

Together, they explore how AI is reshaping the role of the project coordinator, what skills and traits are most valuable in today’s job market, and how organizations can reimagine career paths to make sure talent isn’t left behind. Whether you’re breaking in, hiring, or mentoring, this conversation is full of real-world perspective and actionable ideas for navigating the new career landscape.

Resources from this episode:

Galen Low:

How can aspiring project managers break into the world of project management when there's no ground floor and no stairs till they get to the second level?

Ben Chan:

For those that are trying to go into that project management area, start looking and building up those skills as soon as possible wherever you are.

Galen Low:

What are the skills and traits that like a hiring manager could be looking for with the backdrop of like AI tools, doing all the traditional project coordinator stuff?

Ben Chan:

Quickness to learn, adaptability, being able to manage conflict. Those are things that drive success.

Galen Low:

Is AI literally taking entry level jobs or is it redefining what an entry level job is?

Ben Chan:

It's probably the latter. It might be a redefinition of what does that role exactly look like? You need to see new jobs that have never been thought of. Network. Go and talk to people. In the end, an AI is not gonna hire you. People are gonna hire you.

Galen Low:

Welcome to The Digital Project Manager podcast — the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver faster, and lead better in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real world strategies, new tools, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Today we are talking about the impact that AI has had on entry level project management jobs and what businesses as well as aspiring project leaders can do about it. With me today is Benjamin Chan, Founder of CLYMB Consulting and a recovering "project fixer". At  CLYMB, Ben is the principal project leadership success coach, leveraging over 15 years of experience in project recovery and enterprise delivery. But he's also a prolific keynote speaker, a graphic novel enthusiast, and one of the top project management voices on LinkedIn within Canada and the US. His mission? To get PMs the support they need so that they can stop struggling and start climbing towards a rewarding career in project leadership with confidence. Ben, thanks for being with me here today.

Ben Chan:

Thank you Galen for having me on your show.

Galen Low:

That's an honor. You had me on yours. I had such a blast. And I'm like, I'm gonna return the favor. And then several months passed and I'm sorry about, I think actually it ended up working out pretty good because, you know, I was saying to someone just well, maybe it was today, we're like. The world of project management has never been changing this fast, not for decades, and now it feels like every day is something new. Is AI has impacted the job market? There's different roles, and I think now is actually the right time to be talking about career stuff, career growth, and especially this sort of narrative around entry level jobs, especially project management jobs, but actually all of the sort of knowledge worker jobs. It's kind of changing.

Ben Chan:

Yeah, it's interesting because I would say as much as things are changing, there's also a whole bunch of things that stay the same as well that feel like they're consistent throughout the project management project, leadership work stream. And that's kind of been interesting because we have to kind of dissect how those areas intersect, how they digress, and how they play together in today's new market.

Galen Low:

It's funny because like, as you're saying that I'm like. There's this sort of history repeating aspect thing of things, right? You know, where if I actually had this idea to have a historian on all my podcasts to be like, well, during the industrial revolution this also happened and it was fine. Or maybe it wasn't fine and you know, we can learn from this. But I think, you know, I hear what you're saying. It's like there are some foundations we return to and then there's disruption that always comes. And I guess that's what keeps us on our toes. You and I, we've got a bit of history. We're LinkedIn buddies. I know that we can get into the weeds like, you know, when we were prepping for this and in the green room, we are tangent people, but in case that we do stay on track, here's the roadmap that I've sketched out for our listeners today. To start us off, I wanted to just get one big burning question out of the way that like existentially triggering question that everyone wants to know about breaking into project management in 2025. But then I'd like to zoom out and just talk about maybe three things. Firstly, I wanted to talk about the myths that are driving PM hiring trends lately, and then I'd like to dive deep into what skills hiring managers could and maybe should be looking for to secure and support talented junior PMs, but maybe in like intermediate roles. And lastly, I'd like to talk about the implications of what people are saying about entry-level white collar jobs, especially in project management. Like what needs to change now to make sure the next generation of project leaders is set up for success?

Ben Chan:

Let's do it. Let's see where this goes.

Galen Low:

All right. Awesome. So the big cloud that's like lording over the project management field today is this erosion of entry level jobs as a result of AI. The way I see it, the story goes like this. Generative and agent AI have proven capable of so many of the typical entry level project coordination tasks, that entry level PM jobs are no longer a thing. Essentially talented individuals trying to break into project management are needing to break into like the second floor because there isn't the first floor anymore and there's no stairs going up, you know, from receptions. No smart elevators, nothing. So my big question is this. How can aspiring project managers break into the world of project management when there's no ground floor and no stairs till they get to the second level? Like what are the skills and the mindset that aspiring project managers need to adopt to play beyond what they traditionally be deemed qualified for?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, and maybe we can examine the current path that a lot of project managers entry level areas, what they look at, right, is they come in as a project coordinator, right? Then they're doing things like taking meeting minutes, helping to go and move some of the tasks around on the project. Maybe they're doing a little bit of cost control, helping them keep, I don't know, maybe it's the Project pos and stuff in order and pulling all of those areas together. But yeah, now we're seeing a lot of those things being handled by AI. And you just have the meeting, you end the meeting, and then the transcript of all the meeting summaries, the action items, all of that is all put together for you nicely and away you go. Right? And. That entry level job where someone could be learning beside you on those type of areas, they're not really critical anymore. But then what happens is that gap of skill continues to grow the, we'll say mid-career project managers and senior level project managers, they'll continue to move along on their way. But what's left behind is that gap of how do we get in then? Because those people that want to get in, they're not getting the right experience. Hiring managers will look at that and say, well, you don't have any experience on that, and they're not gonna be able to get it because there is that leap of talent and experience that is suddenly created by this new AI that is making things efficient. And so I think that's kind of the situation that we're looking at right now. And I think for those that are trying to go into that project management area is start looking and building up those skills as soon as possible wherever you are. And honestly, I feel like project management at its core should be a part of school. It should be part of even junior high when you're trying to go and study. I mean, how many of us are cramming before exams or cramming to go and get that last minute overnight report done for your assignment? That is just poor project management on our part. Let's be honest. Right?

Galen Low:

I think PMI calls it crashing the schedule.

Ben Chan:

Yeah. Yeah. And then you have the overnight crash to go and try and get everything done, and then you crash in bed afterwards. Right. But those are kind of skills that we're not really learning a lot earlier. And so I would say part of it is build those skills early, understand how they all come together. Because even understanding how you work inside of a group project like this is something that. I've been wanting to do for post-secondary institutions is talk a little bit about why group projects in universities suck so bad. Everyone goes into them. You got one person who's a slacker. Everyone else feels like they're trying to go and carry that pull over to the finish line, and it's exhausting. Everyone's just like, great. I guess we got a. Whoop do. Right. And everyone's sweating it at the end. But these are the tangents we're talking about here.

Galen Low:

Yeah. Well I think I really like that.'cause it is like, actually, you know, we've groan about it, but in some ways it's the best training that we got, you know, post-secondary. Is that work is like a group project. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Ben Chan:

We have no lessons learned from that whatsoever other than I don't ever wanna work with that group member ever again on a group project. Just hazing. That's the lesson that's learned, right.

Galen Low:

I really like what you're saying though about sort of developing the skill early and maybe in different ways. You know, we talk a lot about sort of like volunteer experience. I know it's like, it's actually not an easy thing to find volunteer work that is like project coordinator work. I guess the other thing you're saying is that your ways of developing these skills are woven into other things, right? It's like it's in, you know, the way you work together as a group for a school project. It's woven into probably a lot of volunteer roles that don't say project coordinator like on them, but you're going to be developing these skills of interacting with people and getting things done so it doesn't feel like that terrible group project from university. And you can start building that narrative for yourself so that you can say that you have this experience. And in some ways be clearing the line of this entry level job gap.

Ben Chan:

Right. And I think part of it is also shifting your perspective, if that's something you wanna get into for project management, is how you take a project management lens on things so that you can then translate that into your next job. There's an interesting analogy that I like to go and draw from is when people go into, let's say, an entry level job at McDonald's, let's say people might think, oh, you're serving burgers. It's minimum wage, ladi da, right? And they have all these maybe gripes about it and whatnot. But if you shift your thinking about it of you're doing these processes not just for the sake of doing them, there's a lot of research and technicality put in from a supply chain perspective as well, from a process delivery. Maybe it's lean SixSigma used into it. I'm sure the McDonald's people aren't gonna release all their secrets around it, right? But if you look back somewhere like. Hundred years ago to go and say, I'm gonna serve you a full meal in less than two minutes, they would look at you and say, you are crazy. There's no way you can go be able to do that.

Galen Low:

Is it gonna be an Apple?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, I know. Exactly. It's like, well, I gotta go to the Garin, wash the apple and give it to you. Right. That's probably the healthiest meal you'll get. But if you're able to go and understand how all these interactive pieces come together so that yes, you are flipping burgers, but you're doing it a very specific time in a very specific way to be able to go and make things happen, and the more you kind of understand how that strategic look. Perspective on it is the more appreciation you might have on. Great. Now how do I fit into the outcome of actually delivering a meal? So yes, you could view it as a minimum wage job or you could view it as this conglomeration of amazing process improvement areas to help deliver outcomes to a customer.

Galen Low:

I really like that. Like I my university job, actually, my high school job was at a Walmart like photo lab. And definitely, you know, I was young, I was punching the clock a lot, right? To just show up and I do my job. But you know, when I think back on it, just even paying enough attention to realize how big of an operation you were working in, and I don't think these are trade secrets, but photo labs, you know, back in the day when there were photo labs inside of Walmarts, they were lost leaders. They don't make money. They lose money. But when you're waiting for your photos to get developed, you shop, you spend money, right? So we're part of this larger operation. So like actually our unit, the way we operated was like actually quite different than the rest of the store and the management structure, right? The culture, the like these pieces that if you're paying attention. You pick up on them and you can actually start weaving that narrative. And I think that's what you're saying is like apply that lens when you're in that job so you can actually zoom out a bit, see what's going on, understand what's going on, and then speak to that when you're actually like interviewing or trying to break into your entry level or early career role. Because you can learn that. You can pick up on it even if it's not sort of part of your responsibilities.

Ben Chan:

Exactly. Right. There's just so much you can go and learn. Depending on how wide or narrow you want your lens to be.

Galen Low:

I wanted to come back to something you said earlier, because I found it really interesting. You're saying that the project coordinator role, part of it is shadowing and learning because you're there and you're watching more senior project leaders do their thing and then eventually you'll pick up on that enough. You'll find your own style, and then you'll be confident and skilled enough to be doing it on your own. Part of the project coordinator responsibilities, like note taking and like sending status boards and stuff is like, it's almost the like cost of sitting around to watch these projects happen. It's like, well, you gotta do something. You can't just sit in a chair and like watch me and I pay you. Right, right. But then if that's true, then. The responsibilities of a project coordinator do not make the project coordinator. They're basically an apprentice. So whatever is there to be done, that maybe isn't the like top priority of the senior project manager is what the project coordinator can help with. It doesn't mean taking notes. So if AI takes over note taking, if AI takes over status reports, I guarantee you that they're still a part of the job. That's like a little bit of a like, ah, I wish I didn't have to do this myself. Oh yeah, project coordinator, could you help with this? And maybe it's not notes, maybe it's actually, Hey, could you like call this stakeholder and explain to them this and that? Like say that I told you to call you and you know, explain this to them. Or like, could you help educate, you know, some of these folks, like we've got some material on like how to do scrum, right? It's like, okay, when we say user story points, here's what we mean. Can you just like. Talk the stakeholder through it who like clearly is not getting it and is frustrated and there's these things that I don't know, like I wouldn't necessarily immediately think, oh yeah, I'm gonna give that to a project coordinator. But like almost that level is up a bit, but it's still part of the job where I'm like, gosh, I wish I didn't have to do this myself. I can maybe get some support on this. And maybe that's what the project coordinator role is now. Not do these things, but to do what's needed. Well, you kind of get to be in a bit of an apprentice and be the mentee.

Ben Chan:

Yeah, and I think that it is. Interesting.'cause I would also say it's like a knight in their squire. If we're talking about fictional pieces, it's like you got the wizard and then you got the little guy, you got the hobbit following you along to be able to go on this journey. And that's where it maybe some of the difficulty comes in because that maybe mean that the project manager needs to delegate more, but there has to be a level of trust of experience. But how do you trust that experience if they haven't had any? So there's that weird kind of dynamic that happens between them that you kind of have to work around. And this is where for me, when I do have more junior project coordinators who are aspiring to be project managers, I'll ask them, what do you wanna work on? What skills do you want to go and have? And we'll look at how I'm delivering to go and say, Hey, can you take these pieces on? Would you feel comfortable? And if you run into trouble, let me know and I'll see how I can help you out. Right? How can I assist you? I think there's also the pieces where you're talking about where they're somewhat shadowing you on the work that you're doing, but they can't just sit there and shadow the whole time. Right. They have to be able to be involved in it, and so there might be a redefinition of what the project coordinator role is. But from an organizational perspective, that's also hard for them to define now.

Galen Low:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say, because like in theory, I like this sort of Knight Squire model, by the way. I think I'm gonna take it and run with it, but like for sure, you know, the Squire job hasn't disappeared, but like fewer inventing right. The whatever carry all AI wagon, it's gonna carry the armor, it's gonna carry the lance and all that stuff. Great. Squire, you don't need to like carry all that armor anymore. And I'm very specifically thinking Monty Python here, right? Yeah. Backpack, you know, that's like, you know, to the moon stacked with stuff like, that's not your job anymore, but. There is still a way for you to be quire. You're just gonna be doing something different. And then I'm thinking about it, I'm like some of the folks coming outta school at any age, you know, like anyone who's kind of like entering the job market or even pivoting into project management and they weren't in project management before. There are some very bright people. We kinda have this tendency, I find to be like, yeah, entry level people like those dummies, so we gotta teach them everything. Frankly, A, I don't think it is ever true, and B, definitely, I don't think it's true now. I think there's a lot of people with like really great ideas, you know, really strong skills. And then I agree with you what you said, which is like now we have job descriptions, right? In organizations that don't fit anymore. So we're not sure like. What even to ask for anymore, especially in terms of skills, but like, I guess I'm thinking like the market is ripe now. People are being told entry-level jobs don't exist. Everyone's like struggling and trying to figure it out. But like if you're a hiring manager, you could snipe all this talent right now because as everyone, you know, they're not getting swept up by all these other organizations.'cause the project coordinator role doesn't exist. But you could kind of sweep them up maybe into more senior roles, maybe into new roles. But I think the thing that you said is the trick is like what skills and traits should we be looking for right now? That it's not like, Hey, you've taken notes for a meeting before, and they're like yeah. Okay, great. Come on in. Like it's new now. I dunno, like if maybe you have an opinion on like what are the skills and traits that like a hiring manager could be looking for? Like how they would support them in a role that they're technically underqualified for, but in the context with the backdrop of like AI tools doing all the traditional project coordinator stuff.

Ben Chan:

Yeah. All right. So this is definitely gonna throw me into a rabbit hole here, but we're gonna see where it lands. So I think there's been a few shifts, especially from the educational front of those people coming out of school. One is they actually know what a project manager is. Some of 'em are wanting to be a project manager coming out of school. And I'd say even for me coming outta school 20 years ago, I'm dating myself. That wasn't a thing. No one said that they wanted to be a project manager as part of it. They wanted to be an engineer, a doctor, whatever it might be. But a project manager wasn't on that list. It became more of an accidental piece that you were assigned as you grew through your career. But now there's people saying. I want to come outta school and I wanna be a project manager. And so that means there's one, a passion for it. And two, they're probably learning more details about how to do project management, right? All the, we'll say the fundamentals, all the technical fundamentals that are guiding it. And the other piece is around with AI doing a lot of the foundational elements. There's also that, I guess, the caution of hallucinations and where it's. I would have it similar to the analogy of like the calculator of, yes, there has always been calculators, but you want to go and show your work. Why? Because the work that you're showing shows the logic you're using to be able to arrive at the answer. And sometimes when we get these answers from AI, we don't see that work. So it's up to us if we want to do that check that we need to do the manual pieces on it, right? So we have to work through the math of it. Does that actually make sense? Or is it coming back? And it's like, why is the deadline pushed by three months? I makes no sense. So there's that AI front, and at the same time, I'm also looking at my own experience where I'm a generalist. Where I've managed projects across many different types of industries, many different types of projects where it's ranged from industries such as supply chain inside of FinTech, oil and gas, government, agrichemical, et cetera. Right. And. Different projects ranging from software delivery, business process improvement, financial modeling, strategic planning at the C-suite level. Right? All these different things. And it's been weird for me to sometimes go to market because people would say, tell me, what's your industry specialty? Tell me what type of projects you specialize in. And my answer is, yes. Because I don't have that specialty, but I use those fundamentals to be able to go and help me deliver. So I think if the HR recruiters are looking at it from the perspective of, yes, what type of traits do I need rather than just the industry experience pieces, then we can have a deeper conversation is what can we do to be able to drive success, right? So quickness to learn. Adaptability, listening, being able to work with others, being able to manage conflict, being able to be organized with schedules and deliverables and all those type of things, right? Which really doesn't matter about the industry nor type of project, but it's very unintuitive to think that way, right? You want a software engineer as of the project manager. That's kind of what people think. I need to have someone that's deep in marketing to lead a marketing project. I would argue, so long as you have a good team and I can learn fast, I can help you deliver.

Galen Low:

I also wonder if like. I don't know if it's been shifting for you with that sort of generalist positioning, but in some ways, like there's a renaissance of the generalist right now because Great. You deeply specialized in like chemical production or oil and gas engineering you know, for something very specific. Great. Now I can only use you for one thing, but like, actually we're doing many other things. You know, like, yeah, our operation is supported. Maybe even because of AI workflows and tools, we can do more stuff. Yeah. We don't have to just only do this one thing. And actually in some ways, a generalist would be more valuable in like a market that's constantly being disrupted. And I wonder if there's gonna be this rebirth where people are like, oh good, you're a generalist. That's great. No, to say no more. Yeah. You know, like.

Ben Chan:

I'm still waiting for it to happen. I'll be honest. There are people that do recognize it, but they need to see it first, almost. Right. It's still hard for a lot of organizations to, I guess, feel like that they can trust someone that's not a specialist.

Galen Low:

Yeah. It's almost like the, cover your butt kind of thing. It's like, what do you mean exactly? You hired some generalist who says they are learn quickly and are, you know, an analytical, like, we need someone with three years of doing exactly this thing. Which, I mean, it's funny that, 'cause as you were saying that I'm like. What do we expect people to learn in like three to five years, right? Like must have three to five years of experience. Mostly because like, I think it's because that's enough time to encounter a whole bunch of different scenarios and figure it out so that, you know, you've made a bunch of mistakes and now you don't have to make mistakes on my dime. You can make different kinds of mistakes, but I don't wanna pay for those like early mistakes. But to your point about. Like the other one I picked up, like the critical thinking skills, especially around like hallucination or you know, how we wield AI tools and not just being like, cool, that's what the answer said. So I just copied and pasted it into the thing. Even that, just that like the wherewithal to be like, i'm gonna double check this. I'm gonna go about it another way. I'm just gonna make sure I'm gonna do a little bit of extra research and make sure that I'm being the responsible human in the loop and I'm being valuable here because I didn't just take the answer to anyone else could have generated. You know, I'm like honing my ability to. It's a challenge and to think critically about things like my AI tools and people, right? Like be like, okay, well I'm not gonna take everything at face. Value is actually a skill that most people, if you're honing it, you've probably been honing it for more than three to five years. You know, it's like your critical thinking skills. The things that we're supposed to be learning in school and in university like that also matters. Could it be the equivalency of like having three to five years of experience? I'm not sure, but it really raises that question for me of like, yeah, what do we expect people to learn in that three to five years of experience that we want before they walk into the door?

Ben Chan:

Right, and you don't get the three to five years experience until you're into an entry level job that can provide you that three, three year experience. And it's one of those things that I think is really tough in the market right now because the three years experience and even being able to vet AI, the hallucinations and the whatnot. There's an instinctual gut feeling that you can look at, something you can go and say, that feels off because you've had been exposed to it a long time, and do you trust it? If you're at the beginning and you don't know what's right or wrong that you're double checking everything, and how much more time is that adding to your schedule or just your own sanity on trying to double check everything that AI is putting out? And everyone's just like, just trust it. Don't worry about it. Right. Until you should. Right? Until you should worry about it. So that's where I'm kind of thinking like even from an organizational perspective, they'd have to think about how they're able to go and support their employees to be successful. A lot of the time I think people get hired in and say, you then need to figure out how to be successful rather than being supported on it. Right. And that's where, for me, I love the coaching aspect to be able to help more project managers be able to understand it so that they don't have to go through the stars that I did. They don't have to make all the mistakes that I did that people will look at you and go, I can't believe you did that. This is how much it cost us. Instead, helping provide a little bit more the guardrails for them while also allowing them to be introspective, to build those skills internally rather than just being told what to do. And I think the differences between how the training elements of it, how they do their day-to-day experience, as well as the coaching and mentoring aspects can come into it. It's a really great opportunity. For organizations to build up that entry level area, right? Even if they're the squire, right? How do we turn them into nights? We can't just have them carrying everything. It might build that leg strength for a little bit, but at some point they have to wield the sword.

Galen Low:

The thing I really like about that is a, I got whole sort of the support that's needed. It's a two-way street. It's not like. Please go find some magical w way to get three to five years of experience, even though everything needs three to five years of experience and they'll see you when you finally get it. Haha. It needs to sort of, you know, that support needs to be inbuilt. But you touched on something and I this is at least what I picked up from it, which is that sometimes what we want from that three to five years of experience is stuff that we just don't know how to teach. Even if we could teach it, it's expensive and we don't really want it to happen on our dime because it's if we could, we'd be like, go to school to learn more the hard way for five years. Yeah, exactly. It's just like build that grit doing something just not on our dime. But I like what you said about the coaching, because I think for me, that's what bridges the gap. It's like there's this judgment layer that you mentioned, right? Where you're like, once you know, you kind of know, you don't have to double check everything. You just, you're kind of almost using your gut. We don't know how to teach gut yet. Not like on the job in a workplace. Like there's no playbook, I think for it. That's why we're like, you just need to have the experience. Whereas in reality, even neurologically, we're like, we're feeding information into our brain of what could happen and what we do about it. And I think that coaching is sort of that middle ground because a coach like yourself, right, you have a lot of experience. You've been doing project management at a certain level across multiple industries for over 15 years. And that's what people are benefiting from, even just by like working with you, dialoguing with you. And it is sort of building their instinct, like their judgment on what could happen and how to react to it. And that mindset of like, what are the decisions that you'd make based on experience? And you're almost giving them that gut instinct layer. As part of their journey into, or throughout their like career journey. The journey through the journey. You know what I mean?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, yeah. No and really it's trying to go and not just be theoretical about these type of discussions, right. Of. Hey, when you put a schedule together, put all these together. Guess what? Critical path, whoop do, right? And it's great to be able to go and do that. But what's hard is when they're in the trenches and working it and they find it doesn't work, what do you do? And how do you crash the schedule? How do you make things efficient? How are you exercising your creative problem solving? And that's where, for me, the coaching aspect is being able to work with clients in the situation that they're in. Just like any project is different, every person is different. Every organization is different. They have different political environments. They have different work cultures. They have different people they're working with. They have different objectives, right? Some people might care about cost while others are really concerned about the end strategic objective, right? What are you trying to go and do about. The response can be any multitude of areas, but it's helping them to develop that intuition in their job, right, where it's alongside their piece. Rather than go to training, pick up one or two things, I hope you apply it instead. Let's continually see how it integrates into your work. How does it integrate into how you think and view things? Does it change your perspective?

Galen Low:

I think it's really interesting and even the like. Project Management Institute, right, the pmbok. I know a lot of folks who studied PMBOK six, five, or six, and yeah, knew the words, knew the concepts, right? Critical path had to crash the schedule. But like didn't really come away with that judgment of what to use, when and why and when not to use something. And like they're like, I don't know how I'm gonna use all of these tools and techniques and processes and inputs and outputs on every project. I'm like whoa. No. You don't have to use'em for everything. They're just like teaching you to use all the tools in the garage. But like sometimes you just need to like screw in a screw. That's not me dissing PMI. Because I think for in some ways, like the PMP certification for me is not an entry level certification. It relies on having that experience. That's why when you apply, you need to like document the experience that you've had because it should be that pairing of like the body of knowledge and the, you know, quote unquote standards paired with your experience. So that's where you kind of learn that judgment of what to use when, which to me, circles all the way back to the coaching thing, which I like. I'm still like, my mind's a little bit blown right now because I often think of coaching as something that happens later in a career. Where it's like, cool, I've gotten to the point where there's no structured learning in my job. There might not even be a manual for the job that I want next. And really what I need is more of a mindset, like a reframing of just guidance on how I develop in my journey. I never really thought of it as like being available at an earlier stage, almost as part of the like education process. Which I think for me, I mean if I was to swing it all the way back, you had at the beginning we were talking about this gap, right? That'll be created. It's like the intermediate and senior project professionals, they're just carrying on. They're developing in their careers and meanwhile this like the new generation, the new layer can't even get in. They're not even like getting into the building. We're talking a little bit about education, we're talking about coaching, we're talking about support, but like what pieces do need to be in place to support the next generation of project leaders? You know, knowing that changes to our education system are gonna take time, heck even changes to like the role descriptions of what people are hiring for. Like what can businesses do? To step in and maybe play a role in developing the labor market when it comes to project management in various industries?

Ben Chan:

Well, I think as we talked about what the role of the project coordinator is redefining what those roles are and examining a little bit more of how are they going to add value to the organization now, either through the project, but also where are they going to go? What do we want them to be? Because if they're all knights and no squires, guess what? You're gonna have a whole bunch of knight that are super tired carrying everything while trying to go and fight the battles. Right? So it might be a redefinition of what does that project coordinator role exactly look like? And I think it's also seeing what are the opportunities that present itself in terms of new jobs that have never been thought of. Right? Because that's always happened. We have. Things where, you know, you had now computer programmers that back in the seventies and eighties are like, what is that? Right? You have typewriters and things, but now you have these electronic boxes that you type into and stuff. It's so weird. And then came internet web developers and whatnot, and it just continues to go and evolve. Right? All throughout crazy ideas that I've literally just thinking now, maybe you need a GPT maintainer, right? Someone that maintains the project GPT. That helps make sure that all the things are there helps to ensure that the documents and maybe the responses are correct, whatever it might be. I don't know. Maybe that's a role. Who knows?

Galen Low:

I kind of love it, you know, like, it, it is funny because like, you know, like when. Early days of catch GPT and everyone's like, oh, I guess now being a prompt engineer is gonna be, you know, the new job. And then you can be the generalist prompt engineer that engineers the prompts for anything and you're a superhero. Amazing. And I think we kind of, I don't know, at least the circles I travel in, we kind of quickly shifted on from that. It's like, nope, it's gonna be a skill that you know, everyone needs. Not necessarily a job. I do like that idea. I was actually gonna ask you, I think I'll still ask you. I like that idea of someone who's gonna maintain the knowledge of a project and make sure there's like accurate record keeping, right? And you know, normally pre AI, guess what? That was the status reports in the meeting notes and now it's something different, right? And now it's are the tools that we're using well-informed, not just our stakeholders, but like our tools are also stakeholders now. Do they know what's going on and are they feeding the right information to the people that they're talking to? But the question I was gonna ask you is that you're leading projects today, you're leading all sorts of projects. What is that thing that if you brought a project coordinator on right now, what would you want them to be doing for you? What would you want them to be taking off your plate and like what armor do you want them to hold for you?

Ben Chan:

All of the AI stuff. No, I'm kidding. Honestly, the things around the. Like the accounting pieces, I'm like please help me out with that. Maybe it's a cost controller, maybe it's a project coordinator, whatever it is. The things around the accounting, cost, accounting for it is where I love to go and have assistance with because all the time there's all these different rules that change around it of what's expense, what's capital, how does that fit within the current structure and stuff. That to me is like where it's not really science and math, it's more around hocus pocus things of what's happening for this budget year.

Galen Low:

Right, right, right. Yeah, I understand what you mean. Not the mathematics thereof, but the like economics thereof.

Ben Chan:

Yeah, and I think to an extent is helping me keep stakeholders accountable for that and giving them a little bit more of that leeway and responsibility of not only keeping myself accountable and checking on the things that I'm doing, but also helping the other stakeholders.'cause for some of the projects, like there's more than 50 stakeholders that are all doing separate things that need to be followed up on, guess what? An email is not gonna work. An AI chat bot checking in on you with agentic AI asking, you know, this task was due, did you do it yet? I'll be honest, I don't think those are gonna get us that far, but a human connection and relationship building and saying, Hey, what's going on? I'm seeing this is late. Do you need support on it? What's going on? Those are things that I think help build the relational skills that I think project managers and coordinators need. Also gets them really involved in that relationship building and understanding the impact that it's having on moving the project forward. So I'll keep it simple and we'll say those are the two areas to kind of work on.

Galen Low:

I really like that because it speaks to, you know, financial literacy being important for one's personal wealth and just on the job. But I also like the other piece because I'm willing to bet that a lot of project managers and listeners here. Might resort to broadcast communications just 'cause they have to, but maybe that wouldn't have been the right idea. In agency land, it's like time cards, everyone do your time sheets. You know, it's like, it's Friday at 3:00 PM do your time sheets, or you know, nobody gets paid. And it's like this broadcast, you get the megaphone out and you're like ba. But exactly what you said is like. Especially tracking time. There's sometimes like those individual just like blockers in people's like mind of like, well, you know, like I feel self-conscious about my work and like is it valuable enough to charge the client 150, $250 for that one hour of work I spent? And they're individual sort of like personal issues and challenges. That if I did have a choir to be like, Hey, actually, could you just go around? Like I could get the megaphone out and be like, everybody, here's what's going on with the project, but I wouldn't get the right information back for me to help do my job better. So instead of me resorting to broadcast communications, and because I don't have time to have individual conversations with everybody, can you have some of those individual conversations for me and just let me know, you know, generally what's been going on, why isn't our record keeping up to date? Why are we working with project data that is, you know, old, we can find that root of the problem, then we're cooking with gas. And then I like the other thing you said, which is, by the way, that is. I think it's a great way. It might, it feels like feet to the fire, but I think it's a great way to learn those human skills to be that person who's like, Hey, not just the messenger, but I'm here to help. Right. Not like, Hey, a senior project manager wants to know why that thing isn't done, but like, Hey, like, can I help? What's been going on? My job is actually to just talk to people and get enough inputs that we can ideate on ways to work together better on this project, which is frankly, stuff that I never have time to do when I'm leading a project. Right. I'm not going like, how might we optimize this machine? I'm like, Hey, we gotta get this thing done. Like what is going on? And I like the idea that this Squire role, the project coordinator role, the duties might be different, but it's still a helping role, right? That does actually help lift the project up.

Ben Chan:

They could be running out to different nights and saying, Hey, what's going on? How come you're not at the front lines? How come I'm not helping out? Or, what's holding you back? Right? Rather than me, you know, to your example of broadcasting, right? I'm not going out there going here ye here you announcement for all, right? You know, there's different ways to add value.

Galen Low:

We're gonna get this in the comments of like someone who's like, I'm a professor of medieval history, and you guys have no idea what a choir does. I know that's time for that matter. Yeah. I wonder if maybe we can look a bit into the future just to kind of round out. I wonder if it's actually perspective, right? Because there's like headlines and stuff, right, where it's like entry level jobs are, they're vanishing, they're disappearing. It's doom and gloom. Some of them are like, don't worry, new jobs are just around the corner, like with different titles that you've never heard of, but they haven't materialized yet. I guess maybe I want your POV on like whether you think AI is literally taking entry-level jobs or is it redefining what an entry-level job is? And if it's the latter, which I think it is.'cause I think we've kind of touched on that throughout the conversation, but like what could that mean for career opportunities for this next generation? Right. The Gen Z, the gen alpha, and the future generations of knowledge workers.

Ben Chan:

Well, I think, yeah, you're right. It's probably the latter where there's a lot of different factors coming in. There's like economic factors that are completely out of our control, political factors, and that are happening inside of the market that we have no control over that impact everything else, right? There's a domino effect on them, and I think for those that are entry level, it's be creative. Think of what role you think you can contribute to that organizations might need. Because sometimes they might look at it and just say, you know what? Maybe we do need that. We need to go and have that. But that also requires, at least for the entry level people, is have those conversations. Network, go and talk to people because you're gonna get frustrated with the a TS systems and AI filter, a AI A TS systems filtering out AI resumes, right? We know that's happening, let's be honest. Right?

Galen Low:

Absolutely.

Ben Chan:

You gotta make that connection with people. You gotta be able to go and talk with others. You have to be able to show exactly what value you are providing and how you're going to go and stand out. So don't sit behind your desk just sending out emails and whatnot. Go and have a coffee. Go and talk to people. Go and meet with people online because in the end, an AI is not gonna hire you. People are gonna hire you.

Galen Low:

Boom. I love that. I like the idea that I think our generation, I'm kind of putting us in the same bucket here, but you know, our generation was like. Learn what job titles are and then find them on the job board. You know, find them on Indeed. You know that's who you are. Now you're a project manager. Only search for project manager titles, and that's all you can do. That's all you will do. We asked you when you were young, what you wanted to be when you grew up and you said this, and you only have the one thing, you cannot stray outside that box. Whereas like actually I see it happen a lot in small businesses and enterprises where they do need inputs about what a new role ought to be. But they are shaping roles sometimes to pivot because of these economic factors and things beyond their control that they need to adapt to and react to. And it actually, it happens a lot more than I expected that yeah, we're actually gonna shape a job around a conversation and a need that we did have. Right. And just kind of like work together. I don't think it's the only way. Or the dominant way of getting a job. But I do think it happens a lot more than people think. So when people are like, yeah, whatever, Ben and Galen, they're not just gonna like make up a job for me because I like had a coffee with them. Actually, they might. Because that's the two-way street of like the bright people getting into project management wherever they are in their career. And these organizations that do need input, they need to be able to support these people coming into these roles, but they also need ideas of what the role ought to be to actually make a difference. I think that's a really good pairing. It's pretty poetic.

Ben Chan:

Thanks Galen.

Galen Low:

That might be a good place to wrap it. Just for fun, do you have a question that you wanna ask me?

Ben Chan:

I guess, for you, how does AI you feel like impact the Digital Project Manager specifically?

Galen Low:

Ooh, that's an interesting one. Okay. My medium length answer is this. I find that like on the digital side of things, we have like this multi-pronged AI challenge, which is a. Using AI to like deliver value, deliver projects and collaborate. There's also the like fact that in the digital world sometimes we are creating, like the product is being created in tandem with AI, right? The team members, you know, on the creative team are using AI tools to generate something. There's like this additional layer of like, okay, like I need to understand where this is coming from so that, you know, we're not plagiarizing, we're not like getting ourselves in trouble. And then there's the fact that sometimes what we're building is an AI product, right? So you have there like three levels of AI to pay attention to. And I keep getting sort of spun around in it because there's like AI enhanced ways of working. How do we get the job done? There's the like oversight. How can I make sure that the team is being ethical and responsible in their use of AI tools to generate something of value? And then it's the third layer of like, do we actually even know enough? Is it our responsibility now? It is. To actually understand the impact of the thing that we are building that is digital and AI enhanced like it is. You know, it is powered by AI. It's not just a website anymore. It's not just a digital marketing campaign anymore. It's got a lot more pieces. So can't even remember what your original question was. But I think there's like these layers of complexity in the digital world where it's more than one sort of lens for AI that we need to be. Thinking about right now, it's also like super exciting. Like what a time to be alive, to like be able to be thinking about those things. It's a lot. It's a lot of complexity. It's like, well beyond what I think a lot of folks thought of their job description as project leaders in the digital world, but now it comes with the territory, right? Of like, okay, well we almost need to be more strategic about the way we think about it because we're so intertwined in the process developing something so complex.

Ben Chan:

Great. Well, if that was the medium long answer to hate to hear what the long length was.

Galen Low:

Yeah, that's that sounds like me being on brand. Awesome. Ben, thanks so much for spending the time with me here today. I've had a lot of fun. Before I let you go though, where can people learn more about you? And also is there anything cool that you're working on right now that you wanted to tell folks about while you're here?

Ben Chan:

Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn under PM Coach Ben, or just my regular name, Benjamin Chan, and feel free to go and connect with me there. I am gonna be speaking at various different PMI events across US and Canada. I'm going to be out in Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, PMI Alamo in Cyprus as well. So all over the world, so that's really cool. Next year, I'm actually gonna be releasing a group coaching program, so it's called Project Apex. It's going to be focused on providing project managers with, I'll say, foundational leadership power skills. Having them understand what they are. And then it comes along with three months of coaching where we come in as a group, we talk about the real situations and how they're applying into your area and enhancing them, and really moving the needle on your leadership skills so that you can not only just deliver confidently for your project. Have the confidence and resiliency to be able to go and accelerate and lift up your own career and superpower.

Galen Low:

Boom. I love it. The missing piece of the like current education puzzle, you know, I'm trying get good grades, get a job, but in between there's coaching or even during the journey, while you're in your job, there's coaching. I love that. Honestly, I think that's such a good perspective on like what coaching is for not to like necessarily like zero in on fix on specific problems, but like as a group to share knowledge and experience.'cause that's what's gonna like help folks understand what is possible and how to like exercise judgment and instinct as different scenarios come up in your professional life.

Ben Chan:

Absolutely.

Galen Low:

Anyways, I think that's so cool. I will include links to all of those things in the show notes. And if you don't follow Ben already on LinkedIn some of your content man is great. It's excellent. I like the, you know, comic book theme stuff. I like the memes. All super relatable, entertaining, and insightful. Genuinely. So keep doing what you do. I appreciate you and thanks again for coming on the show.

Ben Chan:

Yeah, thanks so much, Galen. Happy to be here.

Galen Low:

That's it for today's episode of The Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies and playbooks, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.