Is Project Management a Good Job for Me? AI Interviews a Project Manager

Inspired by two different real people I've talked with in the last few weeks who think a project management career might be on their horizon, I asked a fake person (the chatbot Claude.ai) to pretend to be in this situation and to interview me, an 8-year veteran in the field, about what the career is like. Below is the conversation we had, with Claude's questions in bold and my answers following. If you are also considering project management for your next career move, I hope the below begins to bring the realities of the role into focus!

What would you say are the primary responsibilities of a project manager in your day-to-day work?

First let's get on the same page about what a project is. A project is simply a set of coordinated actions undertaken by a team in order to meet a goal (or, as PMI puts it, to create a product, service, or result) that your company has determined worthy of its resources.

As a project manager, then, I am responsible for keeping a slate of projects on track to meet their goals. I might be responsible for as few as one project at a given time, or as many as a hundred, though I’ve gotten the sense that between 3 and 20 simultaneous projects is a common load for a project manager.

Keeping a project on track requires different actions from a project manager on different days—and in the best project management roles, you'll be given a good deal of freedom to use your own creativity, instincts, and experience to keep each project on track in the way you think is best.

But for example, on any given day I might be gathering some basic information about a project in order to get it started, leading a kickoff meeting to get the entire team on the same page about what the project will require, building out a project schedule in our project management software, answering team member questions, getting team members the resources they need to do their individual tasks, pulling together ad-hoc groups to solve project problems, identifying and looping in the correct people to make various project decisions, or elevating unusual project issues or conflicts to the appropriate senior leaders.

How important are communication and leadership skills in project management?

It's been said that all project managers do is communicate, and I don't necessarily disagree. Because I'm typically not doing most project tasks myself—instead I'm shepherding a team to do them in the most efficient and effective order—most of my time IS spent communicating to those team members in all the various ways they need in order to be effective at their tasks that will get the project done.

I also need to be in ongoing communication with company leaders who requested the project (sometimes called "sponsors") to ensure the project continues to move in a direction that meets the project goal as they understand it, and that the project has adequate resources available to it.

Moving a group of people toward a goal always takes leadership skills, and I feel I do well as a project manager when I take a 'servant leadership' approach—my project serves company goals, the team needs to serve project goals, and, most often, I am getting my team's needs met so they're able to get project needs met. I lead by helping my teams understand the value and purpose behind what we're doing, and I lead by equipping them to do their jobs effectively. Often, as I said earlier, this happens via some form of communication.

How do you prioritize and manage your time across multiple projects, and what tools or techniques do you find most useful for staying organized and efficient?

This is a great question, and something I enjoy talking about because I think we have a lot to be proud of and enjoy in our jobs as project managers, but we can also easily get stressed and overwhelmed by demands from many directions.

It is also an area I have personally grown in a lot, even as I am still growing.

I find part of the answer in the tactics I use to manage my work, and part of the answer in the philosophy I have about my work.

In terms of tactics, I have tried many different ways of structuring my own task lists over the years, and different approaches work for different people and different project environments. Currently I really enjoy using a system where I have a task list for each day in the coming week, and I work hard to only put a realistic, accomplish-able number of things on each day's list. It requires being highly in tune with the priority of various actions, and being ruthlessly honest about my own capacity. But when I do it well, it helps free me from the sense that I should have accomplished more than I realistically could on a given day.

I also label tasks in terms of how much brain power or focus they'll need. Simple items I label "tasks," and more complex items I label "puzzles." I try to only allot myself one puzzle per day when possible, and I also try to do the puzzle first thing in the morning when my brain is fresh—it's hard to follow through on this but the results are great when I do!

In terms of philosophy, I am working hard to tune out the noise of "urgent" requests (because the urgency with which someone brings you a request is not always its actual urgency within the scheme of overall company priorities) and tune in to what is the next most "important" thing for me to do given my role, be that large or small. If I am always doing the next most important thing, I should be able to go through my day working at a natural pace, not being overly concerned with how much I get done...rather than working backwards from a certain amount of things that "have" to get done today, and letting that perceived requirement put me in a stress mode for my whole workday.

What level of technical expertise do you find necessary in project management, particularly when it comes to understanding the work your team is doing or the tools they're using?

Great question. The short answer is: some.

If you have a deep level of technical expertise with regard to what your team is doing, it can certainly be an asset. You'll be able to ask them the right questions sooner (meaning, when you're newer in the role) and keep the project on track with less overall time devoted to communication.

But depending on the project or the type of field we're talking about, you don't necessarily need to go into the job knowing any of the technical aspects of the work, assuming you can convince someone you'll be good at the project management skills the role requires. You can learn the technical context from your team as you go. This will be easier if your team members are good communicators, enjoy teaching you, and trust you. It will be harder without those things...you may find it valuable to fill in your knowledge gaps with an online course or two on the side.

The technical knowledge you need going in may also vary depending on how complex the technical aspects of the field you're working in are. I now know a lot about how to produce a good video, and I didn't know anything about how to do this before I managed video projects. I can't actually use video software but I know all the steps my video team will need to perform and I can ask all the right questions of the person asking for the video to make sure the production process is efficient and the video is good. I learned all this on the job. Something where the field is inherently more complex—engineering, chemistry, astrophysics—you might fumble for longer as you're learning how the technical aspects of the work need to impact the project process. But a good team will still fill in those gaps for you.

The beauty of project management, in theory, is that the core skills of project management apply across disciplines and industries, and you "should" be able to walk into an industry you don't know much about and still manage a project well, because you know how to work with people and you know how to build and manage a process that leads a team toward a goal. But a lot depends on whether the person hiring you also believes that, as well as on the particular field and role, and how much your team is prepared to help you along.

What advice would you give to someone just starting in project management, and what do you see as the key factors for advancing in this career field?

I would start by doing two things simultaneously.

The first is to look or ask for opportunities to manage projects within the job you already have. If you've never managed a project before, the best people to give you a chance to start building this brand new skillset are the ones around you who already trust that you're generally a competent worker. And volunteering for a little extra work will be welcome at most companies. Keep dabbling in projects at your current company until a full-time project management opportunity opens up for you there, or you have enough project experiences to make your resume sound good enough to apply for project management jobs elsewhere.

The other is to dive into the resources of the Project Management Institute (PMI), the premier international project management professional organization. Their most well-known certification is the PMP®; it is worth exploring its requirements and seeing how close you are to being able to take the certification test. Getting your PMP will not only be an asset on your resume and a requirement for some project management jobs, but it will equip you with the international standard language of project managers, ensuring you can sound like you know what you're talking about in an interview and can fit in smoothly with other project managers at a potential new company.

But if you're a long way from your PMP, don't fret. Start by taking a look at PMI's KICKOFF™ course, which will show you the basics of how to manage a project in about 45 minutes. This course may also be a good way to further get a sense of whether the career of project management feels like a good fit for you.

Have more questions about a project management career that you'd like to ask me? I'd be happy to answer them on a coaching call! Or sign up below to be notified about new posts on my blog, where I discuss a wide variety of situations project managers face and how I navigate them.