Stop Chasing the Perfect PM Job and Start Creating It

“We're a small agency. We wear a lot of hats.”

We’ve all heard some version of this statement. As project managers, we are basically trying on hats in a “hat store” every day. We see how different hats fit, what those hats do, why they do what they do, and why some hats are better than others.

But have you ever considered just how valuable those hats are?

Wearing many hats does this (brace yourselves): It adds value. And that’s not just jargon. You. Add. Value. 

Think about it. You add so much value that an organization is willing to pay for your salary, pay into your 401K, pay for much of your medical and dental, pay you while you’re on vacation, provide a budget for self-improvement, and even support your additional education or training. If you were to provide all of that to someone, how valuable would that person have to be to you? Super valuable, right?

That value, and all the skills that come with it, can take you further than you've ever imagined. And when something like a layoff hits (which, let’s be honest, is becoming more and more common for PMs), those skills become your lifeline.

So let’s get into it: what you bring to the table, how to use it to create a path for yourself, and how I leaned on those exact same skills to find my footing after getting laid off.

The Skills You Have to Offer As a PM

At this point, I’ve read enough project management job descriptions to get an honorary degree in “The Psychology of Historically Traumatic Business Practices” with a minor in “Infinite Scroll Job Description Bullet Points.” I’ve seen PM job descriptions that go on for miles, featuring a list of duties that seem to fill in the gaps for every other role at the organization.

But the amazing part is, if you’ve been a PM for more than three years, you probably have these bases covered. You could fulfill those duties and then some.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at some of the duties I’ve seen listed in a PM job description (with PM language translator notes added in bold):

• Be the hub of information for all things—be in the know on everything. (Everything? Yes, everything. The “buck” starts and stops with you.)
• Liaise between departments, ensuring information, feedback, and documents are routed to the appropriate people. (You control the stop and start of timely, interdependent work.)
• Own project management software entry and maintenance. (Version control—don’t botch it. You are daily human QA.)
• Own daily or weekly hotlist and internal status meetings. (You’re telling people what to do, when to do it, and with which items. AKA soft-power bossing.)
• Proactively identify potential capacity issues, scheduling conflicts, clarity issues, incremental scope creep, deliverables issues, etc. (The world famous "etc." catch-all. This is where you make magic happen. True soft-power bossing facilitated by negotiation skills.)
• Identify, secure, and assign resources/allocations for all projects on their assigned brand(s). (Who works on what, when, why, and how. More soft-power bossing.)
• Ensure production is brought into the process at the right time, create/manage holistic project schedules, allowing for proper production time, initiate and schedule production kickoff meetings, and ensure creatives are able to meet production schedule requirements from a resource standpoint. (We’re talking vendor management. POs / Invoices / Hours vs Time / Negotiation / Bidding / Skills vs Needs / Reputation Management based on delivering.)
• Proactively manage workflow budgets / scope. (Make the impossible happen.)
• Ensure the team is clear on assignments, workload is manageable, and calendars make sense. Solve any creative, production, or development problems. (Support morale in difficult situations by maintaining an even-keel, staying level-headed, providing a strong POV on good, better, best solution options.)
• Create project folders and maintain up-to-date server organization / asset management during creative development. (Did I mention version control? Also, quick intuitive access to assets = key to a happy team.)
• Own the creation of project timelines, and work with all departments to get alignment and sign-off prior to project start. (Don’t make promises for others to keep. No writing checks you can’t cash.)
• Schedule and lead / facilitate internal meetings related to project milestones. (Let people know when the crazy is hitting. Have plan A, B, C, D ready. Stay level- headed. Be responsive, not reactive.)
• Own notes and identify feedback and next steps for all internal team meetings in creative development. (Accountability on requested changes and due dates. Also, an opportunity to identify “organic-growth” in light of scope creep.)

As a project manager, you can do all of this. You’re a rock star. And yet, despite all of our talents and skills, not every organization sees our value.

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Getting Laid Off As a Project Manager

At some point in our careers, many of us will find ourselves on the other side of a quick 15-minute, “No Subject Line” meeting, during which our log-ins are quietly revoked and we're given just a few minutes to pack our things and make our way to the exit. It can feel insulting after all the demonstrated loyalty. It can feel confusing when you know just how much value you deliver.

Getting laid off as a project manager is becoming all too common. But it’s important to remember that layoffs are just policy in action. It’s not about you or your skills. So try not to take it personally. Keep your head high and start making plans for your revenge resume.

I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve experienced getting laid off. And I’ve experienced what it’s like to try to rebuild after one.

The realization that has been the most helpful to me while working through the stages of post-layoff grief is that I have all of the skills I need to be successful in whatever comes next.

That list above—those are your superpowers. Those are the skills that will help you find your next gig, and absolutely rock it. So let’s get into what comes next, and the stages you’ll probably go through on your way to bigger and better things.

Stage 1: Grief & Disbelief

Choose something Emo. 

Remember vendors? The freelancers you didn’t use? Consider how much rejection and ghosting they routinely face. If they can face that day in and day out, you can handle this.

During this stage, resolve yourself to not go on LinkedIn until you’re feeling stable and grounded. Comparing yourself to others is a recipe for disaster and demotivation.

In the meantime, take inventory of the positive influences in your life.

Feed the wolf that feeds you. Don’t feed the wolf that drains you.

Speaking of draining, don’t drain your sorrows in cocktails or beer (or some other destructive habit). Maybe drown your sorrows in sweat, instead? While that sounds infinitely more gross, it’s so much better for your brain. Exercise can actually help you grow new neurons! New neurons = new thoughts. New thoughts = new actions. Boom! You’re starting.

It doesn't need to be exercise, but find something the fuels you. Maybe that's making art, sitting in nature, or spending time with loved ones. The important part is to find the space to recenter before you dive back in.

Stage 2: What now?

Ok, fine. This sucks, but I’m over it.

Once you’ve given yourself time to grieve, it’s time to expand your horizons. Who are you now? Who do you want to become? Does your resume reflect that?

Think about the job description we went through earlier. How can you reverse engineer it? How can you apply it to different opportunities?  

You’re the hub—the person who knows all things, and who communicates with all players. You establish the budget for everyone’s work and you maintain those numbers. You manage change, provide updates, and secure necessary assets for work to progress. And you do all of this while making sure everyone’s roadblocks are removed (including emotional ones), and orchestrating the choreography of the project ballet.

You’re a problem solver. You’re a do-anything entrepreneur. If you want to be.

But that’s the challenge, isn’t it? Figuring out exactly what you want to be, and what you want to use your depth of skills to accomplish. As I see it, you have a few different options:

1. You can stay in the village. (AKA get another full-time role as a project manager in the same industry as before.)
2. You can venture out into the wild. (AKA become a freelance project manager or entrepreneur using your skills in entirely new ways).
3. You can escape to the wild, but stay close to the village. (AKA do some feral work—I mean fractional work—as a PM.)
4. Or you can go into the wild towards another village. (AKA Go the freelance / entrepreneurial route in a new business category.)

I’m sure there are other avenues I’m missing, but it can be intimidating to look at a long list of everything you could do. And with your skills, you could do a lot. 

Remember: you don’t have to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. You just have to decide for the now, for what’s immediately next.

Stage 3: Own it

This is me. This is my life. 

It’s easy to say “just pick a path and follow it.” But job searching isn’t easy. Going freelance or starting your own company isn’t either. 

And in reality, life is life, and it’s going to do life things. 

I’m in Stage 3 myself, and I want to share a little bit about my professional story to maybe help you with yours.

I’ve gone through each of the options I outlined above. But my path didn’t flow like a waterfall from 1 to 4, and it won't for you either. You can start with 3, move to 2, jump to 4, then to 1. From the Mandalorian: This is the way. Or you know, one of the ways.

Here’s how I got to where I am, and what I’m aiming at next.

I recently moved to Spain, due to a post-Covid induced mid-life psych-crisis, wherein everyone was in a fever-dream of remote work, working from wherever you wanted or could work. Then reality’s enforcer, the tax man, hit. The freedom rug was pulled out from under me, but I tried to ride it anyway. It was too late to bail. We’d sold everything, bought plane tickets, arranged for our dog to fly—we were moving. What now? Now what? OMG!

With no job waiting, I was thrust into an immediate go-time scenario. No unemployment. No safety nets beyond savings. In this scenario, when an opportunity comes, the answer is yes. Can you do that? Yes! Ok, if the question is, “Can you weld this rocket booster?” the answer is probably no. But you get it.

The fine toothed comb through which we normally filter our world suddenly has much wider spaces between the teeth.

Like many stories, the difference maker, that moment of luck, the light in dark times, found me because I was looking for it everywhere. The first came in the form of friends with whom I’d worked with previously (my network). They needed help securing new clients. Well, I loved new business pitches. Though I’d only worked on the delivery side of those pitches, not securing the pitches, I jumped in anyway. I knew my project management skills would translate.

The second came by way of The DPM. I had experience to share in the project management space, and they had a growing audience (very meta). Meanwhile, I was freelancing through my LLC and working as a Fractional VP of Operations.

These efforts carried me along for a period of time, during which another friend approached me with an idea to develop an app. While I personally didn’t know much about what it takes to build an app, I knew I could make it happen. This was the biggest, most eye-opening experience for me. It’s when I really started to see my project management skills for the superpower they are.

Picture a room of creatives and developers. They’re all discussing the dream, the vision, and how it should come to life. Who does what? When should that happen, and how? Without someone who can aggregate, prioritize, resource, plan, and hold people accountable, not much can get done from meeting to meeting. This is my wheelhouse. Stop the swirl. Project management provides a clear path forward from dream to execution and delivery. The German side of me wants to say: I’m the step maker.

Through all of these different projects, there was still one dream I continued to feel a pull towards. I wanted to create a cycling obsessed, short-term-rental, Spanish gravel cycle-touring business. This was a completely new line of work for me, or was it?

But (like most dreams), it didn’t come to fruition right away. Because Spanish banks don’t recognize American credit scores, and my freelancing/fractional work wasn’t providing the steady income banks want to see, my personal dream was temporarily pickled. On ice. Drying like a Jamón in a cool dark space.

So there was that question again: What now? And that’s when I received the exact advice I needed at the exact right time. A new friend, who had opened a coffee shop in Alicante (and who also had PM-ing in his background) said:

Just start. Just do what you can with what you have now.

It was like a giant “Duh” moment. I knew designers, copywriters, editors—there were people I could ask for help. It was at this moment that my cycle brand went from idea to conception. Another friend created a logo for me and from there, YouTube, Instagram, a co-branded coffee collab, branded STRAVA swag, and gravel race event promotion and organization followed. My project management experience and skills gave me the confidence to try, to endure the suck, grow, and start to see sprouts. Many connections followed. A community began taking shape.  

Knowing about layers, file formats, software tools, specs, process, pricing, sequencing events, asset management, and organization, allowed me to keep my various efforts aligned. My 12 years of experience in project management provided me with a deep network to fall back on for important information and insights.

What Comes Next?

Here comes the reality check: This story doesn’t have a happy ending. Well, mainly because it’s not over. The dream of hosting cyclists in Spain, sharing incredible experiences on gravel in the mountains didn’t quite work out. The sprout’s growth didn’t keep pace with the necessary finances.

So the story continues back here in the U.S., specifically in Boise, Idaho, where I am still working with bullets 2, 3, and 4 while searching once again for 1. In the meantime, a predictable income with healthcare doing what I do is my short “long-term” goal. The gravel cycle touring business remains alive in my soul, waiting to take new shape once the conditions are right again.  

If you take one thing away from my story, I hope it’s this: You have more applicable skills than you may think. If you’re trying to bounce back from a layoff, or are just trying to figure out what’s next, try to find new and different ways to apply those skills. Say yes more. Widen your consideration set and be open to magic happening in unexpected places. And most importantly: Know your worth.