PM POWER Moves: Breaking INTO Project Management - Part 001: Value

Happy Sunday everyone!

Allow me to introduce myself! My name is Logan Langin, I'm currently a Senior Project Manager for the Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) of my organization. I've been a project manager (by title) for almost 3 years but have been performing project management since 2015.

I've been actively engaged on LinkedIn for the last 6 months, posting content and engaging daily for the last 4 months. In that time, I've engaged a niche of aspiring project managers looking to translate their existing experience (like I did) to gain new opportunities in the project management field. My desire for this my content (and this newsletter) is to be able to help YOU do that!

I will be publishing this newsletter every other Sunday and covering a wide variety of content to leverage in your own experience and career to help provide you opportunity!

This week's topic: Value

Value is very vague. It can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I provide value in my position by wearing many hats - coordinating meetings, taking notes, collating information and sharing it, generating reports, maintaining communication, etc, etc. But today I want to talk about how YOU can provide value in your current career to build the opportunity you want.

First, you should be doing your job at a high-level already. It's going to be difficult to gain opportunity if you're not already exceeding expectations. Once you're a top-tier employee in your department, you can start offering to do additional, nominal things to benefit your boss. Taking on 5% more work can lead to 50% gain, if you do it right. Look at the work your boss is doing, what is an easy task they HATE doing? Offer to take that on for them (bonus points if its something that relates to project management). Offer to take notes, collate documentation, set-up meetings, prep a presentation or report.

By doing some of this, you're providing additional value to your boss and team while learning duties of a project manager at the same time. You can use this favor to then leverage in the future to suggest and manage projects. But that's a topic for another newsletter.

LinkedIn "Hack of the Week"

If you've been on LinkedIn for any amount of time, you know that there are many ways to use it for professional development. I stumble upon these often and would like to share a relevant one with you when I can.

This week's "Hack of the Week" is finding content creators at the companies you'd like to work at.

1. Search for the job you'd like (ie: "project coordinator")
2. Filter for "Posts", then go to "All filters" and down to Author Company. Type in your target company/companies. Click "Show results"
3. You now have a list of content creators that post regularly and do a job you want at a company (or industry) you'd like to work in

Review their content, follow them on LinkedIn (ring their bell) and begin engaging on their current content. This will help develop a relationship that you can then leverage further in Direct Messages (DMs) to gain knowledge and insight of the career you'd like to break into from someone on the inside. Try it out and let me know how it goes!

This is my first attempt at a newsletter, so I'd love your feedback! Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you have topics that you'd like me to cover? I'm open! Please let me know in the comments of DM me!