- Welcome back to the second episode of the PM Perspective YouTube channel. I'm so excited to be here with you today. Just a reminder this month,
for the rest of this month and the month of April we're talking about how to get a project management job. You maybe be looking for your
first project management job, you may already have one or you're looking for your next one. If you're in either one of
those scenarios we're going to have lots of great information for you this month and next month. In our last video we talked
about how to determine whether or not project
management is right for you. Hopefully you found that useful. If you didn't see that video
I'll put the link to it in the upper right hand, right,
nope my right, your left. Upper left hand corner of the video. You may want to click that, go watch that before you watch this one. This video today is
all about compensation. Hey when you're looking to
get into project management or into any profession you'll want to talk a little bit about what
is the earning potential. So we'll get into that today. I'm going to apologize to my viewers who are not in North America. The information that I have for you today is North America specific
and I have no idea how it translates into other markets. So for those of you who
are not in North America I apologize, this information
may not be relevant to you. For those of you who are,
then let's get right into it. Today I'm gonna talk a little bit about, I'll give you sort of an
overview of what the range of what people get paid
as project managers today as of the filming of this video. Then we'll talk about some
of the factors that factor in to whether you're at sort of
the upper end of the range that I give you or if
you're at the lower end. In order for me to explain
how project managers are compensated we need
to break it down into the, there's different job
levels typically out there in corporate America, different job levels for the project management profession. It starts with the project
administrator which is more of any entry level role
that people can get into. Then there's the junior project manager, then there's the project manager, the senior project
manager, and now I'm seeing a lot more executive, we call them like delivery, executive delivery managers. Or even program manager. So those are the bands. Project administrator,
junior PM, PM, senior PM, and delivery executive. The PA, or project administrator
I typically see them getting compensated between,
check my worksheet here, between I want to say
40 to 60K, depending on a couple of factors,
but PA entry level job, somewhere between 40 to
60K is what I'm seeing them get compensated for, typically. The junior PM you would
expect to see most jobs fall between 60 to 70K, That's really what I'm
seeing on offer these days. PMs between 70 to 90K,
senior PMs 90 to 130K and the executives, 130
plus depending on the level of executive we're
talking about and the size of the project involved. So that sort of general
overview of the salary bands that I'm seeing out there
in corporate America. What determines whether you
fall higher end of that band or the lower end? The obvious thing is experience. That is one thing. But there is other factors. There's things such as industry, right? So I think the smaller mom
and pop shops that maybe less than 100 people they're
hiring project managers full time they typically, not
even actually in the band, they're usually below. So I see the smaller shops
hiring PMs, like full fledged PMs, not junior PMs they're
advertising them for maybe $50,000 to $60,000. Where I typically see the
junior PM being compensated. But the cool thing about
those smaller shops is they're easier to break into. So if you don't have a lot
of experience, they're more willing to look at you. They understand, they're
not being very competitive where they are but they
do need a project manager to help them do whatever
it is they're trying to do. The mom and pop shops typically
are not even in the band, but below the band. I find that retail and
service industries fall towards the bottom of the
bands that I just gave you. Technology and teleco
companies also unfortunately more often than not are
falling at the bottom of those salary bands. Finance and insurance
are usually in the middle to upper end of the band,
depending on which one you're working for. Consulting is either
all the way at the top or maybe even outside on
the positive side of those salary bands. And of course the reason for
that is, those consulting firms when they hire a project
manager they're usually very, very senior and they're
consultants as well. They're fully billable
at a astronomical rate. Makes sense for PMs in those
organizations to get paid a lot more than some of the others. And then I also find that
energy and utilities, they tend to pay, not
on the high end but even outside of those salary bands. Generally the kinds of
projects that they're into are tremendously huge. I mean, upgrading electrical
infrastructure and doing things like building
oil platforms in the middle of the ocean. I can only imagine what
that would be like. These are very specialized
roles and for people who have experience doing that sort
of thing they usually get compensated very well for that. Government I find is it
depends on whether it's local government or federal
or state or provincial, it varies wildly. But what I find is when you
get in to the provincial or federal or the state and
the federal the salaries are typically in the
higher end of the bands and sometimes they fall up and
above some of those bands. That's kind of what I'm
seeing as far as salaries and the different levels
and the different factors that influence. Before we end this video
I want to take a minute and talk about what makes
project management so unique, especially when it comes
to how you're compensated. I think the cool thing about
project management is that you have an opportunity to
earn a significant amount of money in a very early
stage of your career, if you're good at what you do. I find that things like years of service, degrees, those kinds of
things are less of a factor when people consider you
for promotion and when they consider putting you on bigger projects. The only thing that
really seems to matter in the project management
world is whether or not you can get the job done. Whether or not you're a problem
solver, and whether or not you can be trusted to make
good, sound business decisions with the amount of money
they're entrusting you with. If you demonstrate those
things, nothing else matters. They want you and they want
you now, to manage the projects that they want to deliver
on in this fiscal year. If you're good at what you
do and you learn very quickly you can earn a large
salary fairly quickly. I earned six figures well
before I was in my mid 30s. It's not a hard thing to do. The other cool thing about
project management and it's not, it is related to salary and compensation, but it's a little unrelated, and it's, even a junior PM might
manage a project that's in the $250,000 to $500,000 investment range. That's not a small sum of money. Typically your executive
sponsor for something like that would be maybe a vice president. A junior PM could be
somebody who's in their 20s. They're just getting
started in their career, they were a PA for a few years,
they now are a junior PM, and they're sitting across the
table, as part of their job, from a vice president,
and they're interacting with that person,
learning from that person. And they're involved in
conversations around investments and business decisions
and things that typically people don't actually get
to see or even experience until much later in their careers. If you were in a finance
role or a marketing role or an HR role you would
have had to worked your way up the ranks in order to work that closely with a senior executive. The project management
profession is really cool in that if you're good at what
you do and you're passionate, and you're a problem solver
and you make good, solid business decisions, you can move up quickly. You can make a lot of connections, and you can make a decent living. That is in a nutshell
what I have to say about compensation. Hopefully that helps you
understand what the landscape looks like. The final thing that
I will leave you with, because this always comes up in the compensation
conversation, is the whole full time employee versus
contract employee conversation. This comes up a lot. At some point in your
career you'll be working alongside another project
manager who was brought in on contract and for whatever
reason you discovered oh my goodness, they get
paid a heck of a lot more per hour than I do. Maybe you're making $35 an
hour and they're making $65, or $75 an hour. And you think, how can I
get a piece of that action? The one thing I would say
about that is, you really have to think, and maybe
this is a whole other video, but you have to think long
and hard about what you want out of your career. I've been on both sides,
contract and full time, and I've made the decision,
actually I like being a full time employee better than
I like being a contractor. Although I earned a significantly
more as a contractor than I have as a full timer. We'll talk about why I like
being a full timer later. As a contractor, one thing
you have to be very aware of, is although it seems like
it's a lot of money up front, unless you're very shrewd
with your money and you've set your corporation up
correctly, and you've got a good accountant, you
can end up actually with a lot less money in your
pocket if you're not careful. You also could end up
in trouble if you don't know what you're doing. It isn't all rainbows and
butterflies for the contractor. They do have to go look for
their next job, there may be some down time between
different jobs although today, if you're good you probably
won't have a problem. It's not always apples to
apples when you look at the compensation. And as a full time employee
you also get benefits, the contractor does not. There's that to consider. But there is a lot of
earning potential for those who are experienced, they're
good at what they do, and who are contracting
or even freelancing. There's my project
manager compensation chat. Hopefully that was informative
and it's helped you understand the landscape a little bit. If you liked this information
or if you find that this information was
helpful and you think other project managers would be able to leverage this information, please
interact with this video. Give me a thumbs up or
a thumbs down and please leave a comment. Tell me in the comments,
what did you think of this information? Does it align with what
you're experiencing right now? Did I say anything that
maybe was surprising to you? Please, leave me a comment,
would love to hear from you. So that's it for this video. In the next video we talk a bit about let me take a look at my schedule here, classes. I get asked a lot what
classes a person should take when they're starting a
career in project management. So we'll talk about
that in the next video. With that I will leave you. I think we've gone on long enough. Goodbye and we will see you next week.
