Table of Contents
Introduction
Learning the world’s most in-demand IT skills makes you a hot cake, but if you want to put an icing on the cake and unlock better salaries and perks, then there are other skills that need to complement your IT skills and top of that list is project management.
In this article, we mentioned the reasons why Project Management is the next hotcake for IT experts especially in this post-pandemic season; but one of the biggest arguments around project management is whether or not project management certifications are needed for one to develop skills in this regard. This article explores some of the reasons why going for a certification may be highly needed.
Proving Your Skills
A project manager would determine if a goal is achievable, how it would be achieved, what resources would be needed, how long it would take and how much it would take.
Project management is a big deal, it is not a skill that can be tested within a few minutes, and since a project manager is placed in charge of delicate tasks like handling finances and taking major decisions, it is risky to give projects to a manager to test his skills.
Therefore there is a need for the employer to be assured of your project management skills before employment; the best way to convince your employer of this is by having a recognized professional certificate in project management. In this article, we give a list of the best project management certifications an IT expert should go for.
Having a Guideline
The Project management world is a world is often a very confusing one for beginners; you see a lot of enticing skills along the way and sometimes you spend a long time jumping from one sector into another without having industry-standard knowledge in either sector.
Project management requires a wide-variety of skills and knowing the right sequence to seeking knowledge about the skills such that the foundational knowledge is sought before the secondary knowledge, this is often a hard task.
By preparing for a certification though, you have a sense of direction, the certifications are graded in such a way that you know what should be next for you, based on your interest, after finishing each one.
While you are preparing, you are not just running around haphazardly in the project management world, but you are following a good structure that assures you that by the time you are done, you would have industry-standard knowledge.
Community
Some certification vendors provide you with communities that help you ask questions from colleagues and learn from their experience. Read this article for comparison of different certifications and explore which ones have the right communities.
CompTIA certification holders for example, have formed a strong community you can learn from, interact with, ask for support from and give back to.
You have a community of like-minded people; people who have gotten the certifications you are working towards and can guide you towards making the best use of it when you get it and also the best way to get it.
If used wisely, the community could infact be a bigger blessing than the certification itself, as you create connections that may have a huge impact on your career and exposure.
Conclusion
Taking a certification course in project management is almost a necessity given the fact that the certification vendors prepare you for industry-standard and industry-specific skills, and also, if you take a well recognized certification like CompTIA’s Project Management certification, then you can easily convince your employer to entrust you with big projects without him being hesitant
