APM webinar highlights paths for teachers into project management

If you’re a teacher considering a career change, project management could be a perfect fit for your skills and experience.

On a recent webinar by Association for Project Management, Joanna Evans shared her journey from secondary teaching and senior leadership to her current role at engineering, management and development consultancy Mott MacDonald, where she works on projects related to health, social care and education.

She was first encouraged to try her hand at project management by a friend who was already working in the project profession. She realised that a lot of the daily tasks she was responsible for as a teacher were also important in project management: organising, communicating with people and creating plans.

Joanna saw this as reframing existing experience; a concept she expanded on during the webinar, explaining how existing skills can be applied, developed or adapted to deliver projects.

Reframing experience: education to project management competencies

Joanna shared her view that reframing non-traditional experience is about learning the language.

"It’s not learning to do new things necessarily,” she said. “It’s learning the language to apply to the things you already do and then building on that knowledge."

"For me there are two big themes at the heart of project management…The people skills (leadership, teamwork, communications) and organisation skills (how good you are with time management, planning and scheduling). If you're strong in those two elements, then project management is for you."

Watch the full webinar

You can watch the full webinar with Joanna Evans here. The information shared is relevant to:

• Career-changers exploring project management and related roles
• Early career professionals, interns and volunteers
• Recruiters and hiring managers assessing non-traditional applicants
• Managers supporting diverse career pathways

Discover more

• A full list of future APM events can be found here.
• If you’d like to see how well your own skills could fit with a project management role, take a look at the APM Competence Framework.