Best Jobs For Former Project Managers [2022]

By Chris Kolmar - Jul. 13, 2022

It’s tough to be a project manager nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a project manager isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become project managers in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many project managers no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former project managers to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former PROJECT MANAGERS

  1. Superintendent Jobs

  2. Business Developer Jobs

  3. Operations Director Jobs

  4. Principal Jobs

  5. Management Consultant Jobs

  6. Senior Business Analyst Jobs

  7. Engineer Jobs

  8. Chief Executive Officer Jobs

  9. Information Technology Consultant Jobs

  10. Estimator Jobs

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former PROJECT MANAGERS

Rank Job Title %
1 Senior Project Manager 5.07%
2 Program Manager 2.48%
3 Consultant 1.3%
4 Information Technology Project Manager 1.26%
5 Operations Manager 1.12%
6 Owner 0.89%
7 Manager 0.84%
8 Construction Manager 0.82%
9 Business Analyst 0.82%
10 Product Manager 0.59%
11 Vice President 0.56%
12 General Manager 0.54%
13 Account Manager 0.51%
14 Senior Manager 0.51%
15 Project Coordinator 0.5%
16 Project Engineer 0.5%
17 Superintendent 0.46%
18 Marketing Manager 0.43%
19 Technical Project Manager 0.43%
20 President 0.4%
21 Business Developer 0.39%
22 Senior Consultant 0.38%
23 Director 0.37%
24 Operations Director 0.37%
25 Principal 0.36%
26 Owner/operator 0.36%
27 Office Manager 0.34%
28 Account Executive 0.34%
29 Project Analyst 0.34%
30 Management Consultant 0.32%
31 Senior Business Analyst 0.31%
32 Information Technology Manager 0.3%
33 Team Leader 0.29%
34 Customer Service Representative 0.28%
35 Consultant/project Manager 0.28%
36 Administrative Assistant 0.28%
37 Sales Representative 0.27%
38 Sales Associate 0.26%
39 Manager And Consultant 0.26%
40 Service Manager 0.25%
41 Internship 0.23%
42 Program/project Manager 0.23%
43 Engineering Manager 0.22%
44 Engineer 0.22%
45 Chief Executive Officer 0.21%
46 Project Leader 0.21%
47 Information Technology Consultant 0.2%
48 Estimator 0.2%
49 Project Superintendent 0.19%
50 Sales Manager 0.19%
51 Facilities Manager 0.19%
52 Purchasing Manager 0.19%
53 Data Analyst 0.18%
54 President/owner 0.18%
55 Estimator Project Manager 0.18%
56 Business Development Manager 0.18%
57 Supervisor 0.18%
58 Business Analyst-Consultant 0.18%
59 Associate 0.17%
60 Principal Consultant 0.17%
61 Production Manager 0.17%
62 Marketing Director 0.17%
63 Assistant Project Manager 0.17%
64 Project Manager/scrum Master 0.17%
65 Director Of Information 0.17%
66 Volunteer 0.16%
67 Managing Director 0.16%
68 Program Director 0.15%
69 Research Assistant 0.15%
70 General Contractor 0.15%
71 Assistant Manager 0.15%
72 Quality Assurance Manager 0.15%
73 Quality Control Manager 0.15%
74 Technician 0.15%
75 Analyst 0.15%
76 Project Director 0.15%
77 Executive Director 0.15%
78 Owner/manager 0.15%
79 Store Manager 0.14%
80 Senior Engineer 0.14%
81 Executive Assistant 0.14%
82 Site Manager 0.14%
83 Systems Engineer 0.14%
84 Business Manager 0.14%
85 Systems Administrator 0.14%
86 Adjunct Professor 0.14%
87 Substitute Teacher 0.14%
88 Senior Software Engineer 0.14%
89 Quality Manager 0.14%
90 Teacher 0.14%
91 Property Manager 0.13%
92 Design Engineer 0.13%
93 Architect 0.13%
94 Field Engineer 0.13%
95 Quality Assurance 0.13%
96 Delivery Manager 0.13%
97 Specialist 0.13%
98 Senior Project Engineer 0.13%
99 Mechanical Engineer 0.13%
100 Senior Analyst 0.12%

Most Common Jobs For Former PROJECT MANAGERS

  1. Senior Project Manager

  2. Program Manager

  3. Consultant

  4. Information Technology Project Manager

  5. Operations Manager

  6. Owner

  7. Manager

  8. Construction Manager

  9. Business Analyst

  10. Product Manager

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a project manager would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former project managers to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former PROJECT MANAGERS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed project manager under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a project manager, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

  • Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
  • And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

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Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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