HOW TO BECOME A MANAGER | HOW TO GET A MANAGER JOB

So you’re now established in your career, grown professionally, and are ready for your next big thing: becoming a manager. 

And whether or not you have official leadership experience, you know you’re ready, and you want to take your shot because you know…

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take” Kamara Toffolo (Michael Scott…Wayne Gretzky)

In this video, I’m going to cover how to get a job in management, and give you some tips for taking your resume from individual contributor, to manager.

So you want to be a boss, huh?

Nothing better than calling the shots and bossing people around right, like…

If that’s how you envision yourself as a leader (though I’m sure you don’t) you might want to reassess if this path is for you. But this does bring me to my first point…

Get Clear On Why You Want To Be A Leader

If you watch my videos you’re probably sick of hearing me talk about career clarity. #sorrynotsorry.

While a pain in the butt, this step cannot be skipped.

When you’re gunning for management, you are going to need to be very clear on WHY.

Usually, more money, more responsibility or power aren’t good enough for a why.

But things that are good whys include:

Mentoring staff to develop and grow professionally

Passing on your knowledge

Bringing learnings from prior roles and companies to a new one

Leveraging relationships to deliver better service

Tapping into your demonstrated influence to enhance business performance and results

The key to all of these whys is that they are about creating better solutions for an employer.

Unofficial Management and Leadership Experience

Now that you’re clear on why you want to go after a management role, let’s go back in time and think about how you’ve already been developing as a leader.

Let’s first talk about unofficial leadership experience.

You may not realize that there are many different ways that you could have already been flexing your management muscles without having a management title.

Here are just a few examples:

You mentored, coached, or trained colleagues.

Maybe you cross-trained a colleague on your areas of responsibility.

Maybe you were the de facto intern leader.

Perhaps you mentored a peer on developing their tech skills.

Or even took the initiative to lead a training session on a new collaboration tool.

As you can tell, there are soooo many possibilities where you may have already been using your leadership and management skills.

Official Management and Leadership Experience

Even if you don’t have a management role right now, you may have been in the position of being a de facto manager. Project managers will encounter this a lot as the lead cross-functional teams full of folks that don’t report into them.

The ability to lead through influence is a very sought after skill.

So some official leadership experience that you might already have include:

Leading cross-functional project teams

Sitting on or even leading committees

Outside of work, you may volunteer in a leadership capacity especially if you sit on a board, or committee. Don’t forget about this work.

Being Seen As A Leader By Others

If you’re a top-performer, you have probably already been seen as a future leader before you even saw yourself growing into a management role yourself.

Some signs that you’re seen as an up-and-coming leader are:

You’ve been invited to and entrusted with taking on high-profile initiatives. These aren’t for the average. Being asked to step up to take on a high-profile initiative shows that existing leaders are wanting to put you to the test and see what you’re made of because they already know you’ll excel.

Another sign is you were asked to actually act as a leader. Maybe you were a back-up team lead when your manager was absent. Or given authority to approve certain changes. These are all important details.

And finally, maybe you were invited to develop as a leader through invitation-only leadership training. Many large organizations have formal programs that will prime up-and-comers to become leaders. If you’re invited to participate, this shows you’re seen as top talent.

Now make sure to watch the video to see how these examples would actually look and how you’d write them, in your resume.

We’re going to spend most of our time looking at accomplishment bullets.

How will you be changing your resume after you watched this video? How are you feeling about pursuing a management role? What questions remain for you? Tell me anything and everything in the comments below!