Today is my sixth month of being a project manager, and for the first time in my life, I have never been sure what I want to do with my career. This might not seem extraordinary to you. However, it, indeed, is for me as I’ve tried so many fields during my path so far that I can count on my both hands. Hence, finding a sphere I long to settle down with is like finding true love.
To start the article, it is somehow essential to mention that I studied English philology that has nothing to do with my current career. Frankly, I’ve never thought I’d become a philologist either. So the reason why I’ve decided to write this article is to share my experience of starting a dream career that always seemed a dream not to come true.
So, I’m a person who always pokes her nose into everything that interests her. Sometimes, my siblings say: “Is there anything you don’t want to do?” I mean, it always made me feel that there was something wrong in my being interested in everything, as I was always ending up disappointed. Notwithstanding with this idea, I continued this path even when I was depressed, and the emotionalism and drama are my half-brothers, trust me. Nevertheless, no matter how down I felt, I have always pushed myself one more step forward.
Not to go into details about my personality, all I want to convey is that, of course, it is difficult always being a junior and trying to find out what really you want to do. However, all that time is worthy when you end up finding that one thing. Sometimes we think that all the years we spend on things we don’t even like were just a waste of time. But then again only after almost ten years, I’ve just come to that exact idea that I have always been told:
- Tourism
- Marketing
- Importing
These were my spheres before I came to a conclusion to become an IT project manager. When I started to think about becoming an IT PM, I was in that emotional condition that I hated my job, and used to wake up with a sickness of the idea that this is another day of distress. Sure, I was considering PM career. However, I kept reminding myself: “You have no, not a single idea about IT world, just forget it, it won’t be possible”. In addition to this, who would employ a-never-been -English-teacher to the sphere of geniuses? So I continued my path to importing…. God, I hated that job, ugh…… I don’t want to be rude towards the great importing companies or the people whose dream is importing; it is just I didn’t like it. Nothing personal.
Albeit all this, after a year of this suffering I took a Project Management class at BSC. I remember me sitting among the other students. I felt myself a misery as I knew so little about IT, and I was taking the class with experienced PMs or developers. I felt lost. However, my ambitions were too high to quit so I put myself in the classes, tried to keep up with my classmates and learn as much as I could. I got my certificate after two months and all I was dreaming about was finding a job. Frankly, I was so sick of my job that I was actually always failing and making mistakes the whole time. So, I quit my job without finding a new one and remained unemployed for three months. I did try some other spheres, but the more I tried, the more I was convinced that I wanted was to be a PM and that’s all. And this was because of the fact that my PM lecturer Aram Petrosyan inspired me so much that I didn’t want anything else. I was killing myself over the fact that I actually might not find a job. It was summer and not many companies were offering vacancies or they needed an experienced one. I was going crazy because of this fact but, quite suddenly, at the worst emotional period of my life, I got my job. For what is worth, after I did a very dear acquaintance of mine, an HR specialist told me: “Congrats, you’ve got what you wanted, it is just amazing”. Even though she had offered several other positions that I rejected. Special thanks to Gayane Grigoryan for teaching me not to quit and chase my dreams.
So I finally got my job!!
You’d ask me was it difficult? My answer is: Hell, Yes!!! It is Goddamned difficult. Sure, I knew the theory, but that was all. All I had was my background and some skills of mine that came to help. Furthermore, I found myself in the atmosphere where people talked about things I bumped to once or twice in my life, and I needed to manage these people.
It was soon enough that I got two projects, one of which was a live project. The other one, on which I am currently working on is way too much technical for me to manage. Plus, I still have no idea why exactly I was chosen to manage this project, but, in fact, I do manage the team. It is here where you actually start to realize what exactly a manager’s job is.When you are not a technical girl, and you are to put up with technical guys, you start to look deep into the management itself, not into understanding perfectly how, for example, PHP actually works. All you need is to manage the people your team consists of. I am not talking about micromanagement but about let’s call it psychological approach towards the team members. Here is where you don’t stop reading, reading, googling every single issue you don’t understand, or you want opinions on. Here is where you start developing yourself, and you never actually are satisfied with your knowledge so you grab every single opportunity to grow more.
It was my goal to find a job where I could endlessly develop yourself.
To keep this brief, all I want to imply is that it would be great if we could actually find our goal career from the first try, however the more industries we become a part of the more sophisticated and competitive you become. Never stop fighting, never stop developing, fight for learning new things and stay always up to date. Go for it and surround yourself with people you believe in you more than you do.
For this passion I must be grateful for my cousin and other people who have always believed in me more than I did, especially my current employer Hakob Sharabkhanyan.
01.02.2019
Mariam Khachatryan
Project Manager
Hacktech LLC
