Project Manager Salaries

CertMag released the results of their 2005 salary survey. The survey covers a wide-range of IT-related careers. They report that, "As was the case last year, information storage and security bring the largest salaries, along with Cisco networking." And of particular interest to me, "Project managers and Java developers also scored well as career choices." Compared to last year, "Project management, a rapidly rising area of IT, crept up only two spots on this ranking, but its earnings power was boosted by almost $8,000."

There are many ways to increase one's salary. CertMag's slant is certification. My experience with Microsoft certification is that it doesn't do much when it comes to interviewing. I certainly learned a lot while preparing for the exam, but it only came up once during interviews during the following 2 years since becoming certified. And at that time I was doing consulting work which meant 6 month gigs with many interviews in between each.

Counter to my anecdotal evidence, CertMag reports some positive perceived benefits of certification:

• 29.4 percent of this year's respondents earned a promotion within the first year of receiving what they consider their primary certification.
• 60.4 percent think certification played a significant role in the promotion.
• 43.8 percent of survey respondents received a raise within the first year of receiving that promotion.
• 49.4 percent of those feel certification was a significant factor in earning the bigger paycheck.

For more detail, read the full survey results.