Best Jobs For Former Program Managers [2023]

It’s tough to be a program 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 program manager isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become program managers in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many program 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 program 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 PROGRAM MANAGERS

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 PROGRAM MANAGERS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Senior Project Manager	4.03%
2	Project Manager	3.6%
3	Program Director	1.21%
4	Consultant	1.15%
5	Director	0.94%
6	Operations Manager	0.85%
7	Information Technology Project Manager	0.82%
8	Manager	0.66%
9	Senior Manager	0.66%
10	Vice President	0.62%
11	Executive Director	0.58%
12	Product Manager	0.51%
13	Case Manager	0.49%
14	Business Developer	0.48%
15	Account Manager	0.47%
16	Program Coordinator	0.45%
17	Owner	0.45%
18	Operations Director	0.43%
19	Marketing Manager	0.39%
20	Office Manager	0.38%
21	Administrative Assistant	0.36%
22	General Manager	0.33%
23	Management Consultant	0.33%
24	Senior Consultant	0.33%
25	Adjunct Professor	0.32%
26	Team Leader	0.32%
27	Substitute Teacher	0.32%
28	Principal	0.31%
29	President	0.3%
30	Teacher	0.29%
31	Business Analyst	0.29%
32	Business Development Manager	0.28%
33	Registered Nurse	0.27%
34	Customer Service Representative	0.27%
35	Engineering Manager	0.26%
36	Purchasing Manager	0.25%
37	Principal Consultant	0.23%
38	Service Manager	0.23%
39	Internship	0.23%
40	Therapist	0.23%
41	Chief Executive Officer	0.23%
42	Technical Project Manager	0.22%
43	Account Executive	0.22%
44	Human Resources Coordinator	0.22%
45	Coordinator	0.21%
46	Human Resources Manager	0.21%
47	Director Program Management	0.21%
48	Managing Director	0.21%
49	Assistant Director	0.21%
50	Social Worker	0.21%
51	Chief Operating Officer	0.19%
52	Sales Associate	0.19%
53	Volunteer	0.19%
54	Administrator	0.19%
55	Program/project Manager	0.19%
56	Supply Chain Manager	0.18%
57	Supervisor	0.18%
58	Instructor	0.18%
59	Senior Product Manager	0.18%
60	Counselor	0.18%
61	Adjunct Instructor	0.17%
62	Sales Manager	0.17%
63	Service Coordinator	0.17%
64	Marketing Director	0.17%
65	Recruiter	0.17%
66	Quality Manager	0.17%
67	Programming Specialist	0.17%
68	Senior Director	0.16%
69	Project Coordinator	0.16%
70	Program Analyst	0.16%
71	Associate Director	0.16%
72	Adjunct Faculty	0.16%
73	Consultant/project Manager	0.16%
74	Program Management Consultant	0.16%
75	Business Consultant	0.15%
76	Quality Assurance Manager	0.15%
77	Business Manager	0.15%
78	Associate	0.15%
79	Training Manager	0.15%
80	Owner/operator	0.14%
81	Director Of Information	0.14%
82	Project Director	0.14%
83	Project Leader	0.14%
84	Deputy Program Manager	0.14%
85	Contracts Manager	0.14%
86	Senior Analyst	0.14%
87	Senior Business Analyst	0.14%
88	Program Supervisor	0.14%
89	Specialist	0.14%
90	Assistant Manager	0.14%
91	Service Director	0.14%
92	Information Technology Manager	0.14%
93	Global Program Manager	0.13%
94	Senior Technical Program Manager	0.13%
95	Development Director	0.13%
96	Marketing Consultant	0.13%
97	Project Engineer	0.13%
98	President/owner	0.13%
99	Engineering Program Manager	0.13%
100	Project Analyst	0.13%

Most Common Jobs For Former PROGRAM MANAGERS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a program 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 program managers to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former PROGRAM MANAGERS

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

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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