New to all this, I'd never heard of these. A quick Google leads me to mooc.org and then edx.org for a course I checked out. I like the look of these. Bite sized course, with a certificate if I pay, by the looks of it.
Ah, you mentioned coursera in your careers forum post so I assumed you had heard of these, basically, EDX is essentially another platform similar to coursera - the courses are run by universities and/or sometimes big companies/organisations. Slightly different to udemy in that it's not necessarily, as you point out any random person running them on there but same kind of principle in that you can show an employer you've studied a subject area/demonstrated some interest.
Yeah, definitely, from what I can see and what I'm told, it's the Scrum Master I would be looking at. As you say, the other roles definitely require the technical knowledge. I'm advised to do the certification for Scrum Master as that shows I understand the overall process of Scrum. Are the alternatives to Scrum I should also get a certification in?
Scum is a rather popular agile methodology, there are project management related certifications out there - for example PMP, Prince2 etc.. the latter is apparently popular in the public sector in the UK, the other, PMP, has some requirements re: experience managing projects so might not be suitable yet.
Some project managers won't have any certifications at all, when I was at a place that converted from non-agile, sort of waterfall methodology to scrum we had someone come in and run some seminars/coaching etc...
You could get a book or read some online resources and get the jist of how scrum works in a weekend, getting a certificate simply demonstrates that you have that knowledge. I mean it is basically a 2 day course, it's probably not necessarily going to land you a job by itself, especially with no prior experience managing projects.
I've done 11 years managing a team of staff in a section and 9 years as a Deputy Branch Manager, managing the managers and with general responsibility of the entire store.
This is the bit that might need to be fleshed out - basically why you, how does your previous experience show you'd be good here etc.. general soft skills are obvs useful and those roles demonstrate that but that won't necessarily be sufficient, especially if much of the first role was basically just being a supervisor and managing the shift rota or something. Your current role might well be the one to focus on though, especially if you're responsible for coordinating a whole bunch of stuff.
That might sell you as a potential PM - essentially laying out that you're someone who already manages a bunch of people across several teams and has to juggle multiple tasks through the day, liaise with people inside and outside the company and has a bunch of responsibility.
I guess this is the bit I could really do with advice on as I just don't know how they 'work'. I could be quite interested in something 'bigger' and 'proper', something perhaps 6 months long? At the same time, if I don't need it based on my experience and the few smaller certificates I pick up, I don't want to waste my time unnecessarily?
Well an MSc is generally 1 year full time or 2-3 years part time, though typically they tend to require an undergraduate degree which you don't have, so could be a non-starter.
Some MSc courses might let you in with relevant work experience, I don't think that is likely applicable here though. Similar case fo MBAs, I think some might let in non-grads but that could be a bit of a reach here too.
You could look at getting a part time undergrad qualification (see University of London external system, Open university etc..) or perhpas a certificate of some sort - for example this might be useful, it's not a project management course but rather a systems analysis course:
https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/advanced-diploma-in-data-and-systems-analysis
You could look at becoming a Business Analyst/Systems Analyst - that tends to require soft skills, planning etc..
Bottom line though is you need to be able to sell this to someone, that based on no direct experience and just demonstrating some interest that your previous employment has demonstrated that you'd be worth a shot in a PM role, at a hefty salary simply because you're a super organised, super efficient person with bags of soft skills who'll be able to liaise with everyone from difficult to deal with introverted/autistic developers through to full-of-BS sales people, demanding customers, consultants etc..
You're potentially competing with people with PM experience or internal hires with experience working on projects or even just keen, recent graduates.
It might be the case that you can't go directly into a PM role, it's possible to be a PM without a degree though the cases I've seen tended to start off in some junior admin role - two girls at a previous place worked in the project management office (PMO) first - they'd just go around checking up on where people were with stuff, update dashboards etc.. but didn't manage anything in that role - they did however get plenty of exposure to various different projects and then progressed to managing small projects and taking a junior PM role themselves after a couple of years.
Likewise I know of one case where a PM worked in retail, he went from uni to a big well known retail group to a well known consultancy then the place I worked at where he worked as a consultant again, then transitioned into a PM role.
