My PMP certification experience

First step: Wanting to get it

• You are not going to get it unless you really want it. What is your key motivator? Having a clear answer is going to help you all along the way, when tired, bored or frustrated.

Second step: Training

• You need to take at least 35 hours of training. In my experience 35 hours would be a little too little. Better apply for a 60-hour training course, which is roughly four hours of theory and two hours of practice for each of the ten knowledge areas.
• Living in Zaragoza, the obvious choice was the one by ESIC. Quite expensive but the good teachers and the great classmates worth it. It also provides you with very convenient resources to prepare the exam after completing the training.

Third step: Applying

• PMI is expecting you to have a few thousand hours of project management experience. The precise number of hours depends on your degree.
• Good news is you don’t need lots of precision in justifying your hours. If you’ve been involved in projects for the last years, you should be able to demonstrate the experience. If not, you should check the CAPM certification instead.
• Bad news is one out of ten applications will be audited. If you are one of the “lucky” ones, then you would need to contact some of your former managers or colleagues who can asses your experience. Normally they wouldn’t need to do anything besides signing the experience you have submitted in your original application so, in the end, is more of a hassle than a real problem.

Third step: Booking a date

• Once your application is been approved, you could book a date, and a place, for taking the exam. You can take the exam digitally or in paper form. With the digital option you would have a more open set of dates. With the paper form your choosing is more limited.
• Anyhow, I can’t find the words to tell you how IMPORTANT is to chose a date and book the exam. You are going to have a lot to study. A clear goal date will help you to find the willpower to start studying.
• Try to take advantage of the momentum given by the training course and plan your exam for sometime between six and twelve weeks after the end of the training.
• The exam is taken in english. When booking, you could check whether a translation in your native tongue is available as a support. If it is, ask for it. Nothing to loose.

Fourth step: keep your pace and try some tests

• You should have planned your way through the theory. Whether you’ve planned it as a short sprint or as a long marathon, there is going to be ups and downs, so try to keep your pace.
• You should check your progress every now and then with questions similar to the ones in the exam.

Fifth step: Passing the exam

• You have four straight hours to answer 200 questions.
• Take the first ten minutes in writing the main formulas and the table connecting the ten knowledge areas, the five process groups and the 49 different processes. It would let you use it as a guide when you start feeling exhausted, and you would calm down while doing it, so you would be able to take the first questions better.
• If english is not your native tongue and you asked for a translation support, probably you would feel like reading some questions in both languages. Sometimes translation could misguide you.

Sixth step: Enjoy 🙂

• You should get the results sometime between right after finishing your digital exam, or two weeks after finishing your paper-based exam.
• Update your LinkedIn profile, take your partner or some friends to have a nice dinner, and enjoy your success. 🙂

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Related: Consejos para estudiar y preparar el examen PMP y CAPM del Project Management Institute (Daniel Echeverría)

Why do you work here? (3/3)

After two posts in this series, we agree on:

1. Presented with a better job offer we would change ships.
2. There are three issues easily talkable during negotiation stage.

Being in the intersection of the three circles is the optimum. The sweet spot. Hard to get, hard to leave.

At the beginning of your career you’ll probably start far from the sweet spot. Maybe you are an intern in a very demanding firm, low salary, bad work-life balance but lots of interesting things to learn. Or you could be a low-rank assistant on a well founded business, having a good work-life balance and a fair salary, but with lots of bureaucratic, repetitive, uninteresting job.

If you are just into one circle,finding a new job will be easier because you can do several type of movements.

• You could leave your interesting first job, just because you’ve found another interesting job which will bring you more money or more spare time.
• You could leave your boring fairly-paid job, so you can learn new stuff and make your career advance, in a demanding but interesting new job.

When you are into two circles it’s harder to change jobs, because you need to find a place that drives you into the sweet spot.

• If you are well paid and enjoy a great work-life balance, you will find for jobs in other markets or with new technologies (interesting new things to learn) but these will demand you effort and time to get up to speed.
• If you are always learning new things and are well-paid, it would be hard to find a job which could give you more time to deal with other issues, since you need to keep learning and working extra hours to stay on top.

With this in mind, you could be in four situations.

1. In the sweet spot. You are in the three circles. You feel happy about your job. Difficult to be here, so you won’t seek a change.
2. In two of the circles. You would be happy about parts of your life, but worried about another. If you’ve been not so much time in your current job, you won’t look for a change, because only the sweet spot offers you an improvement.
3. Out of the three circles. You would be actively seeking for a change, and it could be almost in any job that improves your situation a bit.

Ok, Adolfo, you said four situations, but you’ve only talked about three.

Thanks for the comment, Adolfo. You are right. This is because the fourth one is the most peculiar. You can be (4.) Trapped in one of the circles. Most of the times this happens when you work long hours in a job than doesn’t satisfy you enough, but which is well-paid.

This situation is special because in a demanding but not rewarding job, your company will use money as a way to keep you in. And the more money you accept, the farther you are from the sweet spot, the harder you will be able to make it to the other two circles.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on the golden jail and how to avoid it.

Why do you work here? (2/3)

In the first post of this series we agree (at least I did 🙂 ) on the fact that when facing a better job option, we change ships.

Hard part is … What makes an option really better?

• Money. You’ll need to feel fairly paid according to the market and to your co-workers, even though money is not a great motivator for work,
• Time. Having a more convenient schedule, less or better distributed hours, is always an advantage and will become mandatory if you have to take care of kids or sick people.
• Knowledge. Having the chance to deal with interesting, brand-new things or people to learn from on a daily basis is principal.

You could argue that there are many more motivators for working. I agree. The kind of things Maslow proposed. But when deciding to change ships is difficult to know if you’re going to feel recognized by your peers or increase your sense of belonging. While, on the other hand, having more money and time available, and the technologies or the markets you’re going to work in, could be easily known and agreed during the negotiation stage of the hiring process.

So, please, look at this three circles.

Whenever you look for a new job, you are trying to move yourself from the surroundings, into the center of the picture, which is the sweet spot.

 

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Related: Quotes on Money, Love and Retribution. “Once the previous is done, if someone is asking for more money, chances are she’s really asking for more love”

Related: Quote on Passion on Working.