Today I want to tell you about my experience in preparing and passing the PMP (Project Management Professional) exam. This article is divided into two due to its volume.
The first article will be useful to the following categories of readers:
- those who are looking for opportunities to prove their professional level in the field of project management;
- for those who are considering the delivery of PMP and want to know more about the potential profits.
The second article will be useful to those who are already preparing for the PMP and want to understand the format of the exam and how to prepare for it. I will leave a link to the second part at the bottom of this article after its publication.
1. Brief conclusion
PMP is a professional certificate for experienced project managers. From the point of view of employment in vacancies of Russian and German companies, the presence of a PMP certificate, if mentioned, is an advantage, not a mandatory criterion. In US companies' vacancies, the presence of a PMP is often a mandatory criterion.
The cost of taking the PMP excluding training materials and courses will be $ 405 or $ 555 depending on your PMI membership. I estimate the preparation time will be approximately 2-3 months, provided that you spend about 10 hours a week preparing for the exam.
2. What is it and for whom?
PMP is a professional certificate for project managers. This certificate is designed for people with experience in project management from 3 years, subject to the availability of completed higher education. If there is only secondary education, then the requirement for practical experience increases to 5 years. In addition to practical experience for admission, a candidate must complete at least 35 hours of project management training or possess a CAPM certificate. The certification is valid for 3 years, after the expiration it can be extended for the same period ...
If you do not yet have experience in project management, then you can consider passing the CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management): for admission to this exam you only need an intermediate education and 23 hours of project management training.
Information about the experience and the courses taken in project management is asked to attach when filling out the application for the exam.
To validate 35 hours of project management theory training, I took this specialization on Coursera .
It is enough to briefly describe the experience when filling out the application for passing the exam. If you are selected for additional verification of the questionnaire, then you will additionally have to certify information about the experience from those who are ready to confirm it. But that is another story.
3. What does certification give? Why take an exam?
Everyone answers this question for himself. However, to make the decision easier, I will give some rough statistics. I will make a reservation right away: the statistics are rough, but, in my opinion, it gives an understanding of the role of PMP certification when applying to labor markets in different countries.
Exam costs:
- $ 405 for PMI members or $ 555 for non-community members.
- The cost of purchasing courses and training materials.
- About 2-3 months of exam preparation: weekday evenings, part of the weekend.
The potential emissions from owning a certificate are listed below. Let's first look at the Russian labor market.
- hh.ru : 2020 25 “project manager” “ ” ( 200 LinkedIn).
- () hh 133 .
- “PMP” 156 hh ( 700 LinkedIn).
- PMP , . 17 156, . , : 183 — 40 % .
Next, let's move on to the foreign labor market. For example, consider the United States and Germany. We will use LinkedIn data and information from the official website of the Project Management Institute.
- The Project Management Institute's official website (https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp) states that the median salary of PMP certificate holders in the US is 25% higher than the salary of non-certified employees.
- There are 177,000 jobs listed on LinkedIn in the US with a mention of the PMP certification. In contrast to Russia, the presence of PMP is often indicated as a mandatory requirement. As a result of a request from a project manager on LinkedIn across the United States, I received 95,000 jobs. This means that the mention of PMP certification also occurs in those jobs that did not appear in my search query for “project manager”.
- Linkedin 28 PMP. PMP , . project manager LinkedIn 10 . , PMP , .
4.
Thus, if you are not planning to move abroad to Anglo-Saxon countries in the near future, then PMP certification can be just a pleasant bonus. In my opinion, its presence is not a critical factor in finding a job in Russia and Europe, but it can help to stand out from other candidates. In my experience, the mention of RMR or the intention to pass it was a bonus, but not a decisive factor when considering my candidacy in Russian companies.
If there are plans to relocate, then certification can become a significant factor in the device.