25 Jul 7 Common Mistakes Most PMP® Certification Aspirants Do
The PMP® certification has been one of the most coveted ones for a long time. A person who has passed the PMP® exam commands significant respect as a project manager in any industry and across the globe.
Not many people pass the PMP®exam easily compared to the number of people that take the exam. Why does this happen? I have been training the PMP® certification aspirants for more than 12 years now and have guided several thousand people to pass this examination in their first attempt with full confidence.
What I help them do is I help them avoid 11 common mistakes that most PMP® certification aspirants do. If you take care to avoid these 11 common mistakes, you will realize that it is not as difficult to pass this examination as it is popularly believed
Mistake #1: Believing that the PMP® exam is difficult
In my experience of the last 12+ years, I never came across a student who was not worried about the PMP® exam being difficult. Everyone who talks to me almost invariably begins with “Will I be able to pass the PMP® exam? It is so difficult”
The PMP® exam is not especially difficult. I’m not sayin it is easy, but remember it is NOT difficult. It is definitely different. I think that we find it difficult because it is different.
The examinations that we are used to taking usually depend on a textbook. The questions are drawn from the material in the textbook. Read that book (or books) and you will be able to answer any question asked in the examination. The PMP® exam is not based on the text from any particular book. It is based on your experience, understanding and attitude (in other words your wisdom) about project management. If you solve the problems on your project, you should be able to solve the questions in the PMP® exam. Your experience as a senior professional is counted on the examination.
If you start with the idea that this is a difficult examination, that thought casts a shadow on your confidence. Then, instead of relating your experience with the standards and best practices, you focus on how difficult the language in the standard is! Trust me. I’m telling you after countless batches in 12+ years and helping thousands of students pass this examination in their first attempt that the PMP® exam is not difficult
Mistake #2 Not planning your studies
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!!
Unless you know what you have to do, your inertia will never leave you. If you know what preparation you have to do, you will be able to focus.
Think of getting ready for the PMP® exam as a project. Will a good project manager ask his team to directly start working on a project? As a project manager, you know that you need to understand what you have to deliver, how much time it will take to deliver, what else you will need etc. Take the PMP® exam in the same way.
Plan what you have to read when you will read, how much time you will need to read and understand the standard and best practices. Keep in mind that you have to plan to solve a few simulation examinations. Plan to take them just as you would take the final exam. With the same preparation and same seriousness.
Mistake #3 Procrastination
I many times ask those of my students who have not taken the PMP® exam even 6 months after the training, why they have not done so. You will be surprised, but more than 80% of them say that they were really busy and could not start preparing.
Being busy and not even starting to get ready is not really a matter of being busy in most of the cases. It is a matter of not prioritizing your work judiciously. In combination with mistake #2, this is the worst error of judgment the PMP® exam aspirants make.
The best time to actually start taking your PMP® certification preparation is along with your training. The concepts get cemented in your mind if you start along with the training because you have just been taught them, they are fresh in your mind and your self study helps you get them firmed. As you understand better, you get more confidence and start getting ready faster. In my experience, those who start along with the training, take about 30% less time to get ready.
Remember, the secret of getting ahead is starting!
Mistake #4 Using any and every resource that you can think of
All the material out there is not necessarily good. This is one syndrome that surprises me. I read many times on the internet that the PMP® Certification aspirants should solve as many questions as possible. They should solve as many mock tests as possible
This is a big trap. All your attention is focussed on accumulating as much material as possible. You keep on running after the material. Make nice folders and copy the material there. There are thousands of questions and hundreds of mock tests you have collected, but you forget only one necessary thing! You need to start preparing too! You should shift your focus from collecting the material to using it!
Also, have you really checked if all the material that you have collected is really useful? That it aligns to the current PMP® exam? Many a times, such collected material can have many mistakes which can lead to prepare in a totally wrong direction
There is one more thing I want to draw your attention to. Some of the material may actually be ok, but you do not need all the material in the world! That is one reason why you need to plan your reading! It could take years to complete the PMP® certification!
On the other hand, if you do not use too many books/guides/question banks/mock tests but use only the ones given by your trainer, you will be able to get ready for the examination in about 4 to 6 weeks. This is a tried and tested formula by thousands. Saves you a lot of time, money and gets you ready more easily.
Mistake # 5 Not knowing the best method to study
One big deterrent for the PMP® certification aspirants to study is the nature of the PMBOK® Guide! Keep in mind that it is a guide that explains standards and the best practices for project management. It is not a lucid book with examples as you would expect any exam preparation book might be! It is so, for a simple reason that it is not prepared as a book on which the PMP® exam is based! ( The PMP® exam aligns to the Exam Content Outline by PMI® and the PMBOK® Guide is an important reference.)
Yes, you need to read it as it is an important reference. You start reading it and find it really drab, dry, terse and boring! You give up studying!!
I’ll tell you how you should study. Do not read the PMBOK® Guide and your study material while you are doing something else (like watching TV). Read with full focus.
For EVERY point in the PMBOK® Guide (your study material), note an example from your real life experience. Make a short note on the book itself. Using this method is a guaranteed (yes, I mean guaranteed) way of passing the PMP® exam in the first attempt.
Mistake #6 Reading Between The Lines In A Question
Read the question carefully. The information not mentioned is NOT there. Do not assume things.
For example, if the question is saying that an activity is getting delayed, do not jump to the conclusion that it would mean that the project is getting delayed.
Don’t assume that the activity delay impacts the schedule unless the question clearly indicates so. It might just be a risk as of that time. The question actually might be testing if you know that you need to identify risk and update the risk register! Not decide to crash or fast track the project assuming that the project is getting delayed.
Mistake #7: Mark ALL the answers
The PMP® exam does not mark wrong answers negatively. If your answer is wrong, it is just counted as a zero and not a negative something. You are not punished for making a guess when you do not know an answer
Does that impact your answering policy? Yes. It should!
Let us say, you do not know the right answers to 10 questions. You decide to leave those questions blank. What is the result? You get a zero for each of those wrong answers.
On the other hand, you decide to take a guess for each of those 10 questions. What happens now? There is a 25% possibility for each question that your answer is correct. Even if one or two answers are correct, you get those marks which you would otherwise have missed.
In other words, as there is no negative marking, please attempt all the questions. You have nothing to lose. In fact, most probably you will get a bonus mark or two!
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