Is PMP Certification Hard to Obtain?

Being a project manager is a fruitful career in our digitally evolved world. This managerial role offers you an opportunity to bring a significant difference to an organization's bottom line.

With all the development opportunities on the horizon, it's no doubt that many people are exploring the Project Management career and looking forward to pursuing the same to become a project manager.

As project management is one of the most diverse fields, it plays a crucial role in almost every industry. As a result, hiring companies these days skim across tons of resumes to select candidates with Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Why so?

As PMP is a globally recognized certification and is a great way to enhance your career, organizations prefer PMP-certified professionals for several reasons:

• A better understanding of challenges faced in project managements
• PMP framework is a de-facto standard for best practices.
• PMP provides individuals with a strong base and a framework for execution in their future projects. 
• PMP-certified manager performs in various stages of the project lifecycle (start to end).

Recently, several companies are realizing the significance of project management and are hiring candidates with PMP certification.

But to earn the PMP credential, you must meet specific Project Management Institute (PMI) eligibility criteria and pass its stringent exam. Though it's hard to get a hands-on certificate; however, it's not impossible.

Is PMP Certification Difficult to Get?

PMI has created a challenging PMP credential procedure. PMP enthusiasts must meet a few requirements to appear for the exam. Moreover, the exam follows stringent patterns to test your understanding and proficiency in project knowledge domains.

The PMP test is known for being strenuous and challenging; however, PMI doesn't reveal the passing score or failure rates. Some surveys estimate that the failure rate is over 40-50 percent, though this is not the official count.

The PMP certification has a reason why it's known to be a globally renowned and prestigious certification. If the certificate is easy to obtain, don't you think the actual rate of project managers worldwide might be more significant than 1Mn?

You have to understand that there isn't any strict ratio of correct and wrong answers to determine whether you passed or failed the test, as the exam scoring is done using psychometric analysis.

The test centers (PMI-approved) will evaluate your potential, knowledge, and skills based on the difficulty of the questions. Therefore, if you get all the easy questions right but the hard ones incorrect, you will most likely fail the PMP credential test.

Each PMP test consists of a unique set of combination questions such as fill-in-the-blanks, MCQs, hotspot, etc. Therefore, your scorings will look completely different from other candidates.

How Hard is the PMP Test?

As said, the PMP credential test is never an easy job. However, it covers a ton of information and tests your potential to apply the knowledge acquired in a way you will do in actual project management scenarios.

Therefore, remember, to pass the test on the first attempt, you must put a lot of effort and dedication into PMP preparation, as a mere memorizing of concepts and terms won't work.

You must have in-depth knowledge and understanding of best practices commonly leveraged in modern project management areas. 

Your knowledge domain must have the following:

• Three domain knowledge in PMP exam: People, Process, and Business Environment
• 35 different tasks based on the knowledge domains
• Wide range of skills needed of quality project managers in any industry verticals
• Agile, Predictive, and Hybrid approaches of project management
• Significant PMP formulas, terms, and mathematical concepts

This information and more are covered in PMI-approved materials like PMBOK Guide, the PMP Exam Content Outline (ECO), the PMP Handbook, and other materials created by PMI authorized training centers such as iCert Global.

The Difficulty of PMP Exam Questions

In the PMP exam question, you will be given realistic project management situations where you have to use principles, methods, and artifacts from the PMBOK Guide and other resources to get the best solution.

The best answer indicates that there might be more than one potentially correct solution to each question. If you identify a correct answer, you should not simply check it and move on to the next one. Instead, you have to find the most suitable and logical answer for the given scenario.

The PMP exam questions might also belong, so you must read carefully. This can become strenuous and hectic as the exam duration is almost 4 hours.

How to find the right solutions for these tricky questions? Is there any cheat code for determining it?

Here are a few tips that will help you with complex questions:

• Read the last sentence first - help you narrow down what information is most significant.
• Understand and study formulas proportionately. The current PMP exam might not be as math-complex as it was previously, but you must have an insight into all formulas for the swift answering of many questions.
• Note down any particularly challenging areas in your studies, as you may likely fail the credential test if one area is done exceptionally poorly. 

PMP Exam Complexity

The PMP exam questions are divided into three knowledge of domains, and they are:

1. PEOPLE (42%): This domain consists of 14 tasks that focus on the potential to create, train, and lead a project team.
2. PROCESS (50%): 17 tasks focus on your project management process knowledge and how to use and apply them effectively throughout the project phase.
3. BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT (8%): It includes four tasks, making it the smallest weightage domain in the PMP knowledge base. It focuses on how a company influences the project delivery of value to that firm.

Making the credential test further complex, there are 180 questions for the exam, out of which 5 are pre-test one (not scored). This means you only scored on 175 out of 180 exam questions.

PMP Exam Length

There are 180 combination type questions such as:

• Limited fill-in-the-blanks
• Hotspot
• MCQ
• Matching
• Multiple responses

As the questions are randomly organized, you can't determine which question questions contain a score and which one is a pre-test one. The same goes for the difficulty-type questions. Therefore, make sure you answer all the questions correctly and equally.

The length of the PMP exam is 230 minutes, in which 1m 16s must be taken per question.

Regarding exam intervals: You have two scheduled breaks. You can take unscheduled breaks other than these, but remember, the timer clock won't stop ticking during these periods.

While taking the practice test, if you run out of time, don't panic. The actual PMP exam is much more complicated than its mock tests. Several candidates have run out of time before finishing all the questions; however, they have still passed the exam.

But you shouldn't rely on this possibility and attend the PMP exam. Instead, give your best for the credential test. Work hard and refer to the PMBOK Guide followed by resources offered by PMI-approved training centers.

How to Increase Your Chance to Pass the PMP Exam?

Though the PMP credential exam is challenging; however, the PMI is not preventing you from obtaining the PMP certification. The purpose of PMI to set challenges is to ensure that you fully understand the idea behind being an efficient project manager.

Let's see how you can increase the chance of getting hands-on PMP accreditation.

• Schedule a study routine that works best for you.
• Take multiple practice tests to help you identify your strong and weak areas in the PMP domain.
• Memorizing key terms and formulas will significantly help you during the exam. Therefore, flashcards are a great study asset to practice your knowledge. These assets are available online, or you can also make your own.
• Attend PMP training courses offered by PMI-approved training centers. The centers will help you prepare for the PMP exam by providing you with resources such as full-length practice tests, mock PMP exams, and more they have created, ensuring that you pass the test on your first try.

Which Industries Hire Project Managers?

While we see PMP-certified project managers in almost every industry vertical, job opportunities tend to be most plentiful in select sectors. These appear to be diverse at first peek; however, all share a similar requirement for innovation and top-notch productivity.

Companies looking for PMP-certified professionals can be found in the following industry verticals:

• Finance
• Healthcare
• Construction and Engineering
• Information Technology and Services
• Insurance Services
• Advertising

About US

For more information on how iCert Global can help you to achieve your Project Management Certification goals, please visit our website.

https://www.icertglobal.com/

We provide instructor-led classroom and online training across the globe, followed by Corporate Training for enterprise workforce development.

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