Guide to Completing Your PMP Application

Welcome to Tips for Completing Your PMP Application. Do it right the first time, the 2021 version. If you are planning on applying for the PMP examination, the Project Management Professional Examination, before the end of the year 2020, then you should take a look at Tips for Completing Your PMP Application, the 2020 version. This recording is a presentation of the PMP Application. is for those people planning on taking the examination after January 1st, 2021. On June 18th, they significantly changed the application itself, and this recording will help you in filling out that application so that it is accepted. We're going to cover the PMP, or Project Management Professional Eligibility requirements. We'll talk about what's new on the application as of June 18th. We'll go through the application itself, the three parts, education, experience, and exam. And the most important part is we'll talk about how to write the experience portion, what some of the most common mistakes are, and how to write it in such a way that you get it accepted. We'll also cover a few extra tips. In the Project Management Professional Candidate Handbook, you'll see that it lists the educational background required, the project management experience, and the project management education. You can go back as far as eight consecutive years prior to the application submission to collect that information. If you have a secondary degree, high school diploma, associate's degree, or global equivalent, you must have a minimum of five years or 60 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience. In a few slides, we'll talk about what non-overlapping means. You also need 35 contact hours in a professional project management class. The completion of the International Institute for Learning's PMP exam preparation course will give you those 35 hours. If you have a four-year degree, a bachelor's degree, or global equivalent, then you need a minimum of 3 years or 36 months unique non-overlapping project experience and 35 contact hours of formal education. Where it's relevant, if you have a bachelor's or postgraduate degree from a GAC accredited program, then you only need a minimum of 2 years or 24 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience and still the 35 contact hours of formal education. Note the comment at the bottom. Leading and directing the project must be as identified in the content outline for the examination. Let's take a look at the application itself. It has three parts, education, experience, and exam details. You must finish a prior section before you're allowed to move on to the next section. What this means to you in the education area is if you haven't completed the 35 contact hours project management education, you won't be able to move into the experience section and complete that. And if you don't have the requisite experience, you won't be able to get to the exam details portion of the application. What's new for the updated application? The application for the PMP certification exam was updated. on June 18th of 2020. It used to be that you were required to have an experience description of 550 characters. Well, they've changed that to a required minimum of 100 words. Note the change from characters to words. It suggested that your response have somewhere between 200 and 500 words. This makes it easier to enter your experience. You don't have to abbreviate as much. You don't have to avoid using good grammar or punctuation. You no longer must report hours worked on a project. You will report months. You no longer must guess at how many hours you worked in each domain area. And you no longer must submit contact information in the application. You'll provide this if your application is audited. Things such as your references and your coursework. You won't be asked your role on the project. We know obviously it's project manager. There are several new fields which include organizational primary focus, which is replacing the previous industry field, project methodology, Agile, Traditional, or Hybrid, Project Team Size, and Project Budget. To find where to fill out the application, go to www.pmi.org. At the top of the screen, you'll see a hyperlink that says Certifications. Click on that. Then click on Certification Types and click on Project Management Professional. There are a lot of good references at each stop of the way here. For instance, on the Project Management Professional link, you can find the Candidate Handbook. You can also find the PMP Professional Exam Content Outline. To continue on to the application, click on the hyperlink that says Learn About Applying for Your PMP and finally click on Apply for the PMP. Be sure to look at the resources available at each step of this path. Okay, under the education portion of the application, you'll see that the first step is academic education. You'll have to tell the application your highest level of education, the name of the institution, the years you attended, and the field of study. Once you complete that, it'll give you a green check mark on the right saying that meets the requirements. Within the education section, You'll also see Professional Education. This is where you need to record your 35 hours of project management education. Notice here that I filled it in for IIL's PMP exam preparation course and I put in the 35 hours. Note on the right side that once I have the requisite 35 hours, it gives me a green checkmark letting me know that I can continue on to the experience area. So I'll click on the button down below that says continue to experience. The experience area is probably one of the most important. This is one of the major reasons for rejecting an application. If you don't have enough experience, if you haven't written it the way they need to see it, all these reasons can trigger a rejection. As I said before, you must write a narrative that's at least 100 words and the average narrative runs between 200 and 500 words. It must indicate leading and directing the project as identified with the tasks, enablers, knowledge, and skills specified in the Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline for 2021. Make sure that you're using the Examination Content Outline for 2021. The 2020 Exam Content Outline is also there for download. One of the most common mistakes made in completing the experience section is that people tend to write more about what the project was about. PMI doesn't want you to focus on what the project did. They're interested in what you did on the project in your role as a project manager. So write one sentence at the beginning on the objective or the focus of the project. The remainder of the description should be on your activities as a project manager, and I would go ahead and break them down by domain. In other words, put initiating and then write what you did in initiating and make sure that there are activities that fall within the initiating group. Same thing for planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing. Use the Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline 2021 as a model for some of your descriptions and use active verbs to indicate managed and led activities. In the Professional Examination Content Outline 2021, you'll go to page 4, where it lists all the experience and enablers that you should have done in three basic domains, people, processes, and business environment. When you look at page 4 and we're looking at the domain for people, you'll see it broken down by domain at the top, the next division is task, and then you'll see the enablers. What I would do is go through these for each domain, people, processes, and business environment, and pick the ones that most closely relate to what you actually did on the project. Then, instead of just copying it, I would modify it to fit exactly what you did on your project. You can begin this process by downloading the 2021 exam content outline. You can find the domain task descriptions on page 4 through page 10. These are the items that the project manager should be competent in and are listed as domains, tasks, and enablers. Find those enablers that are closely related to what you've done on your project and modify these descriptions to fit your actual experience. Do not... copy the descriptions in the outline word for word. In writing your description, make sure that you write strong action verbs that denote led and directed. Words such as administered, designated, spearheaded, governed, forged, and issued. There are many others that you can find online if you're looking for action verbs. Now in the beginning, we started by talking about the experience needed, and we said you could go back 8 years, but for the months, whether it's 5 years experience or 60 months, it must be consecutive, non-overlapping experience. It might also be 3 years or 36 months non-overlapping experience. Take a look at the graphic on this slide. You can see that project one is four months and project two is five months, but they overlap. Well, you can count the four months for project one, but in project two, you'll only be able to count two months that don't overlap with project one for a total of six months of experience rather than nine. When you have enough hours to meet the requirements in the experience section, it will allow you to proceed to the exam details. In the exam details, they're asking general information that they'll need for your certificate and contact information. Things like your name, your email address, a phone number, and they'll ask for how you would like your name on the certificate. Be sure to check the spelling. and correctness on this page. Let's review a couple things. There are two eligibility requirements. Based on your education, you need a minimum number of months of experience leading and managing projects. You will also need 35 contact hours in a formal project management class. Some other pointers on experience. Aside from the number of months to qualify, your experience must be in a professional setting, but not necessarily paid. For instance, if you did a project in college or working on your graduate dissertation for your doctoral degree, you can't count that as professional experience. But as it says, if you didn't get paid for it and it was professional experience, it counts. There's a tendency for people to take a bunch of small projects and group them together as one project. Don't do that. You must record each project individually. As mentioned before, you can go back eight consecutive years from the date of application to collect experience. And the months of experience must be spent leading and directing the project. Keep in mind, the goal is to get your PMP certification. or Project Management Professional certification. The first hurdle you must pass is completing the application and getting it accepted. If you don't have the 35 requisite hours, be sure to ask the International Institute for Learning about their Project Management Professional certification course. In addition, you're going to need 60 Continuing Education Requirements, or PDUs, professional development units, to maintain your certification every three years. Check with IIL as far as their coursework, webinars, and other ways to earn those PDUs. The International Institute for Learning is a Project Management Institute authorized training partner, and they utilize authorized training partner instructors and trusted trainers. Look for the badges that indicate those certifications. If you'd like a free consultation, Email learning at iil.com or visit www.iil.com. Follow us on social media. and look for us in traditional and online classes. Thank you very much and good luck with the application process.

is for those people planning on taking the examination after January 1st, 2021. On June 18th, they significantly changed the application itself, and this recording will help you in filling out that application so that it is accepted. We're going to cover the PMP, or Project Management Professional Eligibility requirements. We'll talk about what's new on the application as of June 18th. We'll go through the application itself, the three parts, education, experience, and exam. And the most important part is we'll talk about how to write the experience portion, what some of the most common mistakes are, and how to write it in such a way that you get it accepted.

We'll also cover a few extra tips. In the Project Management Professional Candidate Handbook, you'll see that it lists the educational background required, the project management experience, and the project management education. You can go back as far as eight consecutive years prior to the application submission to collect that information. If you have a secondary degree, high school diploma, associate's degree, or global equivalent, you must have a minimum of five years or 60 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience. In a few slides, we'll talk about what non-overlapping means.

You also need 35 contact hours in a professional project management class. The completion of the International Institute for Learning's PMP exam preparation course will give you those 35 hours. If you have a four-year degree, a bachelor's degree, or global equivalent, then you need a minimum of 3 years or 36 months unique non-overlapping project experience and 35 contact hours of formal education. Where it's relevant, if you have a bachelor's or postgraduate degree from a GAC accredited program, then you only need a minimum of 2 years or 24 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience and still the 35 contact hours of formal education. Note the comment at the bottom.

Leading and directing the project must be as identified in the content outline for the examination. Let's take a look at the application itself. It has three parts, education, experience, and exam details. You must finish a prior section before you're allowed to move on to the next section. What this means to you in the education area is if you haven't completed the 35 contact hours project management education, you won't be able to move into the experience section and complete that.

And if you don't have the requisite experience, you won't be able to get to the exam details portion of the application. What's new for the updated application? The application for the PMP certification exam was updated.

on June 18th of 2020. It used to be that you were required to have an experience description of 550 characters. Well, they've changed that to a required minimum of 100 words. Note the change from characters to words.

It suggested that your response have somewhere between 200 and 500 words. This makes it easier to enter your experience. You don't have to abbreviate as much. You don't have to avoid using good grammar or punctuation. You no longer must report hours worked on a project.

You will report months. You no longer must guess at how many hours you worked in each domain area. And you no longer must submit contact information in the application. You'll provide this if your application is audited. Things such as your references and your coursework.

You won't be asked your role on the project. We know obviously it's project manager. There are several new fields which include organizational primary focus, which is replacing the previous industry field, project methodology, Agile, Traditional, or Hybrid, Project Team Size, and Project Budget.

To find where to fill out the application, go to www.pmi.org. At the top of the screen, you'll see a hyperlink that says Certifications. Click on that.

Then click on Certification Types and click on Project Management Professional. There are a lot of good references at each stop of the way here. For instance, on the Project Management Professional link, you can find the Candidate Handbook. You can also find the PMP Professional Exam Content Outline.

To continue on to the application, click on the hyperlink that says Learn About Applying for Your PMP and finally click on Apply for the PMP. Be sure to look at the resources available at each step of this path. Okay, under the education portion of the application, you'll see that the first step is academic education. You'll have to tell the application your highest level of education, the name of the institution, the years you attended, and the field of study.

Once you complete that, it'll give you a green check mark on the right saying that meets the requirements. Within the education section, You'll also see Professional Education. This is where you need to record your 35 hours of project management education.

Notice here that I filled it in for IIL's PMP exam preparation course and I put in the 35 hours. Note on the right side that once I have the requisite 35 hours, it gives me a green checkmark letting me know that I can continue on to the experience area. So I'll click on the button down below that says continue to experience.

The experience area is probably one of the most important. This is one of the major reasons for rejecting an application. If you don't have enough experience, if you haven't written it the way they need to see it, all these reasons can trigger a rejection.

As I said before, you must write a narrative that's at least 100 words and the average narrative runs between 200 and 500 words. It must indicate leading and directing the project as identified with the tasks, enablers, knowledge, and skills specified in the Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline for 2021. Make sure that you're using the Examination Content Outline for 2021. The 2020 Exam Content Outline is also there for download. One of the most common mistakes made in completing the experience section is that people tend to write more about what the project was about. PMI doesn't want you to focus on what the project did. They're interested in what you did on the project in your role as a project manager.

So write one sentence at the beginning on the objective or the focus of the project. The remainder of the description should be on your activities as a project manager, and I would go ahead and break them down by domain. In other words, put initiating and then write what you did in initiating and make sure that there are activities that fall within the initiating group.

Same thing for planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing. Use the Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline 2021 as a model for some of your descriptions and use active verbs to indicate managed and led activities. In the Professional Examination Content Outline 2021, you'll go to page 4, where it lists all the experience and enablers that you should have done in three basic domains, people, processes, and business environment. When you look at page 4 and we're looking at the domain for people, you'll see it broken down by domain at the top, the next division is task, and then you'll see the enablers. What I would do is go through these for each domain, people, processes, and business environment, and pick the ones that most closely relate to what you actually did on the project.

Then, instead of just copying it, I would modify it to fit exactly what you did on your project. You can begin this process by downloading the 2021 exam content outline. You can find the domain task descriptions on page 4 through page 10. These are the items that the project manager should be competent in and are listed as domains, tasks, and enablers.

Find those enablers that are closely related to what you've done on your project and modify these descriptions to fit your actual experience. Do not... copy the descriptions in the outline word for word.

In writing your description, make sure that you write strong action verbs that denote led and directed. Words such as administered, designated, spearheaded, governed, forged, and issued. There are many others that you can find online if you're looking for action verbs.

Now in the beginning, we started by talking about the experience needed, and we said you could go back 8 years, but for the months, whether it's 5 years experience or 60 months, it must be consecutive, non-overlapping experience. It might also be 3 years or 36 months non-overlapping experience. Take a look at the graphic on this slide.

You can see that project one is four months and project two is five months, but they overlap. Well, you can count the four months for project one, but in project two, you'll only be able to count two months that don't overlap with project one for a total of six months of experience rather than nine. When you have enough hours to meet the requirements in the experience section, it will allow you to proceed to the exam details.

In the exam details, they're asking general information that they'll need for your certificate and contact information. Things like your name, your email address, a phone number, and they'll ask for how you would like your name on the certificate. Be sure to check the spelling.

and correctness on this page. Let's review a couple things. There are two eligibility requirements. Based on your education, you need a minimum number of months of experience leading and managing projects.

You will also need 35 contact hours in a formal project management class. Some other pointers on experience. Aside from the number of months to qualify, your experience must be in a professional setting, but not necessarily paid. For instance, if you did a project in college or working on your graduate dissertation for your doctoral degree, you can't count that as professional experience.

But as it says, if you didn't get paid for it and it was professional experience, it counts. There's a tendency for people to take a bunch of small projects and group them together as one project. Don't do that. You must record each project individually. As mentioned before, you can go back eight consecutive years from the date of application to collect experience.

And the months of experience must be spent leading and directing the project. Keep in mind, the goal is to get your PMP certification. or Project Management Professional certification. The first hurdle you must pass is completing the application and getting it accepted. If you don't have the 35 requisite hours, be sure to ask the International Institute for Learning about their Project Management Professional certification course.

In addition, you're going to need 60 Continuing Education Requirements, or PDUs, professional development units, to maintain your certification every three years. Check with IIL as far as their coursework, webinars, and other ways to earn those PDUs. The International Institute for Learning is a Project Management Institute authorized training partner, and they utilize authorized training partner instructors and trusted trainers.

Look for the badges that indicate those certifications. If you'd like a free consultation, Email learning at iil.com or visit www.iil.com. Follow us on social media. and look for us in traditional and online classes.

Thank you very much and good luck with the application process.

Transcript for:Guide to Completing Your PMP Application

Transcript for:
Guide to Completing Your PMP Application