In this interview, Brian Burnett recounts how he earned his Project Management Professional (PMP) certification within a four‑week window using ExamSPM’s online training. He enrolled on January 6, completed the required 35 contact‑hour lectures in about three weeks, and simultaneously prepared for the exam by taking module quizzes and eight full‑length practice exams (approximately 1,600 questions). Burnett leveraged the platform’s speed‑control feature to accelerate review of familiar material and slowed down for new concepts. He found the practice exams more challenging than the actual PMP test, which he considered about 50% easier. His primary motivation was to meet job‑board requirements and secure short‑term project work, prompting an intensive 6‑8 hour daily study schedule. He also discovered that the 35 contact‑hour requirement could be met early, allowing the application for the PMP exam to run in parallel and potentially shave a week off the timeline. Burnett advises future candidates to start the application early, use fast playback wisely, and treat the practice exams as a deeper learning tool rather than just a test‑prep resource.
Chapters
Okay, congratulations first of all for passing your PMP in 4 weeks. That's amazing. Congratulations.
Thanks. I'm pretty excited that it went so well.
Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your, I guess, experience with the PMP.
Sure. You mean the test or the prep for the test?
Let's start with the— well, let me start with the prep and then we'll go into the test itself.
Great, yep. Yeah, I signed up for the training, I think it was about the 6th of January, which was a Friday, and I had time to really focus on working on it, which is why I decided to do this. I've had in mind doing the PMP for years but never really needed it, but now I had a gap in some work where I decided to focus. Great. What's cool is four weeks later I sat for the PMP, which was last Friday, and passed it. In reality, I did three weeks of work because after I did the online training and some of the exams, I found out I could go ahead and apply for taking the exam from PMI, and that's when I then wrote up the. descriptions of the projects that I've done and sent that to you for review. And I basically stopped for a week waiting for those reviews to get done. And once you sent me your updates, I updated it. I then applied and got accepted to apply for the actual exam. Then I studied again for a week. So I studied for 3 weeks.
Mm-hmm.
The online instruction was super. I really like the software that you've got.
Thank you.
I've got lots of years of experience, and so to sit through the online instructions at the slow speed would have been very boring. But because it has the ability to speed it up to 1.5, to 150 and like 200%, I'd say half the time I had it on fast speed because I could still understand what's being said and I could still see the slides, but when it was material that I already knew, I just kind of flew through it. But as I got to some of the things I needed more refreshment on or PSI-specific terms, I then slowed it down to listen to it. So that factor was super.
Right, awesome to hear. So what was your strategy then to pass your PMP in just 4 weeks? So you watched the lectures, did you break it up and do some practice questions, or, you know, did you watch all of the lectures then do all the practice questions? What was your strategy or method?
At the end of each instructional, it had quiz, a quiz or quizzes, and so I did those.
Right.
And usually passed them without much of a problem because the instructional was so good.
That's awesome to hear. That's awesome to hear. And so When you were doing these quizzes, did you find specific spots that were tough? Like, was there any sections that was tough for you, or did you find everything like really straightforward? All you had to do was go step by step?
The quizzes were pretty straightforward. Occasionally though, I'd find a question where I mentioned to you where the answers weren't right, but you said you were updating the software. to get that corrected. But the concept and in general, quizzes were great and I did quite well with them.
Yeah. Did you find on your actual exam the questions were similar to what you saw in the practice questions?
Now, what's different there is you then had the exam questions after the instruction.
Right.
And the exams On one side, they prepared me well for taking the actual PMP exam. On the other side, that's probably good, it went into much more detail on your questions than what the actual PMP did. As I was taking the PMP exam, I kept thinking, now when's it really going to get to harder questions like what I had in your practice? It never did.
Oh really? So you found the actual exam easier than the prep questions that we had?
Yes, like Easily 50% easier. By the time I was 3/4 of the way through the actual exam, I thought, you know, I don't think they're going to get the hard— and what I consider the hard questions are where you've got to dig in and do analysis and come up with various numbers and things, and it really didn't have that. Most of it was higher-level concept things.
Right.
So yeah, that's why your exams did help.
Right.
Obviously, I learned more than I needed for the exam, but on the other hand, I wasn't just studying your material to pass the exam. It was also, I should learn the material too. Another interesting strategy, the online tutorials were great, but the exam questions that you had took it even deeper.
Right.
Because there was material in your exam questions that was not in your tutorial.
Right, so it helped you learn some additional concepts about project management and so forth.
Exactly, right.
That's awesome to hear, and I'm glad to hear that it was harder than what you expected because you don't want the reverse to happen. You don't want the practice exams to be easier and then the actual exam to be harder, right?
Right, yep, very, very true. Yeah, another strategy that I would advise to others is And this wasn't clear to me, but I found out that once you finish the online tutorials, that's your 35 hours that you need.
Exactly.
And you could actually, if you're going to make it go faster, apply at that point to get your approval to take the PSI exam, and then parallel to that, start with your online exam prep.
Right.
I thought I had to get through all of your online exam prep What, 8 exams or so?
No, no, no, just, just all of the— you just had to watch all of those lectures to get your 35 contact hours. The exams are, are, you know, kind of like an additional part of the course that's going to help you take the exam, the PMP exam, but it's not a required part to get your 35 contact hours. Yeah.
Found that out later.
Yeah.
I could have probably saved another week of prep work. I could, if everything went fast, could have had it done in 2 weeks, but that's okay. 4 weeks is fine.
Right, yeah, you still did it very, very quickly. Yeah, so how many exam questions did you do to prepare?
Let's see, how many did you have in there? 8 of them? 8 sections?
There was, I think, 14 sections, and then There's 9 full-length exams at the end.
That's it, the full-length. I did 8 of the full-length ones.
Wow, wow. So you did—
Yeah, I was, I was a testing animal.
So you did 1,600 questions just in the full-length. Each full-length exam has 200 questions. So you did 8 of those and plus the quizzes at the end of each of those modules.
Yeah, again, I had time to do it. That's why I really hit it hard. Other people may not have time that's concentrated to just focus on it.
Right, I should have asked this in the beginning, Brian, but I forgot. So what was your motivation for wanting to take the PMP exam actually?
Ah, very good. Yeah, it's because I'm looking for some short-term projects to work on, and as I look for job boards, a lot of them have PMP certification being required. And in my case, even though I have plenty of experience, I had a hunch that that kind of held back people contacting me for further questioning or interviews. So I took it so that I could have that entree into possible job interviews.
Right, right, just to get your foot in the door because a lot of those recruiters are screening people for this certification, right?
That's right, that was my motivation.
Awesome, and what motivated you to do it so quickly in just You know, get it as soon as possible?
I had the time, it looked like I needed it to get a short-term project, so those two together said, okay, let's push it hard.
Okay, awesome, and you did a fantastic job at it as well. And how did you find out about ExamSPM? Like, where did you find it online?
You're gonna love this. Just a simple Google search.
Oh wow, that's— That's as simple as it gets.
Exactly. And then once I found you, I did a little bit more searching to find out what other options were out there, what people thought of it. And the other options were, like you mentioned, way too expensive. I thought, you know, for the price that you've got, I'm going to take your intro session. And you did a great job of laying it out and what it was like and examples. I thought, yep, this is what I need and I don't need to look any further.
Right. Awesome. Awesome to hear. So just to summarize, and correct me if I'm wrong about anything, so what you did, you signed up, you started watching those lectures, and after each lecture you did the practice question. At the end of each module, there's 50 practice questions. So you did all of those, and I think there's 10 or 15— 10 or 14 modules in the course. And then at the very end, you did 8 of the 9 full-length exams. Each of the full-length exams are 200 questions, and you did all of this in 4 weeks, and you passed your PMP on your first try. Did I miss anything?
Very good, good summary.
Is there anything else that you feel it's important that other people may benefit from, from your experiences?
Let's see.
Oh, how long were you studying every day?
6 to 8 hours.
Wow.
Again, I had a block of time where I could do it, so I was motivated.
Right, so you were pretty much doing it full-time almost.
That's right. Well, full-time for 3 of those 4 weeks.
I see, I see. So if you could do it over again, is there any roadblocks that you would avoid?
Just like I mentioned, if I would have known that it just happened to be 35 hours, I could have applied then to the exam.
Uh-huh.
To take the exam.
Uh-huh.
I probably lost a week of time in writing. Writing my descriptions of my projects was easy, but then waiting for you to review it, and then after that waiting for PSI to approve those and let me take the exam, I'm sure I lost maybe even 10 days through that. Right. So if I would have known ahead of time, I could have compressed that and done it even faster, which would have met my goals.
Right, right. So if you could do it over again, you would have started on your application as soon as you registered and then submitted it once you finished all of those lectures. So that would have saved a little bit of time for you there.
Right. And again, it's because I didn't know what was required for getting approved to take the exam.
Right, right, right, right, right. Okay, that's a fair point. I think one thing I could do is just to make that point a bit more clear for other students in the future.
Yeah, that'd be helpful because what I heard in your introductory was, yes, I do need to document these projects that I've done. I said, yeah, that's fair, but I thought I can't really do that until after I do my 35 hours, and I could have compressed the time more.
Yes, yes, you could have. Yes, that's a fair point. You could have started on your application but not have submitted it until You got your 35 contact hours. So you could have done those 2 in parallel.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that's a fair point. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for your time today.
