In this instructional video, Helena Liu walks PMP exam candidates through a series of practical strategies for tackling the multiple‑choice, situational questions that dominate the exam. She begins by explaining the process‑of‑elimination technique to raise the odds of a correct guess from 25% to 50%, then introduces the “best‑next‑action” rule for questions where several answers appear plausible. She demonstrates how to filter out irrelevant details in a stem, using a procurement‑policy example to illustrate the skill. Liu stresses the importance of mapping PMBOK concepts—especially risk‑response strategies—to real‑world scenarios, noting that roughly 80% of PMP items are situational. She advises candidates to flag uncertain questions for later review, leveraging the exam’s built‑in review function, and to allocate roughly one minute per question on the first pass. Finally, she advocates relentless, active practice: after each wrong answer, create a study note, understand the mistake, and build a personalized error‑log. The video concludes with a call‑to‑action for a free six‑week PMP preparation class, offering an ITTO guide, application‑writing help, and a detailed study plan.
Chapters
Hello and welcome everybody. In this lecture, I am going to teach you how you can choose the correct answer on your upcoming PMP exam. PMP stands for Project Management Professional, and it is a leading certification in the project management industry. And I'm going to show you how to choose the right answer even when all of the answers that you're given on your exam looks the same. Now, if you're new to our channel, be sure to like and subscribe. Okay, now let's dive into our tips. So the first one is to use the process of elimination. So all of the questions that you're going to be given on your PMP exam will be multiple choice. There are 200 questions, you have 4 hours to complete this exam, and you have 4 multiple choice for every single question. So when you're looking at these 4 choices, generally you can eliminate 2 of these choices right away and you're left with 2 more choices to choose from. So using the process of elimination, you can increase your chances of getting a question correct from 25% if you're just guessing to 50% because 2 of the answers you can probably eliminate right away, and then you can look at the remaining 2 and then choose the best answer from there. Now this brings us to our next tip. How do you choose the best answer, right? Because sometimes you can argue that both of these answers could be correct, and PMI does that on purpose. They give you things that could both kind of be argued correct, and you had to choose the best answer for the scenario that you're given. So what you do in this case is you have to ask yourself, what's the best thing to do next? The keyword here is next. So let me give you an example of how to do this. Okay, so let's say our sample question was, Sally, your developer, tells you that the activity you've assigned to her will be delayed. What's the best thing to do? And the 4 possible choices are: 1, reschedule your project. Notify your project sponsor. Inform your customer that the project is going to be delayed. Call a meeting to discuss the situation and alternatives with your team. Now the question here is, what's the best thing to do? What PMI actually means by this is, what's the best thing to do next? The keyword is next, because if you look at these 4 possible choices, in real life, can't you really do all 4? Can I do more of these things? And yes, you can. So to identify the right answer, you have to ask yourself, what is the best thing to do next? And when you ask yourself that, when you've just been notified by your developer that a task will be delayed, the best thing to do is number 4, to call a meeting to discuss the situation and alternatives before, you know, you go to your sponsor, go to your customer, and reschedule your project. So even though you can argue that any of these things could be correct, you have to note what is the best thing to do next, and PMI doesn't explicitly say that, so you have to ask yourself that when they don't explicitly ask you what's the best thing to do next and they just say what's the best thing to do. What they actually mean is what is the best thing to do next. Okay, so the next tip is to figure out what's important in the question and what's not important, because you, you will be given irrelevant information in the question and important information that's important for you to answer the question. And PMI does this on purpose because in real life you'll be given irrelevant information and you'll also be given important information, and you have to be able to choose out the important information. From the information that's not important. So let's jump into an example. So here's an example. Your PMO provides you with procurement policies and documentation to use for your project. These documents are part of your company's blank. A, OPA. B, EEF. C, ITTO. Or D, RFP. Now this question, it could stay the same, But there could be a variation to it. So let's take a look at the variation before we jump into the answer. So you are a project manager with 10+ years of experience in the automotive industry. You've been recently promoted to be a senior project manager position. Today's your first day managing your new project. Your PMO provides you with the procurement policies and documentation to use for your project. These documents are part of your company's blank. So what you can see, from the sample question to the variation, in the variation, there was some extra information given to you that you were, you've worked in the automotive industry for 10+ years, you've just been promoted, and today's your first day, right? So none of this information is actually relevant to answering the question, which is asking you what the procurement policies and procedures are part of within your company. And by the way, the correct answer is A, OPA, which stands for Organizational Process Analysis. Includes all of your company's procedures, plans, policies, et cetera, right? So you'll notice that these type of questions on your exam where you'll be given some sort of irrelevant information and you have to be able to identify what's important and what's not important. Okay, so the next tip I have for you is knowing how to apply PMBOK concepts onto situational questions. So the PMP exam is not just a memorization exam. It's not an exam where you have to recall facts. You have to be able to know how to use the concepts that you see in the PMBOK into situations. In fact, up to 80% of the questions you're going to get on your PMP exam will be situational questions. So you do have to know how to address these questions. So here's what I mean by you have to apply the PMBOK concepts. So as one example, in the risk management section, there was 5 strategies in the PMBOK Guide given for how you can deal with threats on your project. And these 5 different strategies are avoid, accept, transfer, mitigate, and monitor. So on your PMP exam, you won't be asked what's the 5 strategies to deal with threats on your project, or what does avoid risk management strategy mean? They're not going to ask you these kind of definition questions. What you'll most likely see instead is, is that they will ask— give you a scenario, and you will have to be able to identify which type of risk strategy the person used in the scenario they were given. Or they will give you a situation and they will ask you what's the best risk management strategy they can use given that scenario. So you not only need to know these definitions, like what they are, but you have to know when to use them in situations. So be prepared to identify what type of risk strategy was used or identify which strategy you should use given a situation. And then, okay, now let's go on to the next tip. Next tip is to mark questions for review. If you're not sure of the right answer to a specific question, mark it for review. Before your PMP exam starts, you'll be given a 15-minute computer tutorial on how to use their system. This is really useful. You learn how to mark these questions for review. It's pretty intuitive as well. Use this to your advantage because sometimes what you'll notice is that the correct answer in one question will be given out in another question later on. So if you're not sure what the answer is for one question, mark it for review, go through the entire exam, and maybe in another question, the answer to the one that you didn't know previously was already given. And this is also really great because it doesn't get you hung up on any particular question. During your first go-around of your exam questions, just spend no more than 1 minute per question. Mark the ones that you're not sure for review, and with the extra time that you have remaining, go over those questions that you have marked for review. Okay, and the last and final tip is to practice, practice, practice. There's no substitute to doing lots and lots of practice questions. This is the only way you can really get great. At doing these practice questions. Now, when you're doing these practice questions, don't just do it passively. Whenever you get a question wrong, then write it out or give— make a study note for yourself. Whenever you get something wrong, make sure you understand how you got that question wrong and don't repeat the same mistake again. And this is also great because you're creating the study sheet for yourself with exactly what you have to focus on. This is the things that you got wrong before, so you will pay particular attention to those things and not get them wrong on your final exam. Okay, so I hope you found all of these tips are really helpful. I would like to invite you to a free class where I'm going to teach you how you can get your PMP certification in the next 6 weeks. To sign up, simply go to www.examspm.com/free. The link is also below. Just click on the button below, the Register Now button below, or the description box below, and I can't wait to see you during this training. We're going to cover some so much great information. I promise you, you're going to walk out of there learning something new. We're going to break down all of the ITTOs, which stands for inputs, tools, and techniques, and outputs from the PMP exam. I'm going to give you an ITTO guide to kind of just help you see how all of the components are linked together. I'm going to show you how to fill in your PMP application descriptions. I'm going to show you how to read the process chart, etc., etc. So much great information, and I'm going to give you an exact study plan on how to pass your certification in the next 6 weeks. So I'm super excited to have you join me for this training. Just sign up below or go to www.examspm.com/free. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I will see you during our free training.
