New PMP Application Process 2021

As you may have heard, the Project Management Institute, or PMI, have recently changed the application process for the PMP, or Project Management Professional exam. So in this video, we're going to dive into all of the changes and what you need to know and how to fill out your new PMP application. Now, before we dive in, be sure to sign up for our free class at www.exampm.com/free to learn how you can get certified in the next 6 weeks. Okay. So in today's training, we're going to cover what the latest PMP application process has changed to and what you will need to know. So the first step is to confirm that you're eligible to take the PMP exam. Now, there are 2 ways that you can take the exam. The first one is if you have a 4-year degree or global equivalent, so it doesn't have to be from the US, but you do have to have a university or college degree or higher. don't get any more additional bonuses if you have a PhD or a master's degree. So anything above a 4-year university degree, you'll fall into category 1. So in this case, you will need 36 months of leading projects, plus you will need 35 hours of project management certification or the CAPM certification. So either of these would fulfill the requirement. The major change here is that before PMI said that you will need 4,500 hours of leading and directing projects, but now they have changed it to 36 months. The reason they did this is because, well, realistically, project managers aren't tracking every single hour that they're working on a project, especially over a large span of time like years. So most people were estimating anyways, and so they were they got rid of that requirement. So now you just need 36 months of leading and directing projects within the last 8 years. Now, if you don't have a college degree though, you can qualify based on the second way, which is to have a high school diploma or an associate degree or the global equivalent to that if you're not from the US. And if you fall into category number 2, you will need 60 months of leading and directing projects And in the second scenario, you will still need 35 hours of your project management education, or you could also replace this with your CAPM certification. Now, when I say work experience though, I wanna clarify that it's not any type of work experience. You do need to be managing projects during that time. So for example, if you had a 3-year experience working as a waitress, unfortunately that experience is not going to get you qualified for the PMP exam. Now, that being said, PMI does not require you to have the exact title as a project manager. So for example, if you were working as a business analyst and you were doing all of the tasks that a project manager would do, that experience would still qualify you for the PMP certification. So it comes down to the roles that you were doing, and if you're doing the roles highlighted for a project manager based on the what's in the PMBOK, then you would qualify. And we're going to get into the experiences in just a little bit. So after you have confirmed that you do qualify and you are eligible to write your PMP exam, step number 2 is to gather all of your information. So you want to document the experiences and training that you have done, and this includes the projects you have led. You want to just write down briefly where you worked, what your roles and responsibilities were and the durations of these projects. The same thing goes for the training. Any project management training you have done, gather the certificates that you have gotten, what institutes they were from, and what the names of those courses were and how many hours they were. And if you verified that your experiences have lasted more than 3 years or 36 months or greater, and the training you have done is more than 35 hours, you know you are ready and you are ready to jump into step number 3, which is to complete your online application. So, so to start this, you just need to go to pmi.org to begin your application. Now here's an application checklist that you can go through as you're filling out this application, and the application is actually pretty straightforward. There's just 3 steps. The first step is to just to fill in all of your identification information. The second step is to fill out all of your projects, where you worked, the contact person and the description for that project. And then step number 3 is just to confirm your training requirements, and you just submit it and you're off to the races. And after you have submitted your application, PMI generally takes between 1 business day to 10 business days to get back to you with their approval. And this length of time really depends upon how busy they are. The process could take a bit longer if you are selected for another And what happens during an audit is that you will have to contact all of your contact people that you've listed for all of your projects, and they have to verify that you have actually done the work that you have done on those projects, and they will send that verification form back to PMI. So if you are selected for an audit, your application approval process could take a couple more weeks to do. Okay, so once you're ready to apply for your PMP exam, you want to make sure that you have all of your project entries and you want to list all of the projects individually. Remember that PMI defines a project as something that has a defined beginning and ending and produces a unique product, service, or result. So if your project fits within that definition, then you can list it on your PMP exam. And you want to use a true title of the project, so something that really describes that project well. You want to make sure that you have detailed out all of your roles and responsibilities on the project as well as what the project is about. So a brief summary about the objectives of the project, why did it need to start? And you also want to accurately indicate the number of team members who have participated on the project as well as a budget of the project as well. And the audit process I just talked about a little earlier, if you are selected for an audit, then you will be given the proper verification forms that you have to send off to your contact people and they have to sign it and send it back to PMI. So it's not as difficult as it may sound. Now, one tip here is that before you submit your PMP application, send a copy. You could just screenshot it and send it to the contact person that you listed on your application just to get them to look it over and approve it. So that way you know that if in case you are audited, then your contact person has already seen and has already been prepped on what you have submitted. And this is how you know that they will sign your verification form. The confusion comes if you are selected for an audit, your contact person didn't know that you were going through this process, and they may refuse to sign those verification forms, which can lead you to a lot of problems down the road. That being said, the percentage of chance of you getting audited is fairly low. There is less than a 5% chance that candidates will get audited during the process. I believe it's probably closer to 1 to 3% of all applicants get get randomly audited. However, PMI has not confirmed this number and they do not tell you what percentage of applications actually get randomly audited. Now let's get to the fun part, writing your project descriptions. Arguably, this is the toughest part of the PMP application, which is actually writing out what your project descriptions are. So for every single project you have listed on your application, you need to write a description for them. And there are 6 components to the description: the project objective, your role, your responsibility, your activities, your deliverable, as well as your outcome. And you had to fit all of this within 200 to 500 words. Now, because each of these descriptions are still fairly long, although there's not a limit to how many projects you can have on your PMP application, generally applicants have between 1 to 5 projects listed on their application. So even though there's no maximum limit, you just don't— we just don't really see a lot of people listing out 30 projects, for example, on their application. And if it is smaller projects or similar projects, a lot of applicants just group them together so that they don't have to write 10 of these application descriptions. Now that you know what the application description is, let's look at an example of what one looks like. So here's an example of an application description. I know the text is really small, so I'm going to break it down for you. So the first part is your project objective, and this person wrote, the objective of the project was to restructure the organization's roles, responsibilities, and titles. My role is that I was assigned to be the project manager and change agent for this project. Okay? And then it goes on to her or his responsibilities. So this person wrote, and by the way, this is a real application description example that I'm giving you right now. So this person wrote for the responsibility section, my responsibility was to conduct weekly meetings with the executive team and facilitate meetings between departments as they cross-trained, ensure collective corrective and preventative actions were taken appropriately. I led a small team of managers to facilitate change in each department. The next section is the longest section. It outlines the activities that you have done. So this person wrote, I started the project by identifying key stakeholders. Once I identified stakeholders, I engaged them to collect detailed requirements, define the scope of the project, and create detailed project schedule. Once I had the scope, I developed the WBS, acquired and trained and managed project resources, as well as implemented the quality management plan and change control plan. I'm going to pause here for a second. So what you can see is that in the activity section of your exam, this person is using a lot of PMP terminology that you can find from the PMBOK Guide. So you want to use terms from all 5 of the process groups in this section here, and the 5 process groups are initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing. So when you're describing your project experiences here, you want to use the terminology that PMI uses and not the terms that maybe you, you guys are familiar with in your project. You also want to avoid acronyms because the person who's reviewing your application and it's probably not from your industry, and so they won't be familiar with the specific industry lingo. So for example, if you have a database in your industry called FAQ— I just made that up— so instead of saying that acronym, you just want to replace that with database so that anyone who may not be familiar with your company, their systems, or those industry-specific acronyms can still understand what's going on in your project. Okay, now let me continue reading out the activity section to you. I was the owner of integrated change control activities and proactively managed change requests affecting the scope and schedule. Additionally, I verified and ensured deliverables complied with quality standards, worked with stakeholders to prepare user acceptance testing guidelines, and facilitated user acceptance testing with critical users. I worked on preparing training manuals for equipment and developed new organizational chart compliant with new roles and responsibilities. Moreover, I made sure to acquire additional resources to teach classes and significantly improved offered classes, tracked overall effectiveness of conducted training. At the end of the project, I released project resources, documented lessons learned, and prepared the project for sign-off. Once the project was was accepted, I closed the project. So this is the kind of the style that you want to write in. Short sentences, really clear, and using the terminologies from the PMBOK. If you want a list, go to the PMBOK and you go to the glossary section and you're going to get an entire list of these terminologies that you can include inside of your application. Now the next portion is the deliverable. So in this example, this person wrote the deliverable was a successful transition from a siloed-style clinic into a more agile, flat clinical organization by reducing errors and improving employee effectiveness in the workplace that could pivot depending on the situation. Finally, the last section is the project outcome. The outcome of this project was new titles, increase in pay, proper allocation of workload amount, improved communication between Between departments yielded $5 million in saved rework, an average increase in productivity by 15%, and overall boost in employee morale. So anything you can brag about in your project, you can put here. If your project has not ended yet, you can still use that project experience for your PMP application. So in the deliverables, you can describe what the end deliverable is supposed to be, and the outcome, you could say that the project is still ongoing. going at this step. Now some final tips for your PMP application. Your application, once you have submitted it, it is going to be reviewed by PMI. It will take them a couple days to get back to you on that, and there are 2 ways that you can apply for your PMP exam. One is as a member, which is what I would recommend, and one is as a non-member. If you register as a PMI member, the membership fee is around $140, $150. If you do register as a member though, your exam fee goes down to $405, but if you're a non-member taking the exam, you have to pay $555 to take this exam. The reason that I recommend to people to become a member and pay for that yearly membership fee is because you also get a free digital copy of the PMBOK Guide, when you do that. So even if you had to pay for the exam anyways, might as well get a free copy of the PMBOK while you are at it. In addition to that, you also get access to some private PMI member events that could help you with networking as well. So once you have paid your membership fee and you have submitted the payment, you have officially submitted your application to PMI. They will review your application, and once your application application has been approved, then you can go to Pearson VUE and schedule your exam. And the PMP exam is not one of those exams that happens once every quarter or something like that. Now, there are multiple dates for the exam every single week, and that schedule will vary from city to city, and it is determined by the testing center near you. You can also take the exam online. So once you have gotten your application approved, you will get access to the Pearson VUE testing center schedule and you can book off your exam then. If you give them enough of sufficient notice, you can also change the scheduled date for your exam as well. And after your exam has been scheduled, the only last thing you have to do is to pass the test and congratulations, you are PMP certified. Now to learn how you can pass the exam on your first try, again, be sure to check out our free course on how you can do this. We're going to go over the application process in more depth. We're going to go over tips and tricks as well as the ITTOs that you will see. ITTO stands for inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. So be sure to sign up for this free class at www.examspm.com/free.