You Can Now Take Your PMP Exam Online! (PMI Update May 2020)

You can now take your PMP exam online, and in this video I am going to show you everything that you need to know about the new online PMP exam. And if you do want to obtain your PMP certification in the next 6 weeks, be sure to sign up for a free class at www.examspm.com/free. Now COVID-19 has rampaged through the globe, and in the past 5-6 months it has put a third of the world's population into quarantine and forced forced a lot of businesses to either change or to shut down. So PMI also had to adapt to these changing times because people could no longer go into exam centers to take their PMP exam. They have adapted and changed, and now you can take the PMP exam online. But it's not just a straightforward switch from online to offline. There is a few nuances that have also changed as well, and I'm going to walk you through them in this video. So how does the online exam work? Now the online exam is still a closed book exam and there will be a live proctor to be watching you at all times to ensure that you are not cheating. And there are a lot of security protocols to get through to even just log into the exam because they want to make sure you're taking the exam from a secure server. They want to verify your identity and all of those things. So I would recommend that you show up 30 minutes before the actual scheduled time of your exam to get through all of these security protocols so you can start your exam right on time. In order to take your PMP exam online, you will need 3 things. One, you want fast, reliable internet because if there's a lot of lags, you're only getting 4 hours to take this exam and if there's a lot of lags in your internet, that's going to take up room that you could have been using to take your exam. A question I get really often is, what if my internet fails? Well, PMI will try to reboot you back into your exam if your internet disconnects, but if it continues to disconnect, then your exam will be aborted and you will have to pick another date and time to take your exam again. You will also need a webcam because the live proctor needs to see you at all times. They need to see your face, they need to make sure that you're not writing things on the table and you're not just walking away from the exam as well. So you do need a webcam, and if you don't have one, they're really cheap if you just want to buy them on Amazon, like $20, $30 kind of thing. You also want a clean and quiet workspace because it's a closed-book exam. No one can interrupt you during the 4 hours while you, you are doing your exam because that could constitute as cheating if they're trying to talk to you. And you also want a clean workspace because the proctor do want to see that there's nothing else on your desk, so you can't be looking at any other notes and stuff like that. So clean out your desk and make sure there's no other paper or notes on it before you begin your exam. Now let's talk about the pros and the cons of taking the exam online, starting with the good news, starting with the pros. Now because you can take it online, you can take your PMP exam from the comfort of your home. For those of you who have taken any of PMI's exam before at Pearson VUE testing center, you'll know that just to get into the exam room, it's almost like going through airport security. There's metal detectors and other security screenings, and there's also cameras looking down at you at all times to ensure that no one is cheating. Now, a lot of people are walking into these exams with high anxiety already, and just being in that environment where you have to walk through metal detectors and there's cameras looking down on you just adds another layer of anxiety for a lot of people. So being able to take your exam at home just removes that extra layer of anxiety for a lot of test takers. Also, when you can take it at home, you can control your environment. I have heard of cases where the person said that the person next to them in the Pearson VUE testing center was taking a different exam, and that different exam required a lot of typing, and just the sound of the keyboard clicking throughout their entire 4 hours when they were trying to take their PMP was really distracting. So sometimes they have earplugs that they can provide to you and other times they don't, but still when you're able to take it at home, you can control your entire environment and you can make it so that it's really comfortable for you and you can even write your exam in your PJs as well. Now let's talk about the cons. The bad news is that when you do take your PMP exam in person at the Pearson VUE centers, they give you 2 pieces of paper that you can write whatever you want on. A lot of students like to use the first 5 to 10 minutes to create a quote-unquote cheat sheet for themselves, so just to gather all of their thoughts, and they will have those cheat sheets with them for the remainder of their exam. But however, if you are taking it online, you will not have these 2 pieces of scrap paper that you can write on. So doing some of the math questions could be a bit more difficult because you will only have an online-based calculator and you will have an online whiteboard that you can write on. You can kind of think of this online whiteboard that they're giving you as something similar to Microsoft Paint, so you do have to draw with your mouse. So that could be more difficult for a lot of people. So not having these 2 pieces of scrap paper is definitely a downside, but the reason they had to take it out is because if you are writing something on your desk, the live proctor can't see what you're writing, and it's just too much hassle to allow people to have these 2 pieces of paper and still ensure that no one is cheating. Also, in the exam centers, they give you 2 pieces of paper and they ensure that you don't use more than 2 pieces of paper, and if you do want another one, they take one back, and just that whole process is just way too difficult to implement when you're allowing people to write their exams online, and that's why PMI took this out. I also want to talk about changes to the PMP exam as well. So when you are writing it in person, you can take a break at any time. You can go to the bathroom, you can have a drink and eat a snack, that kind of thing. But however, when you're taking it online, Online, you can't do those things because if you're just taking a break and you're walking out of the room, the proctor can't ensure that you don't have notes from another room that you're looking at. And because it is a closed-book exam, they just want to ensure that there's no cheating going on. And in order to do so, they've broken up the PMP exam into 2 halves. So you have 2 hours to complete the first 100 questions, and then you will have an optional 10-minute break So you can take those 10 minutes, go to the bathroom, do whatever you need to, or you know, you don't have to take that 10-minute break at all. You can start right on the second half right away, and that 10-minute break is actually added to your total exam time as well. So technically you have 4 hours and 10 minutes to complete your exam now. So the thing is that even though you have the first 2 hours to complete the first 100 questions, you cannot look at the answers you answered in the first half during the second half. So this again, it just helps PMI ensure that there's no cheating going on during the exam. So in your 10-minute break, you can step away from your computer, you can go to the bathroom, you can eat a snack, do whatever you need to do, and then in the second half you start on the second 100 questions, but you can't modify any of the answers you have put in the first first half that you have just completed, and you can't take any other breaks other than the 10-minute break that's built into the middle. And this again is just to ensure that there's no cheating going on, because if you pause the exam, even if it does eat into your 4 hours, but if you walk out of the room, there's just no way that the proctor who is online can ensure that you're not looking at your notes from another room. Okay, so just ensure that you can still mark questions for review, but you can only review and modify your answers for the first half during the first 2 hours. You can only review and, and re-answer questions for the second half during the second half. You can't modify whatever you answered in the first half during the second half of the exam. Also, you have to ensure that you are answering 100 questions in 2 hours. When you're taking it in person, you could say that in the first 2 hours you answer 80 questions and in the second 2 hours you're answering 120 questions. Unfortunately, when you do Doing online, you can't do that because they did want to schedule in a break in the middle for people. Now let's talk about the future outlook. PMI did not say how long these online PMP exams will last for. It could be a temporary solution until COVID-19 is resolved, but it could be a great option for people who want to use this downtime to get certified. A lot of us are under quarantine right now and there's no better time than to use this time wisely and advance your project management careers. It is also a great choice to take your PMP exam online if you get nervous about writing it in maximum security settings, or maybe you live in a rural area and you don't have a Pearson VUE center that's really close to your home. Maybe you have to drive an hour out of the way to get to a Pearson VUE center, and you can avoid all of that rush hour traffic, all of that, because now you can write it online. Lastly, a lot of project manager positions nowadays require those candidates to have the PMP certification, so they're not even going to interview you without this certification. And since a lot of companies do need to make process changes after this quarantine is over, and a lot of companies are looking to move their operations online, now is the perfect time to get your PMP certification so that you're going to be ready when the quarantine's over and all of these companies are hiring again and they want to make those process changes and they want to add in new projects. Then you'll be right on the front lines and you'll be ready to take on those opportunities, right? So I think this is the perfect time for people to get their PMP certification. Just because the exam is online does not mean the actual test questions are different from what you'll see in the Pearson VUE centers. It's the exact same exam. It's just that you are now able to take it from home. And again, if you're interested in obtaining your PMP certification, please check out our free course at www.exampm.com/pmp. Thank you so much today, and I hope you found this video informative.