You’ve been working for a fair few year’s now. Probably just long enough to trigger your long service leave, but not quite long enough to celebrate 10 years at one company. Good work so far. You’ve gotten a few decent projects under your belt, maybe been promoted a couple of times and have cemented your reputation in your current organization. You’re ready to take it to the next level, whatever that’s supposed to mean. You’ve dreamed of being a COO one day, calling the shots from above, managing super competent people like yourself. So what’s the next step?

Really, it’s up to you. If you enjoy doing project work – and I suppose you do, if you’re visiting my blog 😉 – then you might consider getting the PMP Certification online. This is the industry standard globally for project managers. You turn up to a job interview or show this to your boss and they’ll know that you are definitely a walker, not a talker. Still, you want more information. You want to know whether it truly is the next best step for you. Let’s do a bit of a dive into more details below…

Who should do PMP Certification?

In answering who should do the PMP certification, it’s worthwhile looking into the prerequisites of doing one. There are some clues there that point to a candidate’s suitability and readiness.

I’m not going to write out the dot points in the screenshot above verbatim, but I will point out a few things:

• the PMP certification is NOT something that you can just pay for and get. You need to either have suitable tertiary level knowledge and/or verifiable, industry knowledge, up to 5 years full time.
• no matter what you’ve studied or done, you also need 35 additional hours of project management training. This is to standardize your knowledge and get you up to speed with what’s the latest benchmark of project management knowledge to date.
• the PMP certification is a COMMITMENT, not a once off piece of paper you get, post on LinkedIn (though you should be showing it off after you get it ) then forget. Once you get it, you have to keep your knowledge current and renew it every 3 years.

These requirements will turn off some people and disqualify others. That’s great; thins the herd and only leaves behind those who are serious about their career. If you are committed to climbing to greater heights in your career, read on to learn about what the pros and cons are in the PMP.

PMP Advantages and Disadvantages

Pros:

• you get a certification that’s globally recognized. It’s worth noting that in the Asia Pacific region and SEA region, PRINCE2 is the standard, but companies will still know what the PMP is.
• you get plugged into a global alumni network that can help you keep learning more, as well as connecting you to opportunities,
• you don’t leave your career in the hands of your current organization. Formalizing your knowledge with the PMP will let you take your experience across the country – or world even! – and take back control of your career.

Cons:

• there are costs involved: training to do the exam, PMI membership, the exam fee, to say the least.
• it can be difficult fitting in all the study to do for the exam if you’re time poor. It will likely require you to put a week aside for a bootcamp style course to cram in all the material you need to absorb for the exam,
• it’s not a magic bullet. You may not get a promotion/raise with your current organization after doing it. Again, this is a proactive step that you can take to boost your value, but don’t expect an immediate raise from doing it. The ROI might not come immediately.

So there’s a bit more information there for you. The best thing to do is speak with people in the industry who might already have the PMP, see what their path was like and whether you could see yourself doing the same thing as them. If you do persist in doing the PMP, I’d love to see you around the blog and hear your story!