PMI CAPM – Blitz Review of the CAPM Course

1. Know the CAPM Exam Certification Details

As you move through this last portion of really studying for your CAPM exam, I want you to continue to have the mindset that you are studying to pass, not take the CAPM. You are going to pass the CAPM. The CAPM exam details 150 questions. You’ll have 3 hours to complete the test and you’ll have to retake the CAPM every five years if you want to maintain this certification. Now, many people pass the CAPM and then within three years, they go on and take the PMP. So something to consider, but right now, let’s focus on passing the CAPM. Let’s do a review of the CAPM exam content. Outline 15% of your exam, project Management and the processes.

So yes, you will have a lot of questions on the edo’s, the inputs, tools and techniques and outputs. So you need to know the processes project Integration Management 12%, project Scope Management 11%, time Management 12%, cost Management 7%, quality Management 6%, continuing on HR Management 8%, communications Management 6%, risk Management 9%, procurement Management 7%, and Project Stakeholder Management 7%.

Now, once you’re in the exam center, you will be seated in the Exam center. And then once your test begins, you cannot pause the timer, so you have 3 hours. But if you need to use the restroom or get a drink of water, that’s allowed. But you can’t pause the timer, so your time continues to run. So do some good time Management before your exam begins, you’ll have a 15 minutes tutorial on how to use the exam software. Now, in days prior, you could use that 15 minutes and dump out all of your notes.

In 2016, PMI said no more. You cannot write anything down until the exam actually begins, so plan accordingly. The Testing center is where it’s a pro metric testing center. And of course, this is where you’ll go once you schedule your exam. I encourage people to arrive 20 to 30 minutes early. You don’t want to be rushed, don’t want to be frenzied rushing in the door at the last minute before your exam. So give yourself 20 or 30 minutes to check in.

Once you arrive, the receptionist, they’ll give you a key for a locker. It’s just a little cube locker, and you can put your stuff in this locker. So your jacket, your purse, your laptop, or whatever the case may be. You probably don’t want to bring your laptop, but any of your belongings, your wallet, anything in your pockets have to go in this locker. And you cannot open the locker until you’re 100% done with the testing process.

You can wear a sweater or a jacket into the testing room, but once you’re in the testing room, you cannot take that jacket or sweater off. So just wear something comfortable. It’s a typical office like environment, so don’t think you’re going to be overly cold or overly hot. It’s room temperature. It’s pretty mild. As you go into the testing center, a proctor will greet you and it’ll ask you to turn your pockets out. So you’ll have to go into your pants pocket or your shirt pocket or whatever the case may be, and turn them inside out because they’re going to prove that you have nothing in your pocket. If you have something in your pocket, you’ll have to go back and put it in your locker before you can start your exam. They will also go over you with this magnetic wand, much like at the airport, to make sure you aren’t trying to sneak anything into the testing center.

So don’t let that rattle you. It’s pretty typical. It’s part of the testing process. But it’s what you can expect when you show up to pass the CAPM. You’re going to take the test at a prometric testing center. You want to arrive about 20 or 30 minutes early. They will give you a little locker and a key, a giant key. You put all your stuff in your locker. You can’t open it until you’re done. You can wear sweaters or a jacket, but once you’re in the testing room, you can’t take them off. So just be comfortable. It’s an office environment. Before you actually will go into the testing room, a proctor will make you turn all of your pockets inside out.

Make sure you aren’t taking anything in there with you. And they’ll likely use this magnetic wand like you’re at the airport for security. So don’t be surprised when that happens to you. It’s kind of a way to rattle you a little bit before you go in and take the test. Don’t let it bother you. As I mentioned, the proctor will be the person that takes you into the actual testing room, and they will get you seated. They’ll give you six sheets of paper, or they’ll give you a little whiteboard and a marker.

You don’t get to choose it’s whatever they want to do. I prefer the blank paper, but if they give you the whiteboard, that’s just the way it is. Deal with it and move on. In the exam, there is a calculator. Most testing centers will give you the option to have a physical calculator, but it’s just like using a calculator on your computer. It’s pretty easy to do the actual testing experience. You can strike through answers. So, for example, which one of the following is an output of quality control or whatever? ABCD.

Well, you know, it’s not C, so there’ll be a little option. You can go up and click and come down and strike through the answer, or you can go up and click it and you can highlight the answer. So this is something new that I’ve seen in some recent exams. If you don’t have that in your testing experience, well, that’s just the way it is. I had this on a recent PMI exam and that’s what I experienced. I thought it was pretty handy. Now on all the PMI’s exams, you can mark a question for review.

You can move backwards and forwards and at the end, before you actually click the button to end and grade test, it’ll show you the whole exam what you’ve answered for each question. So anything that you’ve marked for review will show up in yellow. Little highlighter. I strongly encourage you when you get to a question and you don’t know, you have no idea, do not leave it blank.

A blank question is a wrong question. So click and answer Market for Review and then move on. Some test passing strategies I have here for you. First off, your goal is to answer the question. You might get a big scenario where it has a real long backstory about where this guy was born and what he had for dinner last night and yada yada. It’s like all of this information, well, a lot of it, will have nothing to do with the question. It’s just eating up your time. Remember, this is problem solving.

So what you may want to do is just scroll down and read the end of that question first. The question may just be something really quick and direct. All you have to do is answer the question. You don’t always have to consider all of the backstory. Now sometimes you will. But if you get a really long question, come down and read just the portion that’s relevant to the four answers. If you have the highlighter option, you can use the highlighter even to highlight some parts of the question. For keywords. I always encourage people to use process of elimination. So look at the questions and say which one of these there’s no way which one would make the question untrue.

So you can mark those out and then you can improve your odds. Because say you mark out two of the four, well you’ve got a 50 50. And as I’ve mentioned, do not leave a blank answer. A little exam tip for you, a little secret that it’s kind of sneaky, but if you don’t have any idea which one to choose, I always choose the one with the longest answer.

The reason why sometimes to make the answer the most correct, it takes more words. So if you look at my test questions, sometimes you’ll see the longest ones are the correct. I try to write those that they all are about the same length, but sometimes you can’t help it because you have to add a couple of qualifiers to make that question correct. So if I don’t know and I’m taking a test, I’ll always choose the longest one. Doesn’t always work, but it’s a good guess. Some other techniques choose a time that works for you. Do not overstudy. Don’t study 24 hours in a row. Be smart about it, even the day before.

You can only study and retain so much. I want you to sleep, get rest, eat healthy foods, drink lots of water, show up early, be calm, be cheery, be confident, coach yourself. When you get in the testing environment, they’ll give you some earplugs or some noise canceling headphones. I like to use them. I want complete silence. So you can do that as well.

I always recommend that people will take a break every 50 questions. If you spend about a minute per question, that’s plenty of time. You can do 200 questions, 100 questions in 2 hours. So if you take 50 questions, do a quick little bathroom break, come back in, do another 50, just kind of breaks up the exam, gets the blood flowing. Very important to do when you are just sitting there. Just like riding an airplane. You don’t want to sit there for 4 hours. Get up and stretch, walk around, use the facilities.

You will have tough questions on the exam, no doubt about it. Sometimes what you’ll see will be oh, there are two questions or two answers to a question which appear to be correct. Your goal is to find the one that is most correct. So you want to compare the two answers, see what’s different in the two answers, and then think through the question and then see which answer best fits the question. You will see some stuff that is just weird, some what I call weirdo questions. It might be a seated question. Really think about what just the question is asking.

Pare it down, get rid of everything else except for where the question mark is and read that sentence. And then if you still don’t know, guess it. Choose the longest one, mark it down, jot a note, whatever you got to do, but don’t leave it blank. When I teach this class live, I see people change their answers. They talk themselves out of their answers and over and over they usually change it for the worst. So I tell people really don’t change your answers unless you really know that you’re changing it to the correct answers.