As the leading Project Management recruitment specialists, at Arras People we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of the profession, not only in terms of industry knowledge but also how the profession is progressing and evolving as a whole. All our consultants including myself have previous experience within a Project Management setting and as such I felt it would be a great idea this year to test my own knowledge and experience whilst keeping my skill-sets relevant by undertaking the APMP accreditation.
In conjunction with my revision, I thought it would be useful to myself and hopefully insightful to those thinking of taking the exam to start a diary of my progress. I must admit the thought of doing a 3 hour exam in itself is somewhat daunting given that I haven’t been exposed to this sort of setting since University. If memory serves me correctly, I won’t be able to move my right hand at the end of it and I will almost certainly come away with a semi-permanent ink stain on my ring finger accompanied by a 1000 yard stare. Bearing that in mind, I thought I would start off with the exam itself and what is involved.
Arras People's Gary Holmes (not pictured) is aiming to be one of many participants celebrating their passing of the APMP examination next month.
The exam is essentially a three hour, closed book, written paper which is invigilated under formal exam conditions by an APM representative. The APM have stressed that the exam is purely focused on testing knowledge as opposed to experience or competence; however my own personal opinion on this given the work I have already done is that at least some prior exposure to project environments would be highly beneficial in order to give the topics their appropriate context.
The paper consists of sixteen questions, of which candidates are expected to answer ten. Each question carries 50 marks and the total score needed to pass the exam is 55%. What I find interesting is the terminology that candidates need to be aware of in terms of question styles, for example, questions might begin with the phrases ‘List’, ‘State’, ‘Explain’ and so on and each phrase requires a different style of response from the candidate.
The other key thing to bear in mind will be time management. Three hours to answer ten questions seems like a long time, but I have it on good authority from a colleague who sat the exam last year that time management is potentially a major issue with this exam. I have been warned against spending overly long on a particular question to make sure it is perfect when I should be wrapping it up and moving on to the next one. This really makes sense given the marking system in place. I know that for myself I will really need to keep on top of this, from previous exam experience I am aware that this can be as tricky as answering the questions themselves. I would be keen to hear any other opinions on this from people who have already sat the exam?
That’s it for now anyway, I’ll let you know how I’m getting on next week…
