If you don't have enough project management experience, you
may face some difficulties in meeting the required PMP experience. What should
you do if there is a significant gap between the eligibility criteria and where
you are now? Here are some tips that could help you overcome that obstacle.
PMP Experience
Requirement
The experience requirement is 4,500 or 7,500 hours of leading
and directing projects, depending on you having a four-year degree or not.
If you don't have it, you're not eligible yet. So let's take
a look at different options, we have for you:
1. Full-Time Project
Managers
Beginning with the most obvious one: if you don’t have enough
hours, and your current role at work requires you to lead and direct projects
full-time (e.g. your title is Project Manager or similar) then it's easy, just
keep doing what you’re already doing. With time you’ll gather the required
number of hours.
2. Not Really Full-Time
Project Managers
It gets a little trickier if you don’t have enough hours and
in your current role you DON'T lead or direct projects. For example: maybe you
are an SME (subject matter expert) and you mostly participate in projects as a team
member and/or while somebody else is in charge of managing these
projects.
This case also covers the situation where you do lead and
direct projects but only a smaller part of your working time. For example: you “participate
in several projects at the same time” but you are in charge of “leading and
directing just one of them”, while others are being managed by other people.
In both situations (not managing projects at all, or managing
project part-time), you are collecting hours of experience at a slower rate
than if you’d work on managing projects full-time. Let's see how to increase
that rate.
Changing Your Role
The most effective solution is to change your role so that
you increase the amount of time spent on managing projects.
Maybe you can demonstrate initiative to your superiors and
offer to take charge of more projects. This can be a part of your wider
discussion about your career development, where you can state clearly that you
would like to provide more value to your employer by leading and directing
projects.
If you succeed, and from PMP-eligibility point of view the
best case would be to become a full-time project manager, then you’re on your
way to collecting the hours as quickly as possible. Even if you don’t reach the
full-time PM role, every increase would be helpful in getting you closer to
meet the PMP experience requirement.
Changing Your Company
Another possibility, if you can’t or don’t want a different
kind of responsibility within your current company, is to change the
company you’re working for. Maybe you can find a more PM-like role in another
company, which would be particularly nice if you manage to negotiate better
terms and conditions than you’re having in your current company.
However, depending on your preferences and current job
market, it might be too difficult for you to change your role and/or company,
so these solutions may not work for you. Then what? How do you gather more
project management experience then?
Volunteering
One option is volunteering. Donate your project management
services to a non-profit organization. It’s a win-win situation: you get the
experience and eligibility hours, not to mention the feel-good sensation of
helping others, and non-profit organization gets things done for free.
This kind of relationship could have other potentially
beneficial aspects for you, like more and better networking opportunities.
If you're considering this option, I would recommend you to
look for volunteering opportunities at your nearest PMI chapter. Additional benefits of volunteering for PMI
are numerous and we intend to cover that in some future article.
For more info/guidance. Please contact us
Website: www.global-teq.com
Email: info@global-teq.com
Phone: +1-214-227-6396
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