How to nail PMP exam

Posted by Yury Shkoda on December 5th, 2019

If you do research or ask around, you will find out there are more than many ways to prepare for PMP exam. Of course, there is a must-do list:

• explore PMBOK guide 

• attend a few-days course

• PRACTICE

Now, the PRACTICE section is the most important. To succeed on the exam you actually need a strategy to answer the questions in a very effective way, as they might be long and time is very limited. Therefore, search the internet for all possible resources that provide PMP Exam Sample Questions and answer all of them. I would recommend saving those where you made a mistake in a separate file and get back to them from time to time until you clearly understand the answer and it makes sense to you.

Here are some tips and tricks that helped me pass the exam. I hope you will find them extremely useful for yourself.

If you don’t know the answer, skip the question and return to it later. Don’t waste time on complex questions until you answered all that you know. Then, if you still have time left, you can return to the difficult ones and try to answer.

Pay attention to terms that you haven’t heard of before. Some of the answers include made-up terminology just to confuse candidates. If you’ve read basic PMP materials, you should be familiar with correct terms and expressions. Therefore, if you see something new, don’t panic that you could have missed some important topic. Just look at other answers and choose the right one.

If there are questions left that you don’t know the answer to, do not leave it unanswered, take a guess. There is still a chance that you will choose the right answer. 

If more than one answers seem right to some extent, choose the one which looks more logical. Some situations presented may look ambiguous. Sometimes all of the answers are correct, but you will have to choose the most logical one. Just like in real life. There are many options of what a project manager can do in a particular situation, but his job is to choose the best course of action depending on the circumstances.

When a paragraph is too long, start with reading the last sentence of the paragraph. Find out what is being asked. Then look through the answers. And finally read the whole paragraph. Have in mind, that super long question have a lot of insignificant information. You need to kind of scan it and identify important parts of the paragraph.

If you practice enough, you will get used to the style of the questions and find you own way to answer them in a more effective way on the real exam. 

Now, get down to work and good luck.