Aliya Yabekova, PMP®

The PMP® (Project Management Professional) Certificate from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Aliya Yabekova has a lot to celebrate!  She was recently married and is finishing off her Master’s Degree in Project Management, and based on her experience she qualified to take the PMP(R) Exam (you need three years of experience for this*).

I had a chance to talk with Aliya about this great accomplishment, and asked her just how she did it.  Here’s what she said:

The classes I took for my Masters, including yours, were the foundation for my preparation, since I already knew a lot of the material. I registered 2 months ago, but taking a summer class and getting married left me with limited time to prepare! Professor Kanabar also helped me with the application process; I got approved from the first submission.

Here are a few of the things I did to prepare:

– I participated in Professors Kanabar’s PMP preparation classes, which was very helpful! I got most of the structure, materials, and resources this course.

– I would recommend taking a Risk Management class with Professor Belack, it covers Risk, Cost, Schedule, Procurement and Quality- so already 5 chapters from the PMBOK(R) Guide®. It might be good to make this a core course.

– I read Rita Mulcahy’s book once and wrote down all of the concepts that I was not familiar with. I watched various Youtube videos about those concepts, to make them more solid in my mind. Mulcahy has an online process chart game and that was very helpful.

– I memorized the sequence of what should be done in the planning process by hard using the Mind Palace technique (I imagined my apartment back home in Almaty:)) and scored above target, because of that.

– I also watched Udemy Joseph Philips videos. I found them only 1 day before the exam, but they were incredibly helpful!

– I also took one practice exam, so I really recommend at least to take one. I did better on my exam than on the practice exam.

*BU MS-PM graduates get a 1-year equivalency, reducing the requirement for them to two years!

PMI's annual Virtual Student Summit from 2019 is now available for free, via replay.  A note in advance: you will need to disable your pop-up blocker to view it properly.

Check out in particular Session 4: "Career Advice from Emerging Professionals in PM", in which you can hear from project managers who have a couple of years of experience and you can learn from their first PM assignments.

These young PM professionals from all over the world will share their 'mistakes' with you - maybe you can avoid them (the mistakes, not the young professionals).

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