Bear, Diah and Pasha

Back to the Books

Posted on the April 16th, 2011 under Work by Papa Bear

Yet another disappearance act from me. This time was about 12 long days. Reason? Of course there’s a reason for everything, more or less. In this case, I give you three reasons: I had to study, I had to sit for an exam and lastly, I had to overcome my lack of blogging momentum after completing the exam. On top of that, I just got a new project assignment..

The Recommendations

I was recommended to read some books for the exam preparation. The first book was A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Fourth Edition. The second book was PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, Kim Heldman, Fifth Edition and the last book was Rita Mulcahy’s PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition. The recommendation was to read the PMBOK at least 3 times and once for the other two.

The Plan

The plan was to read all the books at least once for each book. 3 times for PMBOK was totally out of the question. The plan also included a 3-day study leave to recap on what was read and do as many sample questions as possible. The plan was scheduled backward from the date of the exam, which was fixed on April 7th, 2011.

What Actually Happened

As with other plans that people made, the actual would always not turned out as planned. As far as the books were concerned, I did not even completely finish reading Chapter 1 except for Rita’s, which was more interesting than the other two, where I managed about 3 chapters. Two factors contributed to that. Work loads and some pure laziness.. Not to mention that each book consisted of more than 300 pages each..

However, I managed to do around 500 sample questions and managed to flip some pages of the 3 books to lookup for the answers and explanations. The 3-day study leave was actually about 50% utilized for actual study. The most important benefits from the leave was that no disturbance from work and sufficient time to relax and rest before the exam. You need to be mentally and physically fit to sit for 4 hours in front of a computer screen and answer 200 questions.

The Result

After 3 hours and 57 minutes sitting in front of the screen.. I made it. I got my Project Management Professional (PMP) certificate from Project Management Institute (PMI).

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Part VII – The Final Chapter

Posted on the May 18th, 2009 under Life by Papa Bear

This would be the final chapter about my job interview sessions. There were one or two other interviews that I attended but since they were not that significant and at the same time I would not want this story to drag too long as it is now already having more chapters than the Star Wars movies…

This one was not really my last interview but it was actually in between the others. The only reason that I put it to the last is that it was the interview that got me this current job.

To begin with, I got the HR contact from a fellow blogger Nina and I shot an email to them. It took them about a week to respond and I was called for the first interview. The first interview lasted about 2 hours where I was made to listen to stories rather than being interviewed per say… He got lots of things to share and since I had nothing else to do, I might just as well listen to him…

Then, a week after that, I was called for a second interview. This one actually caught me off guard as I was not expecting a totally opposite character from the first interviewer. This guy was very particular about certifications such as PMP and business processes experience such as CMMI. I have none of them and as far as I was concerned at that time, I failed!