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Taking the PMP Exam - Part 3 - If you know the extension of the party

Still no progress on online PMI membership so I sent an email and got this response:

Thank you for contacting the PMI Global Operations Center in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, USA. A Customer Care Associate will review your request and contact you within five business days.
If you require a more immediate response you can contact your local service center by phone or by email:
PMI Global Operations Center (Newtown Square, PA. USA):
Tel: +610-356-4600 (8:00am - 8:00pm US Eastern time (EST), Monday-Friday)
For Customer Care, select option 8 at the prompt.
Fax: +610-356-4647

Five days? For faster service send an email? Isn't that what I just did? Well, not to confuse things I'll just wait to hear back from them. For an organization that is proud of the way they have made things available on line, this sort of behavior is a bit unexpected.

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  • Comments (2)

    JohnB:

    I had the advantage of being a Board member whenever I wanted to contact PMI so I was able to negotiate the pathways a little more easily than others. You might want to talk to someone on the Board of your local chapter to get him/her to assist you. However ... while that person might be better positioned to make enquiries and get quicker responses, there will be the lag during the communication from you to the Board member, the lag between the time you contact the Board member and when that person contacts PMI -- and then there's the reverse route, too, with its delays.

    One other thing you might want to consider is the "clock". Once you apply, the clock starts ticking and you must get your PMP within a year. One of the prerequistes to writing the exam is the need to take 35 hours of training. Most people satisfy that requirement by taking a PMP "exam cram" course. If you have already applied and then try to take a course and find it is full then the clock is ticking and you haven't met the preliminary requirements. In terms of scheduling, then, it might be best to take the course first and then apply. On the other hand, you could take the course and then apply -- only to find out that your qualifications don't pass muster at PMI.

    While we're on the subject of courses, they aren't cheap -- but I still strongly recommend that you take one. I'm sure you'll be referring to this in a later column so I'll add further comments then.

    Earn PDUs by taking convenient, 24x7 e-learning courses! Hundreds of choices. Many highly relevant topics for Project Managers today. Find a course for as little as 1 PDU,...or many more.

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