Hi, you’re listening to ByteSize Project Management, a podcast about all things project, program and IT service management. As always, I’m Amy and I work for Training ByteSize, a family-run training provider with a passion for project management. Our podcast will bring you top tips such as how to pass your next accredited exam through to unique industry insights and conversations with industry experts.
In today’s episode, our Chairman, Martin Kinch, speaks to internationally renowned CP3P trainer, Morris Diamond. They’ll talk about CP3P Foundation Level 1 exam and how you can effectively prepare and pass. Morris, so what is the best way to prepare for the CP3P Foundation Level?
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Hi, you’re listening to ByteSize Project Management, a podcast about all things project, program and IT service management. As always, I’m Amy and I work for Training ByteSize, a family-run training provider with a passion for project management. Our podcast will bring you top tips such as how to pass your next accredited exam through to unique industry insights and conversations with industry experts.
In today’s episode, our Chairman, Martin Kinch, speaks to internationally renowned CP3P trainer, Morris Diamond. They’ll talk about CP3P Foundation Level 1 exam and how you can effectively prepare and pass. Morris, so what is the best way to prepare for the CP3P Foundation Level?
Well, the best way to prepare, as I say to all the students, is to actually read the guidance, which is volume one of the eight volume series. It’s about 185 pages and then there’s a glossary to read and the annexes. So it’s a big read and one of the issues is that most people don’t even look at the guide until maybe the day before the course and then realize that maybe they should have given themselves a little bit more time.
Consequently, they arrive on a course and they’re very unprepared. If a course is maybe three, four or even five days, it’s actually very difficult to catch up with the knowledge that’s required. So leaving that reading until the last minute can have a major factor in the orability to pass the exam.
Many of the questions are actually based on the very text that’s in those 185 pages. So knowledge of that text is very important. That’s good Morris.
So what else is there you can do? Is there any other things you can tell us? Yeah, so the APMG and as you know, training ByteSize, be kind enough to put online a mock exam.
And it is extremely good practice to take the mock exam prior to the training course itself. You’re able to take the exam over and over again, essentially, such that you can get eventually 100%. So it’s actually good practice in understanding the type of questions and also what APMG ultimately are looking for.
Okay, so a lot of students I know that go to take the exam, they’re very nervous. Some people haven’t taken the exam for a while. So what are your top tips for someone about to sit down and take their CP3P Foundation exam?
Well, so the first thing of course is indeed preparation. There are 50 questions for the foundation level. And you have to pass 25.
The pass mark is 25 plus. The format is they are different kinds of multiple choice questions. And you normally have to pick one of the four.
So it’s probably a long time since you mentioned that since people have actually taken these exams and multiple choice can actually be quite alarming without a certain amount of preparation. So yes, take the exam that’s online, that gets you to feel what the exam will be like in terms of multiple choice. But there are a number of tips.
One of them is go through each question. And if there are four options, work out which of those options are the least likely and to mark them. And those which are the most likely.
Thereby turning the answer into something which is more easily understood. What happens is people look at all of four potential answers and panic. And they need to sort through them.
I remember you telling me this. This is where someone will look at the four answers. But actually logically, you can usually eliminate a couple of them.
So your focus is on one or two or three rather than four. That’s correct. And more importantly, for the individual, if they choose not to answer the question straight away and they want to come back to it, if they’ve not marked those, let’s say two that are least likely, they then have to go through the whole question again and it takes more time.
So by marking those that are most or least likely, when you come back to it, it’s a faster ability to respond to the question. So there are 50 multiple choice. You have to correctly answer 25 plus.
However, I don’t say this likely, but there are people who get to the end of the exam and may not have answered one or two of the questions. My advice is don’t leave those blank. Go back, very quickly have a quick look and fill them in, even if you’ve only got a moment or two to fill in those blanks.
You’ve got to remember that in this exam, there are no negative marks. If you get something wrong, nobody’s going to penalise you. There’s no minus one.
So it is important to complete the paper. You said to me before as well, the way people do it, you suggested that if they do the first pass, they should do the easy ones first? Yes.
So with APMG, unlike some examining bodies, they don’t have easy questions at the beginning. They’re all mixed up. So I often will look at a group of students about to sit the exam.
They open the paper and there’s a kind of mass panic on their faces because the first question is quite difficult. But actually, the next question or the third question will be extremely easy. So my advice is don’t sit there and panic for five or six minutes on the first question or indeed feel that the exam is going to be so difficult that you should leave the room.
Simply go through the paper, identify those that are far easier to answer, and I can assure you there will be a few there, and then you can go back through the paper afterwards. There’s something else actually that I’d like to mention, which because I think it’s worthwhile mentioning. And that is that some people choose to do their initial answers by marking up actually the question paper first, and then they go back at the end of the exam, and then they mark up the answer paper.
Now, obviously, this is a matter of individual choice. However, you’ve only got 40 minutes to answer all the questions. And in that time, you have to be able to work through a series of multiple choice.
And if you’ve left the question, sorry, the answer on the question paper, when you then try and transfer all of those answers from the question paper to the official answer paper, it’s going to take you longer than you think. Some people I know have told me that that transfer of the 50 questions has taken them 10 minutes. Wow.
That means they’ve only given themselves now 30 minutes to do the paper. So one other thing that you’ve mentioned in the past, what about changing answers? So someone gets to the end, they’ve got 10 minutes to start going back and looking at previous answers.
Any advice on changing answers or not changing answers? So when you’re answering the question, you have to use a pencil. And the pencil mark is a kind of left to right mark or filling in an oval, basically, but it’s in pencil.
If you want to change your answer, you have to rub out completely the mark that’s already there. If you put a second mark on that line, for example, you now change your answer from B to D. If there is evidence of the original question being answered as B, the scanner, which is automatic, will read that you have answered both B and D.
And consequently, you’ll get no mark. So you need to be extremely careful. So when you fill in the original answer paper, yes, make sure that your answers can be seen that the pencil marks are firm enough.
But don’t make them so deep that you can’t rub them out later on, because this could be problematic. And there are plenty of people who score just around the past mark. And maybe they failed because the scanner has read that they’ve got two answers where, in fact, they’ve corrected an answer.
That’s a very good answer, Morris. Thank you. Thank you for that, Morris.
That’s been really useful. And I hope that’s a benefit to anybody about to take or consider and take in their CP3B Foundation exam. Thank you, Morris.
So that’s it for this episode of ByteSize Project Management. We hope you’ll tune in again soon for another edition. Until then, you can find out more about the certifications and training packages we offer on our website, trainingByteSize.com.
Thanks very much for listening.
