If the traditional way works, and it takes between 20 and 100 hours of training to get certified, is earning a certification worth it?
In this article, I will show you that, from my experience, getting certified is very important and helpful to your career.
Let’s see together how earning a certification can help!
Adding value to your personal career
Boost your employability
Being certified is first and foremost a means of validating the know-how acquired through experience and proving your level of knowledge (and in some cases, skills) in project management. It is, therefore, a matter of employability on the booming project management job market.
There is nothing better to facilitate your career development and increase your opportunities than earning a certification. Companies are looking for reliable landmarks and standards regarding this strange job position called “project manager.”
Learn worldwide best practices
Being certified tells future employers that you understand project management best practices and have built your skills in new approaches, methodologies, frameworks, techniques and tools. A project management certification expands your range of tools giving you the ability to lead and manage projects of more complexity.
Gain credibility and legitimacy
Being certified is a way of gaining credibility and legitimacy with the project stakeholders. Whether it is members of your project team, the project sponsor or other stakeholders, everyone can be reassured by the fact that the path you are following and the way you manage tasks is endorsed by experts in project management.
Extend your professional network
Being certified is a way to connect to a network of other project managers to enrich your professional network and learn from managers in other industries and perspectives.
Adding value to the company’s projects
Improve your performance in project management
International project management standards are based on proven best practices. Implementing these best practices increases the chance of success of your projects.
Improve the communication of the project teams
By guaranteeing a homogeneity of practices, terminologies, and approaches, certification provides a better understanding of the different roles of project stakeholders, whether internal or external. This is why many companies now expect their employees to be certified on the same project management framework.
Choosing your certification
It is very important to choose carefully when it comes to choosing a certification and the training program.
There are many project management certifications on the market including Certified Project Manager (C|PM) by IIB Council, PMP and CAPM by the Project Management Institute (PMI), Prince 2 by Axelos and many more. These certifications are not competitors as they cater to different areas of project management.
How do you find and choose the most appropriate certification for you?
This will be the subject of our next article!