Uncovering the Value of PMP Certification with Gabor Stramb: Lessons, Prep, and Productivity Hacks

 Do you ever wonder why the PMP certification is considered the 'crown jewel' of worldwide recognition? Please tune in to our chat with Gabor Stramb, a seasoned project management practitioner, as he pulls back the curtain on the immense value of the PMP certification. Listen to Gabor's candid recounting of his journey, which took him through the CAPM exam he did not pass,  then twice through the PMP exam before finally getting his PMP. Now, he's dedicated to coaching others to achieve their CAPM and PMP certifications on their first try.

We shift the focus of our conversation to the intriguing world of PMP exam preparation. Gabor enlightens us on the finer points of studying, the traps of false applications, and the increasing difficulty of the exam. 

Lastly, we dive into Gabor's productivity hacks for project management. Gabor spills the beans on his personal experiences with various tools such as Outlook, Teams, Excel, and PowerPoint. He also discusses the sheer joy of completing tasks and the underrated value of a good old-fashioned paper notepad. Named a Top Project Management Voice by LinkedIn, Gabor's wisdom is certainly worth its weight in gold. 

We wrap up by discussing the importance of contributing to the project management community through study groups and one-on-one coaching. This episode is a goldmine of insights, experiences, and tips you shouldn't miss!

Favorite Tool(s):

• Excel https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel
• PowerPoint https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/powerpoint

 Links:

•  Connect with Gabor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabor-stramb/
•  For a full podcast episode list, visit here: PM-Mastery Podcast Episodes.
•  For a full list of blog posts, go here: PM-Mastery Blog Posts.
•  PM-Mastery.com 

 PMI Talent Triangle: Technical /Ways of Working (Learn More)

Get your free PDU Tracker here: https://pm-mastery.com/resource/

Transcript

Gabor Stramb: 0:06

Did you know that you can pass the PMP in eight weeks? So the study group which meets every week, Tuesdays, PMP, Wednesdays, the CAPM, and we meet each week, I always prepare something to learn a little bit of a concept, one concept maybe, and then we do two, three questions together, explaining why one answer is better than the other one, doing a drag and drop question, looking into what to study, how to stud my my high-level. Then, my secret sauce, besides that, if somebody would like to work with me one-on-one, I'm happy to help you to pass the exam with my coaching guarantee. So that's what I do.

Walt Sparling: 1:22

All right, welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery, and today I have with me Gabor Stram. Welcome, Gabor. My pleasure to be here, Good deal. So I want to start out with a little bit of you telling us kind of who you are personally.

Gabor Stramb: 1:39

Okay, so my name is Gabor Stram and I really define myself as a project management practitioner, which means I do run projects and do like to run projects. I really consider myself that's the only thing I can do really which means that I'm project manager for about 15 years now and during these years I actually came through certifications, for example. So I'm also P&D certified and in the past couple of years, besides my nine to five, I'm also engaged with supporting and helping people passing CAPMP exams. So I would say that's who I am.

Walt Sparling: 2:19

That's good. I've followed your stuff. You've got some really good things out there. I think the CAPM is becoming more popular. That, like the PMP, had like the highlight for a while people that if I'm going to do this, I have to do the PMP, and then they realize well, the CAPM works too. If you don't have the experience, that's the route you need to take. So I'm seeing a lot more CAPM folks. So I think you're that's absolutely true.

Gabor Stramb: 2:46

I mean, my kind of take on that is that. So people are going many different routes on the project management, careers and certifications wise, but when it's getting down into the cognition of worldwide standards, we really go back to the CAPM route, to the PMP route, because everyone else, or other institutions, they are either catching up or they are not as established as PBI's. Who's doing this for a long period of time?

Walt Sparling: 3:13

Yes, they're the beast, they're the gorilla in the room for sure, and they've got so many certifications. I just saw some statistics on. I don't remember how many total I didn't actually record, but it was probably 20 different certifications and then the quantity of folks that have each one. There's a lot of options out there.

Gabor Stramb: 3:35

Well, they do publish, I think, a fact report every month and I think from the latest there's like 1.4 million PMPs out there. In terms of CAPMs, that's also like a good almost 70,000. And then you are right. So currently they have like say, 10 plus different certifications.

Gabor Stramb: 3:50

But if you are in project management, really the crown jewel of all this is really the PMP, and my take of it is that if you are a project manager and would like to get something which is a clear demonstration of your commitment to the career path, you should get the PMP. Why is that? Because in project management that's experience driven. The more experience you have, the smarter you are on paper, which is great, but not always the case. But technically, pmi become the leading body because the time when university students have been picked this up they didn't, and nowadays everyone's just catching up. And also in terms of worldwide recognition, I mean big certifications like Prince II is great, is valuable, but is not worldwide recognized like the PMP. And eventually almost all universities they all teach in the PMI material, which is either CAPM and PMP for one year program or even more, which I do not find like is the right approach in that case, you mentioned your title or what you do, as you're a practicing project manager.

Walt Sparling: 5:01

I think we had a conversation earlier. I want to try to make sure we don't miss anything. You've been doing project management for how long? 15 years, ok, and you have your PMP. And did you get your PMP the first time you took it?

Gabor Stramb: 5:16

Well, that's a very interesting story. So I was not the first timer. So, according to my story, I started CAPM but failed, waited enough time to have enough experience to go to the PMP, now went to the PMP once, failed, then to second time, failed again and only passed the third time. And this journey was long, painful, expensive. But after that I kind of become a preacher of both CAPM and PMP to see that what is the most simplifiers way to approaching it and get certified by the first try, Because if you can crack the code it's not as difficult as most people think. You just need to find the right approach to take and consume that information, what they're asking you.

Walt Sparling: 6:04

Yeah, there's a lot of data. I failed the PMP the first time I took it and it was during. I don't know when you did your multiple tests. Was it on the same version or did you cross versions?

Gabor Stramb: 6:18

So I did this, mine on 2018, so that time it was very much. You know, the PEMbook 6 was the main source of the information that point of time, but lots of hurdles around calculation questions and ITTOs which, for example, nowadays almost zero. So you know calculation questions. Anyone who expecting you know 10 to 15, do not expect those. I mean they were part of the previous exam, the previous exam content outline. So nowadays, pmi is more interested that. Do you understand the areas which collide, both agile and waterfall, which is, which are communication, stakeholders, conflict management, leadership? Because you do perform all this in both agile and waterfall and that's where the challenging questions are coming into play.

Walt Sparling: 7:07

Yeah, I took it in five and they had a ton of formulas and ITTOs and all the process groups, and then in six they changed some of the process groups, like they moved stuff from one process group to another. So I took boot camp for version six to get caught up on the differences and I ended up passing that time, congratulations. So yeah, and I'm not going to do it again. So keep up your PDUs.

Gabor Stramb: 7:36

Absolutely. I mean going through the exam, I would say, is not just simply having the right knowledge, because that's equally a mental game, and the reason for that is that you have to do so many questions within a short amount of time. So with that, you know the current format 180 questions, 230 minutes. You have over like a one minute for every question, and what does that mean? You really need to be prepared, and what we cannot predict is, let's say, pmi will throw at you long, lengthy questions, long, lengthy answers, which means even reading them through, digesting it. What they want is really really time consuming.

Gabor Stramb: 8:11

And since all questions are situational, you need to be prepared. To be prepared, which is my view of it, is that you need to equally look into understanding the concepts. So you need to have a learning cycle in that case, and you need to have a validation cycle where you spend most of your time on questions, because the end result is you need to answer questions correctly. On PMI terms. Now, all questions will be situational. So if I would like to make an example, if I spent five days understanding how a score baseline works, am I going to be answering questions correctly? Not necessarily, so I really need to put this into a practice, which is let's start two questions and we will see how to solve them correctly.

Walt Sparling: 8:54

Yeah, what I recall is you'd have four answers to, or absolutely throwaways. It was easy and the other two was like one of these is the best answer and the correct answer. But they are sometimes worded so similar that you're like and what I learned and I've heard other people have done this is I would just mark that and go on to the next one, and a lot of times I found that questions that I had marked 10 questions later I would have the answer because of another question. I go, oh yeah, and then I would go back and be able to answer it.

Gabor Stramb: 9:28

So but that's how I felt. I think my second attempt because I'm going that back and forth and flagging too many for review, in the end that's that's that's not going to work out, because if you're finishing, let's say, 20 minutes prior to the end, and you still have like 30 questions to review, you almost set yourself into a into a failure in that case.

Walt Sparling: 9:47

So I think it depends on the number. I mean, I didn't have 30. I probably had 10. But I did go through. I got the ones that I could quickly answer and no brainers, and the other ones I didn't want to spend a lot of time on them, so I'd go on and I got done in the time limit. But that was that was one of my strategies. So each one, each of us, have our own.

Gabor Stramb: 10:07

Exactly. But, for example, that's a good example that we all need to think this through Because, for example, what I tell my students in terms of, you know, flagging questions for review, in the end you need to minimize this number to less than five. You need to minimize this number to less than five Because in that case that's going to be the manageable amount, because on the exam, many things can happen. You might running out of time, you might just seriously have a spare 45 minutes. I will say you never know because, as per the exam content outline, we exactly knows that each and every exam has a different passing rate. So we don't know the universal passing rate.

Gabor Stramb: 10:45

So the mindset I try to give to everyone that, first of all, you need to realize you cannot learn everything by heart. You can't. Nobody's going in with 100% knowledge, Nobody's leaving with 100% results. Now, what does this mean? It is okay that you fail a couple of questions, and you will. So no doubt about it. So instead, I mean you need to look for a passing score in advance which is technically going to be good enough to pass the exam. Now, what is that kind of passing score?

Gabor Stramb: 11:14

Now, whoever is asking me, I would say that you need to look for a good 80% passing rate on those test questions you do before, because what experience showed so far? Anyone who scored as high as they can, most likely they all passed the exam. And that is, at the moment, I will say, very much of a winning formula, because people's approach is different. Some people say that, oh, I need to learn the PMP and I'm going to be a better project manager. That is correct. But if you ask me my honest feedback, I mean how the PMP changed my day-to-day project management life. That time I would like to say seven years of experience, or eight years of experience. I improved as a PM like five to 10%, but you need the PMP. So that's another thing. So it's valuable.

Walt Sparling: 12:00

Yeah, the PM. To me the PMP book is a good reference manual. But, to your point, you mentioned the content outline. That's what you really need to look at and use the resources that they call out in there for study. So I, to this day, even though I passed years ago, I, when a new PMI book comes out, I get it, it's like. So I have a stack of every version they have, just so I can see what the how it's changed over the years, because, like you said, the exam has changed a lot and so is how PMI approaches things, so that's great.

Gabor Stramb: 12:38

In terms of value it started to be is very much more practical. But the challenge is that you know everyone goes with the limitation, which means that we all go in with with work life experience, which means that you know how success looks like in your you know area or in your company, for example, and you need to distinguish that. Is it exactly the same how PMI likes to see that success as per the best practices? And that's where the challenge is Now. You need to understand the best practices to solve situational questions on PMI terms and instead of you battling and say oh, no, no, no, that's not a good answer, we're not doing this real life. Well, the more you try to you know, prevent this or maybe that's not the right word but the more you try to go against this, the more difficult this will get. So, simply, you need to accept this is how the best practices works and you just need to answer those questions, keeping that the two best practices in mind, and you're going to be succeeding with the PMP for sure.

Walt Sparling: 13:39

And the PMP is for people with experience. It's not meant for first timers or people with no actual practical experience. I've been in a lot of Facebook groups where they're you know, they push, they're trying to get their PMP, and it's like Well, what's your background? Oh, I'm a cashier or I'm a warehouse guy, but I hear PMs make a lot of money, so I'm going to get my PMP. And it's like, you know, one of the first things I asked you was this ethical question about are you going to be honest, truly? And so you just stated that you had all this experience, which you did not have, and you got through the audit. You didn't get audited, so you got your PMP and some of these folks have big heads. Hey, I got my PMP and I'm like I won't, I wouldn't hire you, because I know when I start asking you questions, it's going to start to show and I don't want someone that is supposedly PMP working on projects.

Gabor Stramb: 14:29

Well, that's correct. And if you ask me, pmi also moved with the flow. That house is not so easy now to sneak in with the person like you mentioned, because I would say the you know if I would receive an application, what I will do. Okay, I read it through. And then my next, you know, very first intention, let me check this person on LinkedIn. Is it person exists on LinkedIn? Is it, you know? Is this person having the same experience? And if you ask me that that is the most easiest way to check, you know, is this correct? What is in here without me asking you or even just hitting the audit button, and then let's go and find out who you are? And so my advice to anyone you know doing the PMP application make sure that your application and your LinkedIn profile is somewhat matching, because that's that's. That's a good, good starting point.

Walt Sparling: 15:16

I would say, not confirmed, but good starting point yeah, same thing when you're doing a job interview. I mean that's one of my things, the one, two areas I look if they say their PMP, I go to PMI and I check to see if they have an and they actually have it. And then, second is I go to LinkedIn to see what their LinkedIn profile looks like and does it align with their resume. So I that's something that I always believe is a good thing to do when you're well, it's a professional site, so you should keep it up as well.

Gabor Stramb: 15:46

And, and especially, that's where you see the value of the PMP, because people with the PMP certificate go through around one interviews very easily, very quickly. Why is that? Because everybody knows what to expect from a PMP. And again why? Because you cannot simply buy yourself in that. Here is the, here is the money, here is the examination fee. And I do it Now. Pmi will check your experience. You need to be educated and everybody knows you need to go through this very difficult exam. So, for example, if I'm a HR person and I see someone's kind of severe as a PMP, as you said, I can go and check is it true or not? Anyone can do it. Plus, I mean, what does that mean from a HR person perspective? So somebody already did this check and an independent review by PMI have been done, which means that because they accepted your application, so whatever is in there, it's most likely true. So okay, let's go, let's let's see how this person performs. So, around one interviews are already gone. You passed, go to the next round.

Walt Sparling: 16:42

All right. So we we talked a little bit about who you are, what you do and why you. You kind of indicated why you started the exam prep stuff from your experience when you were doing it. Is there more to that than than that experience?

Gabor Stramb: 16:59

Well, obviously that it was more that I was pissed off myself that why I was not able to pass and because, you know, I had the right materials, books, courses. Once there was a guy helping me and somehow this whole thing was never really clicking to me and I felt like that I need to approach it differently, which is, you know, if I'm gonna, so let's say I'm gonna get another course, let's say I'm gonna get another book. If I still continue exactly the same, what I did before, most likely I'll get the same results. So I need to kind of focusing on interpreted differently. And that's where I felt like that, you know, if we more go with fact based, fact based and result based.

Gabor Stramb: 17:44

So what I mean by that that anyone who's preparing for an exam can be CAPM or PMP is that your testing results will determine your faith. What I mean by that that your preparation level is not gonna be my, me, or your wife, your husband, your spouse okay, you are ready, or your boss is telling you you're ready, or coworkers are telling you you're ready. What is your testing score, what is your consecutive score in the past two weeks and how many questions you do? There is no formula that you need to do 8,000, 10,000 questions, but you need to, let's say, go into that remit of 180. So around that area, I mean how you perform with the questions, and that will give you this kind of clarity are you on track, yes or no? And eventually, for the last attempt, I focused on that and, luckily enough, passed the exam. But that formula seems to work because the people whom I'm working with, they all follow the same formula and understand that if you're trying to consider to learn as much as you can for the PMP prep, eventually you're trying to transform yourself to become a PMP professor.

Gabor Stramb: 18:48

Now I think that's not a bad idea, but in that case this will take more than six months. And after that are you willing to talk about this? Or maybe teaching people? Maybe that's your ambition, I don't know. But if you wanted to simply pass, this shouldn't take that much of a time because and you need to go with fact base and understand that you cannot learn everything by heart Nobody's leaving with 100% results.

Gabor Stramb: 19:12

The world doesn't care how many above targets you have, by the way, they only care how your PMP yes or no. And then, beyond moving forward, you go up to your career ladder by the next step by the next step, getting higher with the PMP. So I think that's what triggered me and I felt like there is a mission for me to tell this to people. And that's why I'm running weekly study groups where I'm trying to explain people the concept, give them the spark at least think differently. Because if I came and meeting a person, a person said I will start preparing the PMP today and I will sit on the exam in January or in February, and I'll go like this is not a weight loss program. Okay, this is just an exam. You're gonna see results almost instantly. You do not need to invest three months in just to see some results. Okay, you need to invest time, that's a fact. So you need to work, but it's not like three months, four months, five months Just focusing on the writing.

Walt Sparling: 20:12

Gotcha All right, what? Why? Now you're helping people, but let's say, not just your exam prep, but how do you keep up, how do you keep yourself educated, how do you get your PDUs, things like that.

Gabor Stramb: 20:31

Right. So I try to be as active as possible on the events which are coming through different PMI chapters or even PMI by itself. So, for example, if I can, I go to conferences. If that is an event, let's say, learning about AI and project management, obviously I try to join and collecting my PDUs and since I started to be more active on LinkedIn in the past six months, I discovered lots of good creators and they also sharing very, very good information in terms of project management to make sure that you are up to date.

Gabor Stramb: 21:11

But I would say it's not necessarily the right word, because we learn through each other's experience, because I cannot go into the university and learn project management and I'm gonna be a smart guy.

Gabor Stramb: 21:23

I mean, because of how I see it, the more experience you have, the real advantage you're gonna get is that, or what differentiates a good project manager to a superstar project manager the ability to foresee the next five step, the next 10 step, the next 100 step along the way in this project, because as soon as you see the patterns, you know what to do, you know where this leading to and how. You're going to learn that through experience or I hear a lessons learned by someone, and at least now I have an idea. If something similar come along, at least I have an idea where to get started and I'm not just completely blank or I don't know, calling my sponsor. Now you help me, like something, like you have an idea, because the end of the day, everyone expects the project manager to take the lead, which means that many times they expecting you to come with answers and you cannot say that I don't know. You have to have some ideas to all. Right, let's try this then, and we'll see.

Walt Sparling: 22:25

Hi, go yeah, or you can say you don't know. If you say listen, I don't know that specifically, but I know someone who does and I'll bring them into the team and we'll solve this together, that's also a good idea being transparent and open, that in case of something you don't know, which I consider myself as a project manager or anything else.

Gabor Stramb: 22:48

But my experience goes I've worked in the energy industry oil and gas a good 10 years. Now I'm in a telecom industry, which is again a completely different area, and they hired me not because of my technical experience, instead of all the project management skills I have. Building a team quickly, understanding the stakeholder requirements, make sure there's a clear communication that if you have a plan which is predictable, things like that and that's where you really really can make a difference and not necessarily go into super lowest level of details of all the technicalities which some extent you need to learn. So obviously I also in that some timing, but that's not my expertise. My expertise is to try and to bring the ship or move the ship from A to B, and that's what I mean.

Walt Sparling: 23:39

my expertise is there in that case, yeah, because the PMP is about project management in a general sense, not specific to an industry.

Gabor Stramb: 23:52

That's fully correct and what you're really going to get a universal formula which can work for everything. So, for example, I can follow the PMP framework, I can follow all the 14-line processes of water for if I like, even though, if I plant in my five flowers in my garden this Sunday, or I've been asked to build a nuclear power plant, I will not say no to this. Obviously I mean nuclear power plant. This might take two years for me to get the requirements, whereas the right person with the right experience maybe only takes two months. So that's what I would say, this, that the experience has a really huge stake here. But yeah, I mean you get the formula, you get the way of thinking.

Gabor Stramb: 24:36

It's really like a mindset of approaching things and make sure that you are. You know you can deliver. So you have a plan, because many times, you know, not everyone like to have a plan, some people like to go. I mean, okay, I have a little plan. The rest is I like to have this controlled chaos. But you know, if you would like to deliver something, you need to have a plan. Yeah.

Walt Sparling: 24:59

So what are some of your, say, favorite tools?

Gabor Stramb: 25:04

My favorite tool or tools. I can mention products, right, Mm-hmm, absolutely so. I'm a big fan of Microsoft Excel, a big fan of PowerPoint. I'm a big fan of Microsoft Project. Why? Because they get the job done. There are also fancy tools like Asana, Mondaycom. I'm also an Asana user, which is great. Also, I do like to use Asana as well. But in the end of the day, most big companies, they go back to the basics, which means you have an Excel, you have a PowerPoint, your Microsoft Project, and then you have to master the understanding of how to use them on a good beginner level. Not necessarily how you bring together four, five Microsoft Project files into one, how they're feeding one to another, but at least you have to have a good understanding and, yeah, it will get the job done. I would say that's the simplest way. It's a PowerPoint Gantt chart. It will get the job done. It will mix the stakeholders happy.

Walt Sparling: 26:10

Yep. So yeah, microsoft Projects are big. I agree with you on the three the PowerPoint, the Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. I have probably well, there's two others that I use a lot Teams and OneNote. So in my daily work I have open on the screen Outlook email, outlook calendar on separate screens. Teams, onenote and Excel are almost all the time, and then every other day or so PowerPoint.

Gabor Stramb: 26:41

Right.

Walt Sparling: 26:42

So constantly jumping back between the two, the various tools. All right, do you use OneNote much?

Gabor Stramb: 26:51

A little bit. A little bit, but mainly for those which I. I put some information there which I may be the visit once a week or something like that In terms of productivity, so my brain sometimes coming in waves. So in one week I need post-it notes. Next day I wanted to have everything in OneNote, and a week after maybe I use even the Outlook to-do list. It all depends. But, for example, with the simple sticky notes, it's a great satisfying feeling that you've write down something, you just completed it and you rip it off and you put it into the bin. It's like it's done. It's done great. I'm so happy about it.

Walt Sparling: 27:29

And I've talked to different people. I do this. So when I create a to-do list I'll sometimes I'll pop up even notepad. While I'm on a call or watching, you know, maybe attending a meeting, I'll throw all my notes in notepad. If it's someone else's, if it's my meeting, they go in OneNote and then I figure out where to take all those notes and put them in Outlook or put them in OneNote. But when I do to-dos, when I did them by hand, I had a notebook that I used for years. I kept buying more of them and I would put my way of a to-do, would put a little box, a checkbox next to it, and I knew that was an action item that I had to do. But I would write things either type of write things on my list that I already did, and then I would cross them off. It was like that. Satisfaction is like. You know, I had four items, but I've actually done eight things today, so I'm gonna put these other four and mark them off. Sense of accomplishment.

Gabor Stramb: 28:23

Well, absolutely, and I mean, if you juggling between meetings and other activities or deadlines you have to work with, you need to have those moments when you know it's done and it's done and it's you know you close, it's almost likely closing a page, because, also what I do in terms of productivity so I'm using a paper-based notepad as well and what I try to do is for if I open up this little booklet, so one, so these two pages are front of me. This is just for this week. If something needed to be done next week, I turn the next page and I put it for next week and once it's done, so this week is done and I go to the next kind of two pages and at the moment that that's something I somehow I figured out three weeks ago. It's working very well, also very satisfying, because everything I put down it needed to be done for this week Great.

Walt Sparling: 29:11

Yeah, I think at some point I might want to try to get some folks on and just talk about productivity tips and tricks, because people have little systems. I have a system. I've read and watched videos on other systems and I usually won't follow the system completely, but I'll take bits and pieces and go. I like that. I'm gonna incorporate that into my system. So weekly reviews, a to-do list. I'm actually working on a new system right now probably gonna talk about in the next few months where I've kind of come up with something that has a ring to it and is productive. So we'll get to that at some point. So, did you know you have a? Did you know?

Gabor Stramb: 29:52

I think I talk. Think about it again. I think I have maybe two as well, but did you know First? Did you know that you can pass the PMP in eight weeks? That's the. Did you know First?

Walt Sparling: 30:03

okay, it's a good one.

Gabor Stramb: 30:06

Uh huh, you want to hear second one?

Walt Sparling: 30:09

Yes, absolutely, you get bonus points.

Gabor Stramb: 30:14

That sounds so good. Okay, so did you know? Second one Um, did you know that every project manager should have a crystal ball to the future? Why? Why? Because that's the crystal ball to the future will distinguish between the guy who can lead a hundred thousand dollar project and the guy who can lead the hundred million dollar project. Because if I look into my little crystal ball and I can foresee that how this whole project will, will, will happen, and I can foresee the next step, the fourth step, the fifth step, the hundred step. That's the key, differentiated between one guy to another rather than figuring it out as you go.

Gabor Stramb: 30:53

Exactly, exactly, exactly. But this will come with experience and unfortunately, this crystal ball only works for project management. It doesn't work for lottery numbers. Okay, I give it a try, but it doesn't work Okay.

Walt Sparling: 31:05

All right, so when, when I post the show notes, I'm going to put a link to your LinkedIn profile. Is there other resources that you would like to have shared, like a website or a?

Gabor Stramb: 31:18

I will say my LinkedIn profile and the reason why I mentioned my LinkedIn profile because I'm so proud. I just been selected as a recognized by LinkedIn as a top project management voice, which is very recently came out on yesterday, on 28th of September, so that's something I'm very proud of. I already been engaged couple of people that how did you do that? And then you know, for my response for those people was that I mean, I did exactly the same. So I reached out a couple of top voices on LinkedIn as well. Okay, what did you do? How did you do it? And then, okay, besides, you know, constantly making valuable, meaningful posts about project management, okay, that's something which is needed.

Gabor Stramb: 32:01

There are certain articles which you can contribute and I'm not saying that was the main contributor, but I do comment on articles. I would say one, maybe four times a week, so I would say four days or one per day. I will do that and do not felt like that. This is too much work, if you're asking me, because on those articles, I think you know your comment cannot be more than 750 characters, which means that couple of thoughts, couple of sentences, boom, boom, boom is all can be done, but I think each and every person have to contribute on some extent. I mean saying congratulations for someone you know passing a PMP or a CAPM or the others.

Gabor Stramb: 32:48

I think that's something which is just help everyone to be motivated and form that type of community, because I think within project management we are already in a community, even though some people don't like it or not, because to be a project manager that requires a certain way of thinking. I mean you have a certain type of thinking process of which is only project managers really do that, because if you are a PM you really enjoy what you do. I mean you enjoy the bad days, you enjoy the good days, obviously trying to have more good days in the end, but I mean we all need to contribute because everyone has, you know, something to add. You know sharing your lessons, learn, or somebody openly sharing their failures, because that's how I would say we all learn from this and I think that's somewhat like a collective responsibility for all the PMs that you part of a tribe, maybe not via, not in the same industry, but you know if you can, you know sharing experiences too for a greater good, or on that sense in project management.

Walt Sparling: 33:58

Love it and there are some great people out there that are sharing some really good stuff with project management. Anything else you want to add? You want to talk a little bit about real briefly, your, your programs, what you offer.

Gabor Stramb: 34:16

Oh, okay, okay, yeah, that's a good one. So, as I mentioned, I'm helping people passing CEP and PMP exams. Now my vehicle of doing it is that I running weekly study groups, which is, I would say, not something which many people or many creators or I don't know companies, felt very attractive. But make the long story short, I run three weekly study groups every Tuesday. I run a study group for PMP every Wednesday, around for for CEP, and which is, technically, I do something like more than 18 months that's almost two years now I'm actually been doing it. Now the study group is not a training, not a course.

Gabor Stramb: 34:57

People are actually been voting on the agenda, which is a rolling four weeks agenda, either on my LinkedIn group or on my dedicated Facebook group, so, technically, the people can influence what it's needed to be here and and on each session, we taking some learning.

Gabor Stramb: 35:12

They also taking some or doing some questions, because my approach is more functional, so I put more emphasis on the questions in this case and also, you know, practicing some, some drag and drops. So that's how I say really the what is on the plate, what is on the agenda each week, and besides that, if somebody would like to have, let's say more guided help to pass the exam. I'm also working with people one on one to make sure that they all passing the exam, and that's either an eight weeks preparation program with me or like a four weeks preparation if you are already, let's say, halfway through, to get you to the right level of understanding and the right level of score, because my kind of expertise is there. Make sure that you understand the PMI logic and therefore you are able to score as high as you can 80, 90% passing. It can be easily done, but you need just need to focusing on my secret sauce.

Walt Sparling: 36:14

All right, so CPM and PMP study groups and potential for one on one coaching Absolutely Awesome. Well, good boy, I greatly appreciate you coming on and I want to thank everyone else for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of PM Mastery.

Gabor Stramb: 36:32

Thank you for the pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Walt Sparling: 36:35

Thanks for listening to the PM Mastery podcast at wwwpm-masterycom. Be sure to subscribe in your podcast there. Until next time, keep working on your project.