Thinking of taking your HR certification

You are either a certification holder or trying to be one or still thinking whether this is something you should do. Here I am sharing my experience of the time building upto the exam and the exam day in 10 points.. if any of these resonate with your own experience.. do share!

1. Motivation to certify - There are obvious reasons on why you would want to certify- validation of skills, recognition through a global certifier, opportunity to learn and connect with different people etc. For me the final motivation to take the exam came from linkedin titles my super boss had. Somehow the GPHR against his name was truly inspirational.

2. Study group/ like minded friends -To attempt to give an exam while you are working your 9-9 is no easy feat. Just to let go of binge watching and get into habit of studying and devoting compulsory hrs each day at the end of work may prove to be daunting. What you need here is a bunch of people who are in same boat. I had two people like that. Three of us thought of appearing for the exam in the same year. This peer pressure is needed to compete in exams like this. Within this group you can debate pros and cons of which certification to take. HRCI and SHRM has many certifications and these get very confusing sometimes. Join groups on LinkedIn and FB as well to know how others are preparing- be cautious however as online groups can inculcate a feeling that you are not doing enough. Don’t take that to heart as every person’s style of learning is different. I needed 2 months with the pressure of exam date looming on my head. My friend almost dint attempt due to lack of studying but cleared it with just one week of going through some material. Another one needed 6 months.

3. Which one? While the zeal to do a certification was always there right from the mba days, our group finalized 2018 as the year to be. We debated on hrci vs shrm vs Aon vs simplyLearn vs all local certifications.. basically whatever we could find on google. Hrci is the most recognized and has been available the longest. Although shrm has more supporters and is slowly bridging the gap. Under hrci at my level of experience the options were sphr or sphri. Sphr focuses on employment laws of US among the other topics. Sphri is an international certification with most of the same content but without country specific employment laws. This one felt right for me. Make your own choice.

4. Costly affair- yes it is. Certification cost converted to Indian rupee is a huge amount. This will be the factor that stops you one too many times. Getting to focus, lack of time, space to study will always be other excuses. I personally couldn’t get onboard until I paid. After I shelved out the money and told my family about it (deliberately) it was hard to ignore. Even if I forgot, my family and my like minded friends from above reminded me of the money that I had already paid.

5. What to study? There are countless resources online, we started collecting material, PDFs, articles, MBA HR books and what not. However honestly these were just taking space in my hard drive. I still prefer to read from paper books rather than follow online content. For the longest time the best touted book for sphr has been Sandra Reed/Anne Bogardus one. But to buy a ~3000 Rs book you must be sure you would read it and it won’t lie in your book shelf under dust. Mine did. Until I decided to to go for sphri and brought study material from hrci specific to the actual syllabus. The course content was good, in simple terms laying out all the book of knowledge. The package has 5 books to deep dive on compensation benefits, strategic hrm, organization development, talent management, hr measurement and analysis, leadership development etc. the language is simple and you would infact feel cheated that this is just basic and still costs a bomb. But it is focused and that’s what I needed rather than going through article after article that I randomly picked up. After covering these 5 books I could gather the strength and concentration needed for Sandra Reed/Anne Bogardus book as well and the book seemed less daunting. Working in US helped to understand employment laws without having the need to just mug up a lot of laws.

6. Practice tests - even more important than covering the syllabus was doing a whole bunch of tests. I downloaded couple of free apps on mobile that were for PHR preparations(there is none specifically for sphri), joined FB groups for certifications where they typically post one question a day and just trying to find online quizzes. Good thing about these is that you can do quick 5 questions while commuting in train or autos, while in elevators or bathrooms. Once you start taking tests you realize the questions are not what you assume. There is no straight forward question asking just the definition of concepts or laws. Most questions involve a case-let and tests implementation of those concepts. Atleast two of the multiple choices will feel very close to the answer and you have to figure out which of the two is more relevant. Your HR experience dealing with real world problems will help. Once you hit a question, you can try and relate to a scenario from your own work life and then see if the decision you had taken can get you closer to the answer on paper.

7. Two weeks before the exam- target to finish all content one or two weeks before the exam date. Because you study a whole bunch of things for a long period of time.. it is important to glance over and revise. You will not retain everything for sure, but revision helps to gain some confidence. The only other thing I had invested in was a pencil to write in the books- summarize chapters and mark which areas of knowledge I would definitely have to come back to. In last week I only revisited my hand written summaries.

8. Exam day - the proctored exams are conducted in strict environments. Do know your place of exam, scout the geography, take an Uber.. don’t drive.. do all that you can to keep calm. In current environment exams are happening at home and you may have other technical challenges. Ofcourse in my case Murphy’s law happened and uber driver couldn’t find the location and dropped me off two blocks away. Mishaps can happen, so have plenty of time in hand to keep anxiety at bay. In the exam center.. they dint allow anything to be carried with you.. no water bottle, no handkerchief , no lip balm, no pens. Basically pockets need to be emptied.. it feels like you are going through airport security. So be prepared. They give you a blank paper and a pencil - that’s it. You are not allowed to get up for breaks or water. This did irritate me as I function well with sips of water. There were other people taking exams so you will also have a eerily silent room with lot of annoying noise.. typing, breathing sounds, pencil taps etc. So keep in mind these stressors will be there no matter how much you practiced and you have to keep your cool for 3.5 hrs (that’s a really long time). Half way through the exam I felt I will fail. Later when I asked other friends, they had the exact same feeling. A lot of answers feel right and it’s really hard to choose correct options among the four suggested ones. Personal suggestion- Go with your gut. Don’t come back to change the answers! That’s the only way out. After 3.5 hrs when you hit submit, it takes a few mins to get your result.. it will feel like the longest few mins of your life. In the summary sheet they give you pass/fail result and how much did you score in each individual test area. During prep, the area that I felt least confident in was the one with lowest scores. This will just prove that their methodology is on point.

9. What’s next? If you have time, money and zeal take up shrm/other certifications as well, while you have already studied for hrci. Continue to leverage the study groups and hr communities, they help. Continue the learning through sessions, webinars, on the job assignments.

10. Cherish and celebrate - Hey! Before indulging in any of the above things in point 9, stop for a second, feel proud looking at your logo and give yourself a party for attaining your certification.

Hope these were useful pointers.

Regards,

Harsha Vatnani