Going through the steps needed to receive a professional certification is often both a difficult and a stressful process. However, it is also a means of continuing your education in your chosen career and a means of distinguishing yourself among your project management cohorts. This is no less true for project managers than individuals employed in other professions.
Here are 5 reasons that you should reach for a certification in project management:
1. Formal Recognition of Your Project Management Skills
You should attain a project manager certification because it is a formal recognition of your skills and abilities in regards to project management. Receiving the certification is an endorsement from an unbiased source stating that your expertise and your professional experience make you good enough to meet the standards set by other project management professionals across the world. It is a symbol of the progress that you’ve made in your chosen field visible to your superiors, your team, and your clients. Furthermore, it is a demonstration of both your commitment to your profession and your ability to faithfully fulfill the duties and responsibilities with which you are entrusted.
2. You’ll Be Studying the Most Current Project Management Methodologies
If you choose to undergo the process to getting your project manager certification, you’ll be studying and reviewing the most up to date material about your chosen profession. Not only will this learning process help you refresh your understanding and recollection of what you already know, but it will also expose you to the best practices and current prevailing thoughts of the profession as a whole. Since your education will be thorough and comprehensive, you can also expect to pick up a slew of tricks and techniques to make you that much better as a project manager.
3. You’ll Have a Leg Up in a Job Search
All other considerations being the same, businesses prefer the candidate who has undergone the process to receive the project manager certification over the candidate who has not because it shows that the first candidate has both the ambition to continuing rising in his or her chosen profession and the personal drive to achieve it through continuous education. Your certification will help to both advance your career and open up previously inaccessible doors.
4. You’ll Become a More Valuable Asset at Work
Your competence as demonstrated by your acquisition of a project manager certification marks you as a valuable and more helpful asset to your employer. It is an excellent tool with which to convince your employer that you can be entrusted with more important responsibilities and deserve higher compensation in light of your abilities. Furthermore, your credentials are something that your business can use to win more work with its customers, something that can rebound to your credit.
5. Networking with Fellow Certified Professionals
Undergoing the certification process helps you connect with others in the same profession and build lasting social networks that will help you with your ambitions in the future. Once you’ve gained your project manager certification, you join an exclusive community of individuals who stand out among others in the same field, which is highly beneficial if you are looking to impress potential employers. Furthermore, a certification marks you out as someone worthwhile to people who are working in the same field.