Another acronym to know: LHF
LHF = low-hanging fruit
Okay, so you don’t really need to know about low-hanging fruit for the PHR and SPHR exams, but the concept itself might help you. On a fruit tree, the low-hanging fruit is the easiest to gather. No tree-climbing necessary. No ladders required. You just walk up to the tree and pick it. Some of the questions on the human resource certification exams are like low-hanging fruit. They are there for the picking, and it would behoove you to pick them first.
Passing the exam is about answering questions correctly. There is no additional credit for spending a lot of time on one of the really hard questions (especially if you end up answering it incorrectly). And really, which questions on the exam seem difficult varies from person to person based on background, preparation, and day-to-day job responsibilities. Don’t spend so much time on questions that are difficult for you that you sacrifice the chance to answer several other questions that would have been “gimmies” for you. You can always come back to the tough ones later.
For those of you taking the HR certification exam in the next two months, I hope you find bushels of low-hanging fruit.