Dumbfounded
When I took the SPHR exam in 2000, it was still offered only in the paper and pencil format, and there was a painfully long wait for exam results to arrive by mail. The exam was offered on the first Saturday of May. I still hadn’t received my test results by late June as we were preparing to depart for the SHRM Conference in Las Vegas (where it returns this year); HRCP was scheduled to have a booth in the expo. I was hoping that my results would arrive before the conference so that I could tell visitors to our booth that I had just passed the SPHR exam (again) after studying the HRCP materials (again). Just days before our departure, I noticed that the HRCI website listed the names of those who had passed the PHR and SPHR exams in May. Oh good, I thought, even if I don’t have my official results, I will still be able to tell people that I passed.
One problem: my name wasn’t on the list.
How could I not have passed? How could I even go to the SHRM conference now? How could I not have passed? How could I face the people who came to our booth? How could I not have passed? I was dumbfounded.
Then, the day before we left for Las Vegas, my official SPHR score report arrived in the mail. I didn’t even want to open it. But I did. Congratulations! You passed the SPHR exam! What? How? I ran back to the computer and looked up the list on the HRCI website. I then noticed something I had missed previously. It was a list of those newly-certified. I had taken the exam for re-certification.
I don’t look at those lists anymore.