HRCP Blog

I have commented many times on the importance of practice in your PHR and SPHR exam preparation. (See, for example, “Does practice make perfect?”) The more practice questions you can review, the better. And the closer you can approximate the human resource certification exam environment, the more prepared you’ll be.

I should include a caveat, however: Most practice questions are written as a review for a particular set of study materials. Scoring well on such a practice test is good, and it shows that you know the study material, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll do well on the HR certification exam. In order for your knowledge of the subject matter to translate into success on the PHR and SPHR exams, you need to be able to effectively apply that knowledge to question that are written by different authors, with a different writing style, and sometimes using different terminology. The best way to accomplish this is to expose yourself to many different practice tests. Don’t limit yourself to those associated with your study materials.

There are many practice tests available, both free and for a fee. You should be able to find many resources with a web search. Here are some guidelines for selecting practice tests:

1. Choose tests from legitimate sources. By legitimate I mean legal (as in they don’t infringe someone’s copyright) and reliable (the source is reputable, a known HR expert).
2. Look for tests that provide feedback. An overall score is not very helpful in your study process. Practice tests that allow you to review, show which questions you missed, and provide explanations (such as our online practice test) are most useful.
3. Diversify. Choose a number of different sources. The actual HR certification exam questions are written by many, many different people. It’s a good idea to experience questions written by numerous authors.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am and is filed under Exam preparation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.