Project Manager Certification

Project managers are found in a variety of different organizations and work on a variety of different types of projects. You might not think that this is a job that would require certification, and technically it is not, but certification as a project manager will help you find a better and higher-paying project management job. Project managers desiring project manager certification may obtain it from several recognized bodies, but the most significant of these is the Project Management Institute, or PMI.

PMI has over half a million members, and they offer five different levels of project manager certification in recognition of your skill and knowledge as a project manager:

Project Management Professional (PMP): This is the top project manager certification offered by PMI. It requires a bachelor's degree plus three or more years of project manager experience or a high school degree and five years of experience.

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM): This project manager certification requires a high school degree and either fifteen hundred hours of project manager experience or twenty-three hours of project management education.

Program Management Professional (PgMP): This project manager certification requires either a four-year degree plus four years of project management experience and four years of program management experience or a high school degree and four years or more of project management experience plus seven years of program management experience.

PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP): This project manager certification requires either a four-year degree plus thirty-five hundred hours or more of project scheduling experience and thirty hours of project scheduling education or a high school degree plus five thousand or more hours of project scheduling experience and forty hours of project scheduling education.

PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP): This project manager certification either requires a four-year degree plus three thousand or more hours of project risk management experience and thirty hours of project risk management education or a high school degree plus forty-five hundred or more hours of project risk management experience and forty hours of project risk management education.

For more details, see the Project Management Institute Web site.