TOPIC: PMP eligibility with my PM experience

I’ve been planning to apply for the PMP exam, but there are so many things I’m unsure about regarding the eligibility criteria. For starters, I don’t have a Project Manager designation in my current role. However, I’ve been managing campaigns and coordinating teams for nearly three years in a digital marketing setup, taking care of scoping tasks, allocating resources, and monitoring deadlines. Now I’m wondering if PMI needs tangible proof like detailed project documents or final deliverables, or if they rely more on the information we provide in our aplication.

Another concern is that, in a few of these campaigns, I wasn’t directly involved during the initial planning phases. My main responsibilities were in execution, tracking performance, and closing out the projects. So I’m not sure if partial involvement across multiple projects would still count towards the required experience. It’s a bit confusing because many people say it’s sufficient, but I’d like to be sure.

As part of this, I also managed quite a bit of vendor coordination and oversaw customer requirements for various promotional launches. It was essentially running these launches end-to-end, guiding my team, and ensuring everything went smoothly on the final day. Some colleagues have hinted that this kind of work might be accepted as valid project management exposure, but I keep seeing different opinions on whether something that doesn’t sound exactly like “traditional project management” will qualify.

Lastly, my current company often revisits the same marketing campaigns each year with tweaks based on lessons learned and new strategies. Does PMI allow repeating such recurring projects on the application if they were done during separate months or years? Or are they strictly looking for distinctly different projects to meet that 36-month criterion? I really want to make sure I’m presenting my background correctly and not missing out just because of technicalities.

Hey Arun,

Many students have similar concerns as you do. But it's really quite straightforward.

First, remember that PMI doesn’t require you to have the official job title of “Project Manager.” What matters is that you’ve been performing the tasks related to managing a project. So that's things like planning, resource allocation, stakeholder communications, monitoring, and control. If you’ve been doing this for at least three years (or 36 months), then you’re pretty much on the right track.

In terms of documentation, PMI relies primarily on the information you provide in your application. But... you want to be 100% truthful, because you might get audited. And it's only at that point when you’d need to be able to back up your claims. Or rather: the contact persons you name in your application for each project have to confirm (electronically) that they agree with and support what you included in the application.

Partial involvement is okay. It’s not necessary for you to have been involved in every single process area on every single project. The key is that across all your projects, you can show experience in each of the five process groups—Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing. Your experience with vendor coordination, requirement gathering, and project closure should more than likely be sufficient if you can clearly describe the roles and responsibilities you held. Also, managing promotional launches end-to-end definitely sounds like “traditional” project management, in the sense that you’re moving from concept to completion while juggling resources, risks, and deadlines.

As for repetitive or cyclical campaigns, you can list them as separate projects on your application if they happened in different time periods or had significant variations in scope or objectives. On my own application, for example, I submitted at least 4-5 "Web development projects". No issues whatsoever.