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CIP Exam Lessons Learned

Some lucky attendees at the AIIM 2012 conference paid in advance for discounted vouchers to cover the registration fee for taking the Certified Information Professional exam. This is a multiple-choice 100 question exam that tests your knowldege in each of six specific information management domains. The only catch was you had to take the exam prior to June 30 2012, so the clock was ticking as soon as Thedra White processed your credit card and handed you a voucher.

I talked to several people during the conference to get a feel for what the online training material was like and how difficult the exam was. AIIM borrowed the online video training concept from the Kahn Acadamy, where they post videos online for various topics to enable learning on demand. After speaking with the likes of @steveweissman @piewords and @bfanning I decided that some studying prior to the exam was a must and I am glad I did.

I found the online videos really helpful and I spent several weekends reviewing each video. However I did fast forwarding past the repetitive “Hello & Welcome...” introduction after watching the first couple videos. If you decide to take the exam and watch the video tutorials you will be hitting that forward slide too. I watched the videos on my MacBook and my iPhone, I actually preferred the iPhone because it kept me from being distracted by pop up tweetdeck notifications and the occasionaly Adium IM chat request.

With nearly two decades of involvement in the industry under my belt and being an early adopter of social media, cloud and collaboration technologies I can say with confidence if I didn’t study I may not have passed the exam. It is not an easy test and it should serve as a benchmark for seperating the serious career professionals from those that merely hold a job in the industry.

Here are a couple of tips going into the exam:

• Eat a good meal, the exam is two hours. I finished 20 minutes early but was glad I had eaten prior.
• Read the questions carefully some ask you to pick to answers.
• Use the Mark option for any question your not sure of and then go back after you have run through all 100 questions.
• Go with your gut, if you study you shouldn’t have to overthink your answers.

While trying to think of a catchy title for this post I came up with the following, if you have any other creative ideas post a comment:

• “To CIP or not to CIP”
• “CIP, CIP’in Away”
• “I think I got the CIP”