After months of studying, I’m proud to say I passed my SHRM-CP exam last week! I wanted to share my experience and offer advice for anyone taking the exam during the next testing window.
First, the cheat sheet from this post really helped me frame the SJI questions correctly. I attached images of the cheat sheet for people to use, thank you so much for that post u/Aggravating_Meal7892 !!
https://www.reddit.com/r/humanresources/s/EOK2hqlJfc
One thing I would add to that cheat sheet: the correct answer is never to complete a task for somebody else. For example if the CFO made an error when drafting the merit increase budget, always direct them to make the correction themselves, don’t just do it for them. I think SHRM really emphasizes that HR should not be a task rabbit for other departments.
For studying I basically only used HRStudyPro. In total I took 35 quizzes, 10 practice exams, studied 432 flashcards, and almost fully completed all 6 study guides.
When I first started studying I wasn’t really doing well on the quizzes and practice exams and I got pretty discouraged. When I’d go back to look at the questions I got wrong, I’d kick myself because a lot of the time I knew the correct answer but I either didn’t fully read the question or I forgot what the question was actually asking while looking at the choices.
The hardest part is that there’s SO MANY scenario questions and they’re SO LONG. You read like 2 paragraphs of a situation, then you have to answer 3 different questions for the same scenario. I realized I would zone out or just stop reading questions halfway through because I got bored and I wasn’t used to focusing for that long.
But like that cheat sheet says, there’s usually only like 8-10 words in the scenario or question that really matter, and if you aren’t fully paying attention it’s so easy to make a stupid mistake.
It might have been overkill to study as much as I did but the constant practice really did help so much. After 10 practice exams I didn’t have any issues staying focused for 3 straight hours for the real thing.
My biggest advice is to make sure you’re practicing a lot of long and high quality SJI questions. They can seem easy until you have to answer like 20 in a row, that’s when you can trick yourself into zoning out.
Sorry for the long post and I’m happy to answer any questions!