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MBA Jobs: Certifications Add Weight To Project Management Careers

Online MBA degrees are a boon for project managers. But if your business school does not offer specialization in project management, then you should pursue a certification program.

By  Ian McGrath

Wed Jun 11 2014

BusinessBecause
If your business school does not offer specialization in project management, then a good way to add value to your resume is by pursuing one of the many certification programs that are available for project managers.

MBA graduates looking to pursue a career in the IT industry have a lot of different roles to choose from. Pre-sales is one of the common entry level positions that are available to MBA graduates in IT services companies. In product companies including the likes of HP, Dell and IBM, product marketing is a role that is quite lucrative and popular.

If you are not looking at a career in the sales and marketing divisions, then one of the most sought after positions is in project management. This may or may not require specializations in technical areas. However, your knowledge in the technology domain adds great value to your resume.

Here are a few of the best courses:

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Awarded by the Project Management Institute, this is an advanced certification for project management professionals. This is applicable to candidates who already have significant project management experience prior to the MBA. The requirements for the certification include a Bachelor’s degree with at least 4,500 hours of PM experience.

If you do not have a Bachelor’s degree, you need to at least have a secondary school (high school) diploma, in which case you need to have at least 7,500 hours of PM experience.

This is an easy way to set yourself apart from rest of the crowd. Earning the certification itself is extremely hard and involves answering 200 multiple choice questions in four hours.

Certified Novice Of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (CNERPS)

ERP is a critical part of any large corporation. A CNERPS certification is ideal for MBA graduates looking to gain a foothold in the ERP management division of an organization. Besides adding value to your project management skills, this certification is also useful if you want to get into NetSuite consulting or SAP consulting, which offer pretty lucrative careers.

CNERPS is an online exam that may be followed up with CIERP certification for the more advanced professionals.

Advanced Project Management Certification (APMC)

This is a 66-hour certification program that may be completed in between three months to a year. Like the PMP certification, APMC is meant for advanced professionals and so any prior work experience (at least three years) in this field is welcome.

There are up to six courses to be passed for this exam, each containing 30 questions which may be answered online.

If you do not have prior experience in project management and are not interested in pursuing the CNERPS certification targeted at novices, one great choice is to pursue an online MBA degree specializing in project management.

While online MBA degrees do not have a reputation that is as good as the traditional full-time degrees, you may still be able to showcase your expertise in project management, while making use of the better job opportunities available with your full-time degree to apply to the companies of your choice. 

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