End of March, I took and passed the AIIM Certified Information Professional exam. After having received some questions on twitter that require a longer response than 140 characters, I decided to write down my experiences.
Why I decided to take the exam
Simply said, I wanted to show that I have experience with managing information, and the CIP seemed like a very good choice as it’s an exam that covers all important areas of Information Management. Additionally, I wanted to learn a bit more about some of these areas (records management, e.g.), and preparing for the exam would give me a good reason to look at these in more detail. The exam doesn’t go too much into detail, more breadth than depth. If you want to get certified in an area with more depth, there are of course the other certifications provided by AIIM, for e.g. for ECM, ERM, etc.
How I prepared for it
The most important thing I was “using” during my preparation (and also the exam) was experience. Having worked in IT for several years, and specifically in some of the areas covered by the exam, most of the content wasn’t new to me, and I already had a very good basic knowledge of the majority of topics.
In addition to that, I went through the videos at first, and later onwards worked my way through the slides (can be requested if you’re an AIIM member).
The Exam
The exam consists of 100 questions with either one or multiple possible answers (have a look at the test exam), for which you have 120 minutes to complete. Some of these questions are fairly easy, anyone who has been working in the information management area for a while should have no problems answering these (I basically selected the answer and clicked “Next” within seconds). For the majority of questions, it’s important to have gone through all relevant topics (videos and/or slides) in detail, it’s definitely not enough to just know the topic roughly. There were a few topics that I only browsed through during my preparation, only to realise during the exam that the question asked goes much more into detail, and that my knowledge was insufficient. For some I could still deduct the right answer, for others I had to guess (after narrowing down my choice)’ and for one I had absolutely no clue at all… So, just because you think you know a topic, don’t assume that you know it well enough! I would categorise the last group of questions as “best practice questions”. You are given a small scenario, and you need to decide how to best proceed. These are the questions I thought about the most during the exam, as the answer is not immediately clear, and I felt that you need to have a certain amount of experience to answer these (for 1 or 2 I really thought about how I would go about it).
I think the difficulty of the exam is about right. It’s certainly not too easy, so browsing through the slides ones is not enough (unless you have many years of experience, then you might still make it). But it’s also not too difficult, with the right amount of experience and preparation it should be possible to pass the exam without any trouble.
Would I recommend the exam?
That largely depends on your job scope and experiences, and if you think that it would provide some additional value to your personal profile. The quality of the exam itself is certainly quite good, and there are definitely benefits for oneself just from preparing for it.
Thank you for sharing your experience with the AIIM.
You’re welcome!
Hey hey – good to read. Congratulations.
Thanks Mark!
Thank you so much. I hope to be successful very soon. I am currently viewing the videos! I am an IM Professional with an IT background that I hope the CIP will complement my resume
Good luck, Shelly!