Myth: PMI audits candidates with certain profiles more than others.
Truth: The audit process is completely random.
In this article, we will walk you through exactly how to complete a PMP® audit, and you’ll see that it is not as scary as it sounds. The process is actually very straight forward.
If you are chosen for an audit, you will get an email from PMI that looks like this:
Note: You have one month to complete the audit after you’ve been notified.
Follow the link in the email and log into your profile on the PMI website. There, you will see a PDF document for each of the projects you listed in your application.
Below is an example of one sample audit report:
After you’ve downloaded these documents, you need to either mail or email them to the contact person you’ve listed with the appropriate PDF document.
Protip: Before sending your email, double check that you sent the correct PDF file to the appropriate contact person. You do not want one of your managers receiving a document about another project you’ve managed.
Note: Your contact person MUST physically sign the document and MAIL it back to you. For the audit, PMI does NOT accept electronic signatures.
Waiting for your contact person to sign your verification form and mailing it back to you might take a while.
You should be following up with your contacts every few days to make sure that they are not running into any problems on their end.
Since you’ve got a month to complete the audit, you need to be proactively managing your contacts and making sure you are getting the signed documentation from them on time.
After you’ve received all the signed documentations from all your contacts, you need to mail everything to PMI. Again, scanned copies are not acceptable. PMI wants to see the original signatures from all your contacts (it’s also a good idea to get your contacts to fill in the form in blue ink!).
Before you mail your package to PMI, make sure you’ve included ALL of the following (if anything is missing, you will fail the audit):
• Copy of your degree (Bachelor’s or High school)
• Certificate for 35 hours of project management training
• Signed documents from your contacts verifying your work experience
When PMI received your package, you will get an email confirmation that looks like the following:
You do not need to do anything at this point except wait. PMI will take approximately a week to review your package, and if you pass the audit, they will send you an email congratulating you. It looks like this:
Now you’ve successfully completed the audit! See, it wasn’t that bad at all. You can now book your PMP® Exam at a Prometrics centre close to you. Good luck!