Whether you're yearning to get a real job or a better one, the struggle to make your résumé stand out from the competition can be a demoralizing impediment to landing the right position. Portraying your skills and value to a company in a unique way without a long job history can seem nearly impossible. However, developing your skills in project management can make you a sought-after asset ton any organization. Becoming a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® is a relatively and inexpensive way to unlock better jobs and significantly higher salaries in almost any industry. This certification will build skills to effectively manage a project from planning and projections to execution through completion.

For those who hold a CAPM certification, earning the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification will allow you to further distinguish yourself and display your mastery of the subject. This leading certification carries a significant increase in annual salary.

1. Vast Job Opportunities

Glassdoor.com, a leading job listings and information website, has over 300,000 active listings for project management positions nationwide. Project management skills and knowledge are also applicable outside the borders of the US. Skills in project management benefit practically every facet of every industry. From IT, to banking and finance, sales, medical services, human resources, and research positions; project managers are in extremely high demand. Developing your skills in project management will grant you increased access to any industry that interests you.

2. High Perceived Value

A survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit saw the majority of international executives identifying project management as "the single most important skill for their current and future success." The US News and World Report has also ranked project management in the top three of most desired skills sought by employers. The demand for these skills means that a recognizable project management certification will distinguish your résumé from the competition in a way that a typical 4-year college degree cannot. No matter the industry, a CAPM or PMP certification will identify you as a necessary leader and team player who is focused on the efficient completion of assignments.

3. Greater Salary Potential

Glassdoor's salary tracker also shows average Project Manager salaries range from $26,000 to over $100,000 with multiple postings in excess of $200,000 annually. Simply obtaining your CAPM or PMP certification will increase your real and perceived values and have a direct effect on your income.

CAPM vs PMP

	CAPM	PMP
Who Should Apply	Entry-level employees or those with little project management experience	For CAPMs or experienced Project Management Professionals
Experience Required	No experience required	Minimum 4,500 hours of project management experience and 35 hours of Project Management education
Certification Maintenance	Retest after 5 years	Achieve 60 PDUs every 3 years to maintain a current knowledge of project management issues and strategies
Benefits	Access to multiple industries and lucrative employment Salary increases and résumé distinction Introduction to the field of Project Management	Résumé distinction through proof of subject mastery 12.5% increase in salary vs those in equivalent position without PMP certification Maintaining a current and multi-industry knowledge of Project Management

The CAPM examination can further facilitate your achievement of the more prestigious and financially rewarding PMP certification.

According to the Project Management Institute, which awards the CAPM and PMP certifications, they both focus on:

• The skills to initiate a project
• Project preparation and planning proficiency
• Executing, monitoring, controlling and completing a project
• Estimating activity costs
• Planning for quality at every stage
• Performing quality assurance
• Hiring, leading and managing a project team
• Foreseeing and planning for the unexpected

For more information on the PMI or the CAPM/PMP certifications, visit www.PMI.org.

CAPM and PMP Test Prep

Successful CAPM and PMP candidates typically use multiple study aids to prepare themselves for the exam. Although many business schools are incorporating CAPM and PMP test preparation into their classes, standalone assistance is also available. For more information on the CAPM or PMP certifications and effective test preparation, please view our project management courses or contact Jim Wynne at jwynne@meritcd.com

PMP and CAPM are registered trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Through gaming and play, employees can experience positive emotions that enhance their learning retention rates.

Regardless of age or experiences, we all play games in some way or another. But games aren't just about play; they educate. From smartphone puzzle-oriented hits like Candy Crush Saga to games of "peekaboo", in which infants learn object permanence, games and learning have gone hand-in-hand for thousands of years. So what happens when you take learning through play and apply it to online training courses?

Beyond Childhood Games

According to many historians, the adoption of a "game" called Kriegsspiel by the Prussian officer corps was instrumental in Prussia beating France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Derived form the German word meaning "war play", Kriegsspiel was designed as a training system for Prussian military officers in 1812. War and simulation have a much older history thourgh: Chess, one of the oldest games still in existence, was used throughout the Middle Ages and the Reniassance to teach noblemen war strategies. Battle tactics were part of their jobs, and the most efficient training was often through play. The famous back-and-forth nature of a "Socratic" dialogue has parallels in tennis, fencing and other sparring games.

Today, thanks to the technological advancements in smartphones and other mobile devices, almost everyone has become a "gamer". The term might carry a stigma with business professionals, but used as part of an effective training regimen, games can make a huge impact on employee retention and performance.

Empowering Employees Through Play

Game designer and author Jane McGonigal has found that play can create a sense of hope and empowerment. According to her research, gaming produces and heightens positive emotions when individuals are participating and feel engaged. Emotions are one of the most effective tools training instructors can leverage. The late Jim Spaulding, technical instructor at Merit Career Development, believed that evoking emotions from students is essential to improving learning retention and employee engagement.

According to a recent Gallup poll, the 87 percent of workers who currently feel disengaged at their jobs could potentially cost companies trillions of dollars in lost productivity. Play might be the key to changing these attitudes and re-engaging employees.

McGonigal feels that gaming can create behavioral changes that lead to better performances from employees. Her research found that two areas of the brain "light up" when a person is actively engaged in gaming: the caudate and the thalamus, the goal-oriented rewards center of the brain, and the hippocampus, where learning and memory reside. These two parts of the brain are the lynch pins of retention, marrying motivation and memorization through emotional response and other stimuli.

Employees can only improve their skills if they're engaged and attentive during training. By designing courses where learning happens through play - rather than drilling information through presentations - senior leaders can ensure that their associates are gleaning the most meaningful lessons possible through training.

Review a course list or contact Merit today for more information

When he reward for your hard work turns into a terrifying "opportunity" to be video recorded, you could get derailed worrying about the impression you're going to make and your credibility.
With the boom in YouTube's popularity and marketing importance, and the continued growth in consumers preferring to keep up by watching over reading, your skill on camera is more critical than ever. Research has proven that learner retention from video is significantly higher than from text. Here are some stats on video that you should know:

• Learner retention¹: 65% video vs. 10%-20% text
• People are 75% more likely
  to watch² a video than read an email
• Visual are processed 60,000 times faster³ in the brain than text.

If you are asked to speak to a reporter, tv news crew, or anyone with a video camera, you can make or break the impact of your message without event knowing it. Your appearance, behavior, and subconscious actions can conflict or undermine your spoken word. Whether you're representing your industry, company, department, or your own experience, we're sure you want the message to be accurate and meaningful.

At Merit Career Development, we recognized the need to offer these insights to our clients and teamed up with BTK Communications, a recognized leader in video production to create this workshop for you. Barbara T. Radler, the founder and CEO of BTK Communications, has been helping professionals be their best on camera for almost 3 decades. She and her team worked with us to create this experiential program that will be held in a studio-like setting with a professional director, camera crew and teleprompter operator. Participation in this program will change your professional trajectory forever!

During the workshop, participants will learn, in detail, insider tricks and tips from preparing to be on-camera, day-of on-camera production, and post-production impact. Specifically, you will learn through experience:

1. The impact of sleep and alcohol on being your best on camera
2. How to impact the impression you make with your clothing and color choices, hair style, make-up, and more
3. Engaging the viewer with body language, eye focus, and specific mannerisms
4. How to vary your voice's tone, pace, and volume to control the points of emphasis
5. How your posture and gestures impact the spoken message (what to do and what NOT to do)
6. When and how to use Silence
7. Production and post-production tips

Where else are you going to learn these important insights and have the opportunity to apply them immediately with a camera crew and teleprompter operator?
As you may have learned in your youth, you can never get a second chance to make a first impression, so you want to give this your best effort. To bring this important training experience to your leaders and influencers, contact Jim Wynne at (610) 225-0193 or at jwynne@meritcd.com.

Sources:

1. https://www.ragan.com/infographic-why-visual-content-is-better-than-text/
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/02/03/video-marketing-the-future-of-content-marketing/?sh=5d2d66e96b53
3. Forrester Research https://www.panopto.com/blog/answer-transparency-isnt-town-halls-technology/

What if you could reduce your training costs by up to 40% while increasing employee engagement and retention by up to 60%? Would you be interested in learning more?

While you're probably familiar with "e-learning", you may not know as much about Adaptive eLearning. What's so important about Adaptive eLearning? This is personalized instruction that adapts to and builds upon the employee's existing knowledge. It by-passes redundant (and boring) review periods found in most e-learning courses that are designed for the masses.

The goal of any great training program is to engage the learner and to teach them things they don't know by linking it to things they do know.

Adaptive eLearning is based on discoveries in the last 10 plus years of cognitive neuro-science. It recognizes that every person is unique, has had different experiences, and therefore different levels of knowledge on various topics. Instead of trying to teach everyone the same content, Adaptive eLearning takes advantage of this disparity in two distinct ways:

• It tests a person's level of knowledge, and, more importantly, their confidence in that knowledge. By doing so, it recognizes each person's knowledge and how comfortable they are with it.


• IF a person knows the knowledge and is confident in that knowledge: no further training in this area is required.

The second point highlights the question, why spend time training and boring people on stuff they know? They should be trained on stuff they don't know! The graph below is illuminating. Many people are confident in their knowledge but may not be competent or proficient in that subject. The green lines indicate a person's knowledge level, whereas the red lines indicate missing knowledge areas. The yellow lines indicate their confidence in that knowledge area. As you can see: many people may be confident in their knowledge, but may not actually be competent.



Adaptive eLearning recognizes this disparity and responds appropriately to each person by training the individual learner exactly what they need to know!

The Benefits of Adaptive eLearning:

For Your Business

• Improved employee productivity
• Higher employee engagement
• Measurable capability and capacity (Lower unconscious incompetence), see chart above.

For the Learner:

• Faster time to proficiency
• Eliminate frustration of unnecessary training
• High self-awareness of strengths and development areas
• Enhanced and personalized learning experience

For the Training and/or Human Resources Department:

• Measurable outcomes
• Real-time quality feedback
• Real-time content updates
• Improved teaching effectiveness
• Elimination of the "one-size-fits-none"

Merit Career Development has partnered with the leader in adaptive eLearning, Area 9, to deliver world-class training in the most efficient manner possible and provide our clients with more delivery options than ever. For more information, contact Merit Career Development today. We'll help you achieve the best training program you've ever had, with a lower expense and higher learning retention rate. Contact Merit Career Development today to learn more.