FAQ

Everything you need to transition from military Leader or Veteran to civilian Project Manager!  You’ll receive:                            

1. 21^st Century AI-driven conversion of your military leadership experience into commercial project manager experience for your PMP application, resume, and LinkedIn profile.                            
2. Personal PMP application audit defense by Dr. Eric A. Wright, PMP,ACP, CIA (inactive); we have successfully defended 50+ applications with PMI.                                                                                          
3. Training to use the 6^th edition of the PMBOK Guide and pass the PMP exam using military project examples that parallel civilian projects for ease of learning and translation.                         
4. A hard-copy PMBOK Guide, a PMI-published PMP exam Q&A book, a full-color Study Guide workbook, a full suite of project management documents depicting a real-life project for reference, and video and audio recordings of all our recorded virtual courses.  No wonder our first-time go pass rate is 94%, and our second-time pass rate is 100%! Yep, we stick with you until you pass!                                                                                                         
5. Provide you with a professionally written 2-page Executive resume.                                                                                                                      
6. Provide you with a 4-hour Interview Skills Workshop.                     
7. Provide you with lifetime PM career mentorship and placement assistance.                                                                                       
8. All for some of the lowest prices in marketplace, especially considering most of the industry’s training organizations only provide the PMP training component!  Our virtual Webinar courses are only $1,247.00 USD and our onsite courses are only $1,647.00 USD.  This produces the highest value, lowest cost, only lifetime long solution in the industry!  Additionally, our average Veteran client is placed in 60-90 days of starting the program.

The virtual classroom is open every Webinar session, and participants actually use their Web cameras, microphones, and chat function to interact with the instructor and other participants in real-time, all from the comfort of their home! 

You can attend our live instructor-led, monthly Webinar from the comfort of your own home any month you wish, and in classrooms at select locations globally.  High interaction with other participants and instructors occurs in both formats; in fact, we have seen no difference between them in terms of our 94% first-time pass rate, and our 100% second-time pass rate. 

Both live courses, onsite and virtual Webinar, are 40 Actual Hours long, yielding the 35 minimum PMI-required Hours.  Additionally, the average PMP finds that 1-2 hours of studying per day, for 3-6 weeks, prepares them to successfully pass the PMP exam.

Our live instructor-led Webinar starts the first Tuesday of each month and runs for 3 weeks; meeting each Tuesday and Thursday from 6-10pm EST, and the first 2 Saturdays from 10am to 6pm EST.

Instructors provide instruction through Power Points, anecdotal stories, interactive exercises, polls, and videos.  As adult educators, we have built our curriculum and delivery method in a manner that engages all learning styles.

We provide your texts: PMI’s PMBOK Guide and Q&As for the PMBOK Guide 6th Edition, and a full-color Study Workbook! 

Webinar students: Register and order your materials for yourself no later than 10 days prior to your desired Webinar start date to ensure they arrive in time. 

Onsite students: You will receive your materials the first day of class.  Please register at least 10 days prior to your class start date to ensure your materials are there day one of class. 

Glancing through the Glossary and Table 1-4 are great, but not requisite, pre-course activities. 

Yes, you’ll receive detailed instruction and email phase gates to monitor your progress, and ensure you’re on track easily and accurately.  

As part of your Boot Camp Plus program I will create a resume for you, translating your military experience into civilian-understood terminology. I will send an intake email just before the start of your course, asking a series of questions and requesting certain documentation. I use this information to create the first draft of your resume. Your first draft resume will come with instructions on the revision process, where we collaborate to get the resume ‘just right.’

Our Boot Camp Plus program includes a 2-page (usually) Standard resume geared toward private industry or government contractors. A Federal resume is much more involved, much longer, and contains much more detail. If you are interested in a Federal resume, I can provide that and the fee is $250.

Once your course starts, and you reply to the resume intake email you will receive a reply that tells you I’ve added you to my resume queue. My resume queue is often very long, and I ask for your patience as we work through the process. One of my questions in the intake email is when you are transitioning and what is your target date for the resume. I will always do my best to work within your time frame, and you can feel free to talk with me about timing if you have a special request or need the resume outside of the normal queue.

No!  It is a free service we provide Veteran project managers!

PurpleX, our cultivated, proprietary candidate database is a unique tool available to recruiters, hiring managers, and talent acquisition professionals, and contains thousands of candidates, trained and/or credentialed in the PMP® & other highly sought-after industry certifications, possessing breadth of expertise across Technical, Business, and Operational disciplines. PurpleX candidates are mostly alumni of Vets2PM, but also includes other select Veterans and military spouses. You will even find a few non-veterans. All candidates in PurpleX have a relationship with Vets2PM, have requested inclusion in the database, or are past candidates from our job postings. We do not ‘inhale’ people from other sources. In fact, we do daily quality assurance of the database and discard candidates who are not qualified to be in the system.

PurpleX candidates are all  professional, educated, vetted, motivated, flexible, and interested in exploring roles with leading civilian organizations and government contractors.

PurpleX grows by approximately +/-60 candidates per month, and a PurpleX subscription includes a fee Corporate Partnership for the term of the subscription.

Every PurpleX subscription comes with two user credentials. Additional user credentials can be purchased for $200 each for the term of the subscription.

There is a serious gap between transitioning veterans, their ability to accurately convey their expertise, and a hiring company / prospective employer’s ability to identify and understand a candidate’s worth when their resume contains only ‘military language and acronyms’. The candidates in PurpleX have resumes that have been translated into civilian-understood terminology, with titles that convey their responsibilities, and makes identifying and hiring veteran professionals just as easy as hiring civilian candidates.

Yes, we certainly do. You will need to request an invoice from us to include with your credentialing goal to be approved by your supervisor. Afterwards, you will need to go back into the AF Cool portal and submit 2 funding requests, one for study material (tuition), and the other for the exam fee, both of which need to be approved by your supervisor. Please let mike@vets2pm.com know once your funding requests have been approved and are awaiting AF Cool CPO review and I can help expedite.

Every PurpleX subscription comes with two user credentials. Additional user credentials can be purchased for $200 each for the term of the subscription.

Yes, we have had several Officers that have had success getting their unit to fund their attendance via the SF-182 process. Please email mike@vets2pm.com for a SF-182 with our admin portion pre-filled out to route through your command for approval. Once SF-182 is approved, I will need to know who the invoice needs to be made out to (Usually your RA/RM/S4/Comptroller) to make payment via Government Purchase Card.

No, we certainly train everyone to successfully learn and obtain their project management certification. We have done trainings for several corporate clients in the past and can address your company trainings needs.

We have conducted classes across CONUS locations and several OCONUS as well including UK, Germany, Japan, Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, and more.

We are a SDVOSB and specialize in corporate training and staffing (Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) and would love the opportunity to work with you. Our capabilities statement can be found here: https://www.vets2pm.com/fedsupplier

This 33-minute video answers the questions what is a civilian project manager, how do I know if I qualify for a career in it, and how do I prepare myself to achieve a post-Service career in project manager?

https://goo.gl/pQ2UjV

In the field of project management, the widely-accepted defining doctrine is A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, or PMBOK Guide®. It defines a project as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique good, service, or result for a professional organization.  It also defines a project manager as the person responsible for leading the project team to deliver the expected good, service, or result within the project objectives of scope, time, and cost.  This means that your experience receiving, planning, resourcing, leading and controlling, and documenting military mission and/or exercise performance equates to the civilian profession of project management, according to its own governing doctrine.  Documenting this experience can play a key role in your transition, either upcoming or past, because civilian hiring managers and recruiters instantly recognize project management, understand its extreme value to their organizations or their customers, and pay top dollar for it.

The PMP® certificate is globally considered the gold standard project management credential. It is awarded to project managers that successfully pass their PMP®  PMI requires PMP exam applicants with 4-year degrees or higher to document a minimum of 4,500 hours of experience “leading and directing project activities” over 36 cumulative months within 8 years of the application submission date, and PMP exam applicants with a High School Diploma or 2-year degree to document a minimum of 7,500 hours of experience “leading and directing project activities” over 60 cumulative months within 8 years of the application submission date.  PMI also requires all applicants obtain 35 contact hours of project management-specific education and adhere to their Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.  These requirements let industry know that PMP applicants understand their profession in terms of knowledge, execution, and behavior.

PMI uses a standard 40-hour work week, of which they consider there to be 4 of during a standardized month.

Therefore, when you are calculating your Gross Project hours, multiply 160 hours to each month you present to arrive at your Gross Total of Hours. Then, determine how much of your time that month, and for each month, you spent on the project under consideration. Finally, then apportion your Revised Gross Total of Hours according to PMI’s generic allocation percentages if you can’t, or don’t want to, calculate your specific hours in each Process Group of: 13% Initiating (IN), 24% Planning (PL), 31% Executing (EX), 21% Monitoring & Controlling (MC), and 7% Closing (CL).

I have provided a table which illustrates both; PMI’s generic percentages and an example, that you can use as a reference.

Many civilians work 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year.  This means they work about 2,000 hours a year, the maximum number of annual hours PMI allows PMP® exam applicants to document on their applications.  To break this number down into PMI’s target units, we divide 2,000 work hours per year by 12 months and get a conservative 160 hours per month. Use this factor X your project’s total number of months to calculate your project’s Total Gross Hours, which you’ll multiply by the % of time you devoted to it each month for it’s duration, i.e. full-time, three-quarter time, half-time, or one-quarter time to get you respective Revised Total Gross Hours.

Let’s illustrate:

I lead a 6 month long project that I worked on half-time, i.e. 50%, because I was doing other projects and leading Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines. So, 6 months X 160 hours per month = 960 Total Gross Hours, X .5 (50%) for a Revised Total Gross Hours of 480 hours. So, I would get 6 months and 480 hours of project experience.

You then allocate your Revised Total Gross Hours to each process group according to PMI’s generic allocation model: 13% for IN, 24% for PL, 31% for EX, 25% for MC, and 7% for CL, or 62 hrs. IN, 115 hrs. PL, 149 hrs. for EX, 120 hrs. for MC, and 34 hrs. for CL.

You’ll actually insert all of this information in your PMP application at pmi.org.

Vet Stone only needs the Project Details such as hours and months “leading and directing the projects’ activities”, and the qualitative statements about which activities you led and directed to lead to which project outcomes/deliverables under which   project objectives/constraints.

Furthermore, for each Project Summary on your Final Report, you’ll enter “Project Manager” as your “Title”, and you’ll enter either “Sponsor” or “Manager” for your POC that will validate your experience if audited.  That’s because PM was your role, because you “led and directed project activities”, and the person that gave you the project charge A. did so (Manager) or B. paid for the project you did (Sponsor).

Google Chrome has recently made some adjustments to their browser, which means to retrieve your Vet Stone reports, Vet Stone Users need to:
1. Open a Chrome browser;
2. Insert the URL: chrome://settings/content/pdfDocuments
3. Slide the button right to enable “Download PDF files instead of automatically opening them in Chrome”.