my NKE strategy

OK so the big countdown is on and I and all my HR peeps have two weeks to go before writing The Big One.  If you’ve stumbled upon my blog at this time it’s likely that you are a frenetic HR student like me who is presently scouring the web for any morsel of advice on how to maximize your chances at passing this exam, which most of us believe is the most difficult exam we will ever have to write.

Now please keep in mind that this is my first (and, with any luck, only) attempt at writing the NKE, so the advice I’m about to impart upon you, dear peer, is what I feel is the best strategy that I have come up with at this crucial point in the preparation phase, and not based on previous experience with writing.  Rather, I would hope that you will somehow benefit from what insight and wisdom it might contain.  Also it would be worth mentioning that I am not a FT student, and thus have not had the luxury of spending my days in the classroom immersing myself in the material.

Having said this, I have found the prep course I took to be a great review of all of the coursework and given me the opportunity to see where my knowledge gaps lie.  Unless you are fortunate enough to be receiving daily guidance from an HR professor, a prep course or some set of review modules is imperative to refresh you on the coursework.

Some will tell you that the best way they feel to prepare is to guide your studying by the Required Professional Competencies, or RPCs.  Personally I found this approach to be somewhat overwhelming and confusing.  A one-day workshop that I took at my college was helpful as well.  It was facilitated by a CHRP, BComm, BA who had been facilitating this workshop for a number of years and found that his students’ success rate on the exam was over 90%.  His workshop was based more on strategy than content, and he had some really good tips on how to ‘play the odds’ as it were when you are unsure of the correct answer and have to hazard a guess.

Some tips were:

1. The LONGEST answer is most often* the correct one
2. Do not choose an answer with a typo in it as it is usually not the correct answer.  Conversely, when the exam proctor advises the group that there is an error in one of the answers, this is usually the answer to the question!
3. When in doubt, choose B
4. When two answers are opposites, one of them is usually the correct answer
5. When asked to give the correct number or figure in a statistical question, you can usually discount the smallest and the greatest figures
6. The answer ‘None of the above’ is rarely correct, as they want to test you on what you know, not what you don’t
7. The answer ‘All of the above’ is usually the correct answer, especially if you know that more than one of the options to be correct

I must issue a word of caution here: in my experience with using these tactics I have found that they will work best only after you have carefully read each question and given it some serious and clear thought before resorting to playing the odds.  I believe this strategy is only meant to be used as a way to either narrow down between two answers that you think are correct, or when you have absolutely no fricken idea what the answer is.

Good luck to everyone!

*the odds will be in your favour when using these techniques approximately 80% of time according to this professor

PHOTO: jackhynes

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