Elevator Pitch:
Since the founding of PMO Advisory, we have always stood for expertise, quality, value, and social-consciousness. In fact, our social mission has been an integral part of our strategy. One such program we started six years ago is our Value-Exchange program. This program allows professionals to offset cost of training by providing their effort in exchange. So if you are interested in one of our courses but cannot afford it, then consider applying for this program. The value-exchange program is based on a warm handshake of mutual respect, good faith, and a recognition that we all need help. By helping you, we are also helping us and together we will grow and improve ourselves, our profession, our communication, and our world.
Full Article:
When I found PMO Advisory in 2012, I considered seriously to structure the company as a non-profit organization. In fact, we still own the domain www.pmoadvisory.org. Then, as the nation emerges from the Great Recession of 2007, many college graduates and professionals could not find “real” work. As a college professor, I have witnessed the pains of many who searched long and hard for meaningful jobs. Many took unpaid internships for years hoping to land a permanent job, and we created an apprentice style program to help them. But after consulting potential clients, I eventually decided to structure PMO Advisory as a for-profit organization, mainly because Wall Street is not likely to hire a project management consulting and training firm to provide professional services. Being socially minded has been in the fabric of our organization’s strategy.
PMO Advisory officially found the Value-Exchange program in 2014 when multiple people inquired about ways to offset training cost. And over the past six years, we have helped many professionals to attain their certification dream. The program is based on the simple premise that we all have something to contribute and the project management profession is stronger when more people are qualified. Studies have shown that the state of project management continues to be poor with wastes estimated at least 10% and the overall success rate less than 30%. Furthermore, PMO Advisory can always use more help to grow the firm and advance our mission. In short, by helping professionals who are in need, we are also helping us and paying forward. The program never had a legal basis, there is no contract and no legal ramification. We build this program to rely on good faith, professionalism, and mutual trust.
At first, this program was originally designed for U.S. veterans who were transitioning back into civilian life and full-time college and graduate students. Then we expanded to include unemployed and the underemployed professionals. We have also accepted professionals from non-profit sector. Today, with the coronavirus ravaging our society, we have plans to open to even more people. Our challenge is to approve candidates who are genuinely in need and naturally consider our financial health. Our process includes these four evaluation criteria:
- Participant needs and justification – explain the situation
- How they can help PMO Advisory – describe how to help us
- Our needs – internal review of our needs, including the amount of management time we can afford to help working with the candidate
- Our finances –can we afford this?
The process to apply is rather simple. First, applications must complete the Value Exchange Program application. If you are looking to offset the entire cost of training, then it’s much more important to provide suitable justifications and value exchange. For candidates whom we deemed credible, we will schedule a call between the candidate and one of our executives to better understand the needs, the interests, and how to help PMO Advisory. We strive to inform the candidate within a week of the meeting.
By helping you, we are also helping us. The vision of PMO Advisory is to be a leader in project management and business execution. We need everyone’s help to develop our business, create stronger content, design better training, produce quality assessments, craft new insights, and improve our profession. Together, we can improve project execution and build a better world for all humanity.
For more questions, please review the application which contains more details and email us additional questions at cert@pmoadvisory.com.
Prof. Dr. Te Wu (PfMP, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP)