I'm an "old" CRM. I started the process in about 1990 and passed Part
VI in 1992. Those were the days of blue books and short answers with
the multiple guess for Parts I-V. Back then, I was hoping for
computerization and a faster feedback cycle. You young records managers
have it so easy... oh wait. I'm sounding like the old fart that I am.

Anyway, I have always found Part I to be nearly as challenging as Part
VI for many people. It mainly comes down to the various management
theories that you will have to learn. My experience is that almost no
one walks in conversant with what "Theory X" is all about, so that is
something that you have to learn. Part I also gets to a lot of the
skills that many records managers rarely consciously employ. But they
are things you should learn.

The process is a learning process -- but, if you don't know much about
records management, it is unlikely that you'll pick up a book and learn
enough to pass the exams without any practical experience. I suspect
that a person who has a good head could work out a passing score, but
it would be painful. The process as a whole should make you a better
records manager by helping you identify areas in which you can improve
your knowledge and broaden your base. Ultimately, that is the greatest
value of the process.

I recommend that candidates take the "shotgun" approach. Take all five
preliminary parts up front. What you pass, you pass; what you don't
pass, you can focus on for the next round. For Part VI, get a mentor or
join a study group. Practice your writing. Get used to the format of
the questions. Answer the questions exactly as asked. Creative writing
and outside the box thinking rarely helps you in Part VI, in my
experience. Get used to rattling off statistics and focusing on what is
important to management. In almost every Part VI question that I have
been exposed to, you're given a scenario when a company is in bad
shape, records-wise, and you have to convince management of the
rationale to fix the problem. Build an outline (far easier today with a
computer) to suit the manner in which the question is asked. Manage
your time. don't put all your energy into one question (particularly
the 40-pointer). The strategy that I employed was to select which
questions I would answer, read the questions in detail, construct an
outline to show the path to the answer, then move on to the next
question and repeat. Once the outlines were constructed, I started
writing. I spent about 1/3 to 1/4 of the remaining time at that point
on the lower point question. If I felt that I could finish the lower
point question with another couple of minutes, I finished it;
otherwise, I went on to write the bigger point question. Figure double
the amount of time you spent on the first question. If you're doing
well, you should then have maybe 30 minutes to tidy up the first
question and then finish the second question. If nothing else, at least
show the grader where you're going through an outline. If you're off to
a great start and you show the points you wanted to finish up with, you
may get partial credit.

So figure that if you spend 30 minutes reading the questions and
building your basic outline, you can spend 60 minutes on the small
question, 120 minutes on the big question, and have 30 minutes to split
as necessary to finish up. There's never enough time. The idea is to
hit the points as requested in the style requested and get as much on
paper as you can. 




Patrick Cunningham, CRM
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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