My recent ponderings about the APMP Foundation Level qualification also made me wonder about the folks who get the highest marks in the exams at the end of our courses – not, of course, that we can ever share anything other than a simple “pass” or “fail” with candidates (a source of some frustration, to us as much as to many of you).
I guess the profile of the perfect participant would encompass some non-proposal attributes (inherent intellect, short-term memory, academic ability, exam technique, skill at revision) as well as your proposal experience – where a track record of managing proposal teams (rather than writing them all yourself!) within a more formal, defined process on which you’ve been trained in the past will certainly help. And fluent English is a big advantage.
That’s not to say that if all of these don’t ring true for you, you won’t pass; the overwhelming majority of those who come through the doors into our classes do. You just won’t be one of those folks who accumulate enough marks in the first two columns on the exam sheet (comprising 50 questions) to have reached the pass mark of 42 before we even score your final column of answers!