Edit: This actually got a lot more attention than I expected, I’ve revised my study notes to be a bit more relevant to the SHRM-CP and updated the link posted below. Please let me know if there’s anything important I forgot to include and I’ll add that to the document!

Took the test yesterday morning and received a preliminary pass result! Wanted to do a little write-up on how I studied for it as well as my opinion on the various study materials I used. First, some background:

• Years in HR: 2
• Money spent on study materials: ~$120
• Hours spent studying: 40~60 hours total, over 3 months
• Study materials used:
• SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide (Dory Willer)
• SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP Certification Practice Exams (Dory Willer)
• SHRM-CP Exam Secrets (Momentrix)
• 500 HR Certification Practice Questions AKA pink book (Olamide Asekun)
• Quizlet sets

Regarding the test itself, I felt pretty confident going into it. About 2 weeks before the test I was consistently scoring between 75% — 80% on the practice tests, and for the questions I got wrong, the correct answer was almost always my 2nd choice. You get partial credit for picking the next best answer, so this wasn’t a big concern for me (Edit: Turns out you might not actually get partial credit, so don’t quote me on that). Finished in 3 hours including one 5-minute water break.

I found the Knowledge sections to be fairly easy. Situational Judgement questions were a lot harder, but mostly because of how long they were and how much attention they required.

Some observations:

• Once you understand “SHRM-Think” a lot of the questions turn into total gimmes. Pick the answer/business decision that best supports the organization’s strategy/vision, also any answer that paints HR as a strategic component in an organization. SHRM’s own vision is for HR to become more of a strategic part of a business as opposed to an administrative part, so pick the answers that support that vision. It’s something that gets parroted a lot in this sub and I think it’s the best piece of advice regarding the CP test.
• There were no blatant “trick” or overly-specific questions (e.g: how many hours can an unpaid intern work). A lot of the questions really just test your fundamental understanding of certain concepts, like identifying different types of organizational structures and their characteristics. Focus on understanding all the elements and their underlying purpose/function instead of diving too deep into definitions. (For example don’t just memorize the definition of a job evaluation, understand when it’s used, and how it compares to a job analysis)
• Remember to pace yourself, and don’t be scared to take a break half way. Keep in mind that SJ questions will take a lot longer to complete than the regular knowledge questions. Some of the SJ questions literally came with 3–4 paragraphs of text and took about 10–15 minutes to complete. This gave me a lot of anxiety because I mentally allocated 1.5min/question (since you get 4 hours to do 160 questions) and constantly felt like I had to rush through the SJs, which only made me have to read it again because I read it too fast the first time. Started to feel really fatigued around the 2 hour mark, like I was just reading and not actually comprehending anything. Taking a water break totally helped clear my head and it was like getting a 2nd wind.
• Flag questions you’re unsure of and get back to them later. Sometimes later questions will give you insight into the questions you were unsure about. For example, you’re unsure on whether you can assign intermittent FMLA leave to an employee. A later question might present a scenario where an employee is away on an intermittent FMLA leave, thus giving you the answer.

Book Reviews:

SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide + Practice Exams — [9/10] — Found this set of books to be by far the easiest to read and most relevant. Chapters are structured really well and it has good pacing to it. Honestly probably could have done it with just these books alone. It is however pretty expensive to get the set, and if you’re just doing the CP you’re really only utilizing half the book. If you’re really on a budget, just the Exam Guide would be sufficient.

SHRM-CP Exam Secrets (Momentrix) — [6.5/10] — I thought this book was ok. Reads more like a dictionary than an actual study guide. Just wasn’t really structured, felt like it was teaching multiple parts but not really conveying how they all come together as a whole. Also a lot of unnecessarily long definitions. However since this IS specific to just the CP test, you pretty much get the full value of it. I do consider it more of a definition book though. Basically a very comprehensive Quizlet set.

500 HR Certification Practice Questions (Pink book) — [3/10] — I surprisingly didn’t find this that helpful at all, despite abundance of praise it seems to get in this sub. The 5 sections aren’t categorized, which makes it hard to pin-point which areas you need to work on. It’s really just a collection of 500 assorted HR questions. Few repeat questions, and a lot of them seemed grossly specific (e.g: how many years are copyrighted works protected for from the first year of publication vs their first year of creation). A few religious elements in it as well which kind of threw me off (“Pray and ask God for favour, commit your exams into the hands of the Lord Jesus”). I felt like there were a lot of trick questions as well, with answers meant to trip you up, when there weren’t any questions like that in the actual CP test. This book might be more appropriate for the PHR tests considering the content, however for the CP test it isn’t really relevant.

Quizlet sets — [6/10] — Like condiments, they’re not much alone, but if you have a good foundation they can help immensely. I would recommend using these as more of a refresher instead of using them to learn new concepts, mainly because of how short most of the Quizlet definitions are. You can get the app on your phone so accessibility is great.

Lastly, here’s a google drive link for a simple study guide I made (45 pages). Really just covers the main things I felt were most important, and isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide for the SHRM-CP test.

The original file was about 100 pages long and can still be found here if you want, a lot of the information is repeated and a lot of it really isn’t even relevant; It was really just a progression of stuff I thought was important and typed out into a word document.

Hope this write up was able to provide some insight into the CP test. I gained a lot of confidence reading the advice that other users in this sub have posted and wanted to contribute as well. Would love suggestions on additional parts to include in the study guide, feel free to shoot me a PM and i’ll add it to the document :)