PHR Exam Prep: Professional in Human Resources (2nd Edition),   ISBN:9780789736772

Customer Rating: 

I took the PHR exam today and passed. However I have to give this book a mixed review. Though certain aspects of the book were complete and thorough (especially the chapter on labor relations), I felt many important details were left out. Also the layout of the book is not very conducive to easy reading and retention. This is a very good secondary resource, but I suggest going for the study guide by Anne Bogardus (which I used) or the SHRM learning system as a primary resource.

Customer Rating: 

The book was in great condition and arrived fairly quickly. I wish I would have read more closely that it did not come with the CD-Rom, but for the price I have no regrets.

Customer Rating: 

I've been studying this book for about 2 months in addition to other sources for the PHR exam. I haven't taken the exam yet but I feel confident about the information I have obtained.

LIKES: comprehensive information on every aspect of HR and "exam alerts" that provides areas that will definately be on the exam.

DISLIKES: There are SO many mistakes in the book which include typos and misprints. For example, the "exam review questions" at the end of Chapter 4 show answers to questions that are not related to the question. Definately a misprint on the publisher's part. Also, there are alot of small mistakes in wording here and there throughout the book. Doesn't cover subjects that are on some of the practices exams I've taken online.

Customer Rating: 

I use this book as a complement to my study plan for the PHR certification exam. It was very helpfull.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this book and the SHRM Learning System to help me prepare for the test, which I passed. The Learning System came with six individual books for each module, and I was surprised how well this one book compared to the whole SHRM set. I was a little disappointed, however, with the practice test in the back and the CD software. I suppose it might be a nit-picky complaint, but some of the given answers did not match up with the question. For example, there is a question that asks for you to compute the average of a set of numbers. There is one answer given in the answer key that is wrong, and then the written explanation has yet a different answer. Then, when reading through the explanation they are explaining why a certain answer is the mode, not the mean that the question asked for. This also happened with the questions on the software. I couldn't understand why "two" was an incorrect answer to the question of how many full time or equivalent employees an executive exemption was responsible for when I realized that the question referred to "executive" but the answer referred to "administrative" exemptions. It could be awfully confusing to someone who isn't all that familiar with some of the topics. I know I was devistated for a few minutes that I apparently couldn't calculate a simple average until I caught the problem.

Long story short, it's a good investment for what, less than $40? It makes a great complement to other resources (as mentioned earlier, no one resource has it all) but just check and double-check yourself when taking the tests to make sure you're not learning something incorrectly.