About this site, and how it checks facts

Who is behind it

A small independent team that builds exam-prep tools; the site is funded by the practice apps its buttons point to, and it carries no ads. We don’t sell courses or HR consulting.

No certified HR professional signs these pages, and we don’t name one. The pages earn trust a different way: each fact in a table carries a footnote to the document it came from and the date we read it, so you can check any line yourself in a minute.

The documents we read

Exam facts come only from the certifying bodies’ own documents, never from other prep sites:

1. HRCI: the Certification Policies and Procedures Handbook (the edition dated October 1, 2026), the Recertification Handbook, each exam’s page and content outline on hrci.org, and HRCI’s pass-rate and exam-statistics pages.
2. SHRM: the 2026 SHRM Certification Handbook, the 2026 BASK, and the exam options, eligibility and recertification pages on shrm.org.
3. Older figures: pass rates for earlier years and earlier outlines come from dated snapshots of HRCI’s own pages in the Internet Archive, cited as such.
4. Job-market context: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, our only independent source on pay or employer demand. The one pay figure from a certifying body, SHRM’s own salary survey, is labeled as a self-report wherever it appears.

Each fact lives in one record that every page reads. A correction is made once and appears everywhere, with the new check date.

Where the documents contradict each other

Primary sources disagree more often than you would think. When they do, the newer or more specific document wins, and we say what we left out:

• Eight or nine competencies. SHRM’s exam fees page calls the BASK’s behavioral competencies nine in one line and eight in another. The 2026 BASK merged two of them into Inclusive Mindset, so this site prints eight.
• SHRM renewal fee. The 2023 recertification handbook still lists lower fees than the current recertification page; we print the current page: $165–$210.
• Fees nobody publishes. HRCI’s handbook names a Pearson VUE rescheduling fee but gives no amount, and neither the handbook nor the fees page prices Second Chance Insurance. Where a source is silent, the table says so instead of borrowing a number from another site.
• Two answers on one point. Two SHRM pages give different credit ranges for its specialty credentials, so that figure appears nowhere on this site.

How the practice questions are written

• Every question is written for this site and tied to one functional area of the current HRCI outline or one area of the 2026 BASK. None is an HRCI or SHRM item, and none was recalled from a real sitting.
• Each option has its own explanation, so a wrong pick still teaches the point.
• A second reviewer answers each question without seeing the key, then checks the key and every explanation against the outline. Questions that fail are rewritten or replaced.
• One topic, one owner: US employment law is explained on the PHR pages, behavioral competencies on the SHRM-CP pages, and the other exams link there instead of repeating them. The same scenario with the same answer is not repeated across exams.

Found a mistake?

If a fact here disagrees with the current handbook, the handbook is right. What to check, and which body handles your application or score, is on the contact page.