Ready To Take Your Data Privacy Career To The Next Level? Unlock The Secrets To Pass IAPP Exams In Record Time!

In this episode, Jamal Ahmed, CEO and Founder of Privacy Pros Academy reveals the 3 step process that hundreds of his mentees have followed to pass the CIPPE exam on their first go.

You'll discover:

• How to stop the self limiting beliefs holding you back and take your exam with confidence
• The surefire tips that will make you more attractive to potential employers
• How to leverage the CIPPE certification to land your dream role and increase your pay

Unlock new career possibilities today!

Discover more about The Privacy Pros Ultimate CIPP/E Certification Program: http://bit.ly/3ZmiJZz

Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/

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Welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast by Kazient Privacy Experts. The podcast to launch progress and excel your career as a privacy pro.

Hear about the latest news and developments in the world of privacy. Discover fascinating insights from leading global privacy professionals and hear real stories and top tips from the people who've been where you want to get to.

We're an official IAPP training partner. We've trained people in over 137 countries and counting. So whether you're thinking about starting a career in data privacy or you are an experienced professional, this is the podcast for you.

Welcome to the Foolproof way to pass the CIPPE exam in two weeks, even if you're a newbie. My name is Jamilla. So if you've failed at leveraging your CIPPE certificate to land the top paying roles in privacy in the past, it is not your fault. If you've been concerned in the past that you can't succeed with leveraging your CIPPE certifications to land the top paying roles in privacy. Put those fears to rest. Training providers who tell you that just passing the exam will change your life want you to think that you can't land a top paying role in privacy or never have to worry about job security, imposter syndrome, or standard of lifestyle without them. But it's not true. If you've ever thought that training providers who tell you just passing the exam will change your life, they want you to fail, you're probably right. So we're here to show you how to prepare for the CIPPE exam in a way that will actually make you incredibly marketable and attractive to a prospective employer. So Jamal wants to help the people who want to land a top paying role in privacy so you never have to worry about job security, imposter syndrome, or your standard of life without getting passed over for better candidates on interviews or a clerical role that pays you peanuts and offers no professional growth. The only way for you to land a top paying role in privacy and never have to worry about job security, imposter syndrome, or standard of lifestyle is through leveraging your knowledge of CIPPE to land the top paying roles in privacy. The only way to do that is through the ultimate CIPPE certification program for high performance professionals. And that is what we're offering at the Privacy Pros Academy. So let me hand over now to Jamal.

Thank you very much, Jamilla. I'm going to start off telling you a little bit about my story today, guys, and you're going to figure out exactly what I did to get to where I am and how you, too, can do even better. So I was frustrated. I was broken. I was stuck as a case handler trying to pay off my debts and get a bigger place for me and my wife to live. And I really wanted to get away from doing this mundane clerical job that paid me, okay? But it didn't allow me to have the life that I wanted to live. And I was continuing to live in this dingy apartment that made us moody at the end of the day because it just wasn't enough space for both of us. I wanted a role where I wasn't micromanaged, and I could make an impact and upgrade my lifestyle so I could have more financial freedom to get the lifestyle that I wanted and that I knew I deserved. And the thing is, I was struggling to get interviews for those top roles, which meant that if I wasn't able to get a role where I wasn't micromanaged and I couldn't make an impact and upgrade my lifestyle, then it wouldn't allow me to get the financial freedom and afford the lifestyle that I truly wanted. The problem was that I got news that my wife fell pregnant, all praise to God, and that got me thinking about, do I really want to bring my child into a world where I couldn't provide for their basic needs properly? Which started destroying my self confidence and started making me feel really hopeless. And then, as if by chance, something amazing happened. I discovered what it was all about.

I figured out what hiring managers were actually looking for. It became crystal clear to me how positioning yourself as an attractive prospective employee to the employers got me more interviews. And companies started reaching out to me now, and they were even willing to negotiate to have me on their team. I also learned that by getting an IAPP certification, it doesn't really do much for your employability. You need to focus on how things work in the real world instead of just showing them you have four letters after your name or the theory. And as a result, I started learning everything I could about the practical side of things so I could operationalize that privacy and really make a difference by providing those practical and pragmatic solutions. After I did that, I started exemplifying my knowledge and communicating that real world scenario so easily. Suddenly, I was acing interviews, and everybody wanted to make me an offer and work with me. And that's when I realized that the secret to paying off my debts and getting a bigger place from my family was targeting the needs of their employers effectively. My plan was to start positioning myself as an expert, and as you can see, that's going quite well so far. So I started investing even more into myself, and I didn't stop there. I surrounded myself with a community of experts, and after that, I started working on building up my personal brand. But I still had a problem. I was earning six figures a year. The top companies wanted to work with me. Life was good, really good. But while I wanted to make an impact globally, I couldn't possibly work with everybody all at the same time. And I also saw that the knowledge I had wasn't easily available in the market. And there were so many other people like me who have so much potential, that because of no fault of their own, they were continuing to live in misery, full of self doubt, full of imposter syndrome, feeling stuck where they were and looking desperately for a way out.

And I understood the frustration they were dealing with. So I decided to bridge the gap. And I call this my ultimate CIPPE, CIPM, or CIPT certification programs. And we also got the CIPP US coming up soon as well. And I thought if I could create something that would really make it possible to learn what businesses are really working for, it would be a great accomplishment. And after a year of brainstorming and building an entirely comprehensive program during the pandemic, I created the ultimate CIPPX certification programs. I now meet hundreds of privacy professionals at various stages of their professional journey, finding the fulfilling and rewarding roles they deserve. So whether you're someone that's looking to pivot into privacy, whether you have some experience in looking for your next role, or whether you're a privacy leader, we've created the programs that can help you get from where you are. Now to where you need to be and overcome all of those obstacles of experience, of confidence, of lack of knowledge, of lack of practical, operational experience getting in the way. As a result, we've been able to achieve the following. So within the first two years, I've mentored more than 100 mentees and helped them. And I've helped hundreds of mentees land their dream roles, increase their pay by at least £20,000 on average, get the promotions they were waiting for, and also start creating their own personal brand by getting invited to speak on podcasts, getting invited to speak at webinars and also being recognized as somebody who add value to conferences and be seen and position themselves as true industry experts. After creating these programs, I wasn't just able to impact my own life and the work I was doing, but also the careers of so many others and the data of millions and billions of people that myself and my mentees are responsible for as part of serving our organizations and serving our clients. I've also been able to stop worrying about the standard of my lifestyle, because I can now afford to live comfortably without thinking ten times before I want to make every little purchase. And in the end, all of this now means I'm able to give my family, my wife, and my daughter a good life and play a small part in changing the lives of others, just like you, for the better.

So how does all of this relate to you? So you can probably relate at some level to the situation I was in a few years ago. And it's not that I didn't have the potential, but it was that I wasn't initiated into what's really required to become and to be seen as the go to, in demand expert consultant. And if I can do it, believe me, anyone can do it. You don't need to spend years earning peanuts only to realize there was something you could have done about it when you had the chance. If you've been trying everything you can think of and nothing's worked so far, then you definitely need to try what we have in store for you. So let me give you an example of Tahir. He's one of my mentees. You've heard his podcast. You hear me talk about him a lot. He landed the role as a Data Protection Manager, even though he had never done a day of privacy work or any professional work in his whole life. And he did that within five months of joining the Academy. Saheel he attracted an inbound role with a large multinational company right after completing his certification training with me, even though he had no previous experience and he still hadn't sat the exam to get certified. And Adhnan, you've also heard him on the podcast. He got a pay hike of more than £30,000 within six months, when he had previously been trying for two years to change his life, but hadn't had that much success. And you saw I was invited to as his first guest, to his home that he managed to buy now that he had this pay increase and how much more financially free he is. Zainab another example, she got snapped up by one of the largest organizations in the UK within four months of joining the program. She previously used to work in retail and had no previous knowledge or experience in privacy. And then Mojisola a lot of people come to me and say, hey, I've been doing whatever I've been doing for the last ten years, whether it's It or project management or something else. I'm on a really good salary and I don't want to start again at the bottom.

So how can you help me pivot my career where I don't have to start and at the bottom and I can go in across to where I am now, or even higher? Mojisola is a great example of somebody who used to work as part of a multinational company in the healthcare sector, and she was actually a senior consultant. But then she went through the program, and she was offered to come on as a director for a leading consultancy where she had previously held the belief that if she changes or pivots her career, she has to start at the bottom. So you can see that this will work for you no matter where you are. And Roberta, you saw Roberta come and visit me at the RISK exhibition last week, and if you haven't, all of this information is available in my LinkedIn profile. And she landed her dream role within a month of joining the academy. And she's finally resigned for a job that she had been killing for four years, but was no longer motivating her, was no longer giving her the challenge and the growth she needed, nor the financial reward. And although she hasn't even set her CIPPE exam yet, she's already able to demonstrate her expertise. So much so that people are actually reaching out to her on LinkedIn and offering her interviews. And when she secured this role, everything she asked was part of the negotiations they gave her because they wanted her on their team. So I'm going to share with you a number of secrets. Secret number one is all about what makes getting CIPPE certified so difficult and how can you make it easy peasy?

Some of you may think I don't understand how to leverage my CIPPE certification the right way to land the top paying privacy rules. So let me tell you something. Trying to teach yourself from a textbook doesn't work. It might help you to pass the exam, but you don't even know what you don't know because the textbook doesn't teach you how to take that and apply. In reality, it's a little bit like learning karate or any other martial arts. You can't learn from doing that in a manual. You have to go and get an instructor, you have to go a mentor, someone who's got a black belt, and they can teach you how to really learn karate. So just having the CIPPE certification makes very little difference to your attractiveness to an employer. It might get you past the first stage where you get a call, but then what we find is that it's very difficult to actually get any offers. Also, applying to mindless roles, or lots of roles, mindlessly doesn't increase your chances of getting an offer. It's only when you put in the effort to understand the practical side of things do the doors really start opening for you. And then suddenly everyone wants you on their team and they're willing to pay handsomely for it. So earlier on, I mentioned Adhnan. When you listen to his podcast, you'll hear he secured four offers in one week. How many of you think that would be a great problem to have? Right. So on average, only 50% of test takers actually pass the exam on the first attempt. And I've seen DPOs with years of experience failing the exam. The number of years of experience you have don't really count if you've been doing the same thing, or more scarily if you've been doing one thing the wrong way your whole career.

If you do a search on LinkedIn, you can see there are lots and lots of people who are professionals and who have the CIPPE certification after their names, but some of them are still unemployed or they're still stuck in the same roles they've been stuck in. And they all have open to work or looking for work, and they're applying for those one click jobs, 10, to 15, 20 a day, and they're not getting any success. So why is that? How can we break out of that pattern? Because it's not their fault. No one told them where they're going wrong. People will call you, they'll have an interview with you. You never hear back. You'll never hear back from them. You haven't understood what the other person did that made them so much more attractive. So I'm going to share this with you guys. And before I do that, I just want to celebrate all of the people in the academy, because those, guys, they put in so much effort and they work so hard that our first time pass rate is 97%, and our overall pass rate is 100%. So our mentees at the academy, they get all of the inbound opportunities without having to apply for roles. And Roberta will tell you how people have been inboxing her since she started posting her takeaways with roles right after the training without even having to sit the exam and get the certification. And you can see from all of the testimonials and all of the stories that the mentees on the accelerator program, they're getting pay increases, they're getting promotions, and they're being seen as the go to expert and a valued member of the organization, one of the more powerful cogs in the whole mechanism of the company. And that's exactly how I want all of you to position yourselves. Now, you might also be thinking, I don't understand how this is going to work for me, given my educational background. So you might be thinking, I don't have a legal certification. I'm not a lawyer. How is this going to work? You might be thinking, my limited knowledge of data privacy, this is something I'm pivoting to, I don't have that. So that might hold me back. So how is this going to work for me? You might even be sitting there thinking, well, I don't have any experience. I have very limited experience. And so how is this going to work for me? And other things I hear is, well, I'm very busy. I don't have the time. I have a full on job, and then I have children, and I have other work commitments, or I've got other commitments outside of work. How is this going to fit with my busy schedule? And the other thing I hear a lot of, especially in this climate, is I have budget constraints. I don't have an endless amount of money. I can’t just write a blank check to go and take all the training programs that are available out there. So I have all of these problems, and now, given I have all of these problems, how is this going to work for me? So I'm going to explain all of that to you. The truth is, the CIPPE certification is just your first step. If you can ace it the right way, you should be able to attract any interview you want and negotiate the employment terms you want and choose the company that you want to work for. So secret number two is the three big do's and don'ts while preparing for the exam as a first time test taker. So some of you might be thinking, I don't have the experience or the expertise to do this the right way, but let me tell you something. I put in years of trying to teach myself everything I could. I even joined all of these Facebook groups. WhatsApp groups, LinkedIn groups full of people who just had this mediocre loser mindset, which meant that all they wanted to do was pass the exam. They didn't care about how this stuff actually applies. They didn't care about exploring the reason why policymakers have put this in, what the spirit of it is.

Once I did that, I was not only able to pass the certification like a breeze, but I was also able to really command myself when it comes to interviews. And the days of applying for roles every day were gone. And I had offers coming in left, right and centre, and I could start picking and choosing which contracts I wanted to take, which company I wanted to work with, how much travel I wanted and how much of my expenses they were going to be paying. My life was never the same after that. My standard of living improved by leaps and bounds and I was no longer having to worry about living from one pay check to the other. And I finally achieved the financial freedom I had so desperately craved for and was secure in the value I was bringing to my clients. I'm now in a position where we cherry pick the clients, we want to work with at the terms that we decide. We get recognised by the biggest companies and the media outlets as a global privacy expert. And people know about me, people trust me. And I'm so incredibly grateful that I discovered how to figure all of these out all those years ago. The BBC now called me the King of data protection. I've done loads of interviews and I've also been shortlisted and won multiple awards. And the most prestigious awards coming up next month or in two weeks are the Picasso Awards. And I've been shortlisted as a finalist in two of those sections. When you look at that and you be honest with yourself, in any other day you would say, you know what? What am I doing there? I don't belong there, I don't have a legal background. I'm definitely not the demographic that you'd expect to see that's dominating this industry. So how is it that I've got myself shortlisted for not just one, but two awards? And I'm telling you, it's as simple as just putting in place the secrets that I'm really sharing with you during this webinar. And then I've been showing my mentees some of these secrets and they regularly come back to me within a few months of joining the program with such emotional stories of how they've been able to transform not just their professional life, but also their personal life too.

The biggest head hunters in the privacy space wait to snap up new cohorts of my mentees. And you've seen me on webinars with some recruiters and they are the people who are responsible for placing people like Adhnan, for placing people like Sara, because they know the transformation that happens and the value people bring once they've been through one of our programs. And my mentees say they'd happily pay double for the same program because of how much value it's actually given them. You might also be thinking, maybe I can do this by myself. But you can't teach yourself everything, and learning by trial and error could take you years in place of a few weeks. How much time, money and energy and opportunities do you think you would have lost by them? Now, before I move to secret number three, I want to recap on secret number two. So I've got the do's and don'ts for you. So number one is the first thing you need to do is learn with a mentor, choose wisely and focus on really understanding the practical application of how you operationalize privacy over memorizing the GDPR or the articles word for word because that is going to confuse you.

The exam is designed to test your comprehension. And for those of you who have already sat the exam, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's not just a knowledge question. A lot of it is to do with just the way you read the question and comprehend it. So if you are already going to have that comprehension challenge and you are struggling with the knowledge, then you're not setting yourself up for success in the best way possible. If you've cemented that knowledge with that deep foundational understanding by learning with the mentor, learning with other people similar to you, learning with people ahead of you from the community, then you're going to be in a really good place when you get to the actual exam itself. In terms of don't, don't refer to any unofficial sources. Now there are a number of websites out there who are selling answers and questions and they're telling you these are the official questions with the official answers. I can tell you from my experience and the experience of some people who came to us before they joined the academy that those are incorrect. They're going to guide you down the wrong path. And they're designed for people who just want to cheat their way into thinking they're going to get something. Eventually you will get found out. So make sure you don't focus on that. What you want to focus on is the understanding of the application of the law over the memorizing. And that's where the easy peasy GDPR guide I've created is going to help you.

Now, third do, is schedule the exam within a week of completing the training. As soon as you complete the training, make sure you schedule the exam. So what are my three top don'ts? Number one is don't refer to unofficial exams. Don't refer to unofficial sources. I told you that. Number two is don't train with somebody who's just going to spend two days of your life reading out slides to you. So there's lots of training providers. The IAPP actually has 120 official training providers and there's lots of people offering unofficial training. What you want to do is find somebody who's going to be able to share their knowledge with you, share their stories with you, and explain how to break this down in a way that actually makes sense. What you will find is if you go for a cheap training provider, then all they're going to do is outsource that to somebody else, get as many people in the room or on the computer as they can, and that person will just end up reading the IAPP slides to you. So there is no benefit in you doing that. You're just going to get ripped off. Go and find the right mentor for you. And the third don't I have for you is, don't take a proctored exam. If you take a proctored exam, you are more likely to fail. And I tell my mentees at the end of each training program is when you go and do the proctored exam. If you look at the rates, the data on its own says, people who sit the proctored exam have a higher chance of failing in the first attempt than those that actually go and do it at a Pearson View centre.

And it made me realize when something is cheap, it's cheap for a reason. At that point, I had lost trust in any other training programs or any other training stuff. I was like, they're all the same. I've done too many of these. But what I didn't realize was I was the problem. What I was looking for was the problem. I was looking for the cheapest stuff. So everything I came across had the same poor quality and the same people reading the slides out. But when the moment I started looking for the most valuable programs in the market, then that's when everything started change for me. I even had the attitude that I thought everyone was just out to get my money and didn't actually care about me at the end of the day. It was only when I met one of my mentors that I realized how important choosing the right mentor was. And he didn't mentor me for free, but I could see that because of this bond I'm creating by paying money, there was accountability. He was invested in my growth. He took the time to address my needs, and he wanted to see me to the finish line. And he made sure that he worked with me all the way through till I achieved the goals that I wanted to. And that's something that I've taken along to my mentee, and I make sure I work with them until they get the outcome they want. So if you join any of our certification programs, we have this really powerful policy where we will work with you until you get certified.

And then I realized that while I couldn't teach myself everything, I also couldn't trust random solutions on the Internet with my career. I was going on YouTube videos, I was going on podcasts, and I was trying to figure out what I need to do. And I was taking advice from here, there, and everywhere just to see if I could beat this thing. And I realized that I had to be proactive about my goals, and I had to invest in something that was proven to get results and get the results that I specifically wanted and I was after. Now, Matthias, some of you might know him from the IAPP. He's done a couple of webinars with us. He heads up all of the partnership program. He says that the Privacy Pros Academy has one of the highest pass rates amongst all 120 of the official training providers. And you can see the mentees come back after completing the program, getting the result, and they come back and they say, what else can we do with you? What else can we buy from you to become even more successful? There's more than 100 recommendations on my LinkedIn. You're welcome to read every single one of them. And I've been listening to the challenges that my mentees have constantly face, and I've treated the program seven times since we originally started offering it. And it targets all the foundational touch points that you need to work on to become the expert. Starting from mindset, which you hear me talk about on the podcast, all the way to building your personal brand, you might also be thinking, I don't know who's worthy of my time, I don't know who's worthy of my money, and I don't know who's worthy of my trust.

So let me explain what you want to look at is who is currently where you want to be, or has already been where you want to be. So if I wanted to become an Olympic swimmer, then I would go and find somebody who's won an Olympic gold medal and has retired and is now training people so who has helped others get the same results that you are looking for. And once you understand who's in a position to get you from where you are, which is your current reality, overcome your obstacles that are standing in your path to get to your desired reality, then the answer should become obvious to you. Now the question is, who wants to really take things to the next level? I'd like to introduce to you the ultimate CIPPE certification program for high performance professionals, which is only available at the Privacy Pros Academy. This is going to help you land the top ten roles in privacy, and you're never going to have to worry about job security feeling like an imposter, or the standard of your work life balance ever again. You're not going to get passed over for other candidates who can speak better at interviews, and you're not going to waste more months and weeks and years in cherished roles that are paying you pennies and offering you no professional growth. So here's what you get when you sign up for the Ultimate CIPPE certification program.

So everything we do is based on my proven methodology, and I call it the C Five methodology because it's based on the five C’s and you'll hear me talking about this on every single podcast and every single interview. My goal is to make sure that you have the clarity that you need to really understand what are the requirements from the key legislative point of view. Then I want to make sure that you are boosted with the confidence that you can go and confidently explain whatever you need to explain to your stakeholders, to your organizations, to your clients, to the data subjects. When you are in your role. Next, it's important that you have credibility. There's no point in just getting a certification. You need more than the certification. You need the credibility. And we build the program in such a way where that credibility will automatically become known to anyone who starts speaking to you, because you've got the clarity and you've got the confidence. When someone's clear and they can explain things to you in a language you understand, and they're confident about what they know, and they're also confident about what they don't know that makes them credible. And all of these things combined will make sure that you have the competence that you need to be able to go and ace any data privacy role for any company, whether it's a small charity or a multinational organization. And finally, what we do is we make sure that you have a powerful environment where you're not going to get judged. I've seen a lot of privacy professionals who feel very anxious asking questions because if they say something on LinkedIn, people message them saying, oh, you didn't know that? So we have this powerful community of people who are in the same stage as you. Some people are ahead of you and some people are a little bit behind you. But the community comes together because we're all working towards the same thing. And from the people you can see here and in the program, you can see how powerful and valuable that community is. So these are the five pillars that are essential to success and that's what makes our certification the most powerful and unique certification on the planet.

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