The purpose of this paper is to explore strategies for enhancing the efficacy of the current examination system for certifying professional and technical personnel, using professional engineers as an example to illustrate key points. Discussions on the challenges we have faced are first presented: (1) a poor demand in the engineer job market: low employment rate of certified professional engineers; (2) lack of test questions to reflect practicality and lack of an effective test mode to validate professional skills; (3) leaning much toward written tests and essay writing without identifying and incorporating multifactors; and (4) low reliability of the passing scores: a poor correlation between a passing score and the prediction of good performance at job. Then several alternative strategies are presented, aiming at the objective of better equipping our professionals with knowledge and skills for global competition with the aid of an examination system, under which human resources can be effectively developed through education, trainings, exams, and employments.Alternatives include (1) two-stage examination mode to incorporate multifactors in test questions to reflect the practical needs in the engineer job market; (2) requirement of work experience for eligibility to take exams; (3) consolidation of professional practice categories for better management of each category of professional knowledge and skills; and (4) application of scale score to improve the reliability and validity of the examination.