I am about to embark on my CIPD qualification and have heard all the usual stuff from CIPD and MALPAS about how great it is but would like to hear from other people who have completed the qualification or are going through it. Particularly interested in the time commitment involved and how you have found studying the course via flexible learning. Also have if you have completed the qualification how useful has it been for you in terms of your own career development?
Lynn Joy
5 Responses
Arian Associates Ltd
Not being a CIPD member myself I can’t comment personally – however one of our associates has the CIPD quals and has been a member for many years. He states that his qual has served no practical usefulness to him but has acted as a door opener to interviews. Many organisations use it as a pre-requisite and it has become the ‘Industry Standard’ but in his opinion it is used for Professional Snobbery.
It is fun but hard work
I thoroughly enjoyed doing the qualification and found that because I was working in an generalist HR role, I could relate the theories to the policies in place.
The time committment depends on your expectations and learning style. I wanted to get distinctions in my assignments and put in a great effort spending 20-30 hours a week reading, on different websites and in study groups to help me understand things better. I especially found the study groups useful as I could talk to people with different experiences and get a balanced viewpoint.
The qualification gave me more confidence and I applied for posts that I could do but never applied for because I was unsure of my abilities. I now speak more confidently about HR policies and can relate theory to practice.
Go for it and good luck!!
Not wholly appropriate
This is a training site so I presume your question refers to CIPD qualifcations appropriateness for training.
As a freelance trainer I have never once been asked for professional membership of CIPD and many many successful trainers operate without it. It seems of little importance to clients whose overall demand is that they need training delivery, experience seems to count for a great deal more than CIPD.
That said the training vacancies in People Management always seem to specify full CIPD required. Either PM is pushing its CIPD agenda or clients have an unbalanced expectation or knowledge of what full CIPD entails and its relevance to trainers.
The relevance of full CIPD status and its subsequent study been done to death so I wont go into it again…. except to answer your questions personally, I dont see it as being useful in terms of career development for freelance trainers.
PS. The trainer’s forum on their website leaves a lot to be desired.
HR qualifications
We list the CIPD qualification range on our organisation’s application forms but also seek the experience levels of a good HR professional. Because of the range of services we offer we look for niche skills in the whole range of HR areas and also train in house ourselves to further develop. CIPD is useful and a good standard, it is not used nor appropriate for us to wholly adopt it as a benchmark test of capacity and we would suggest other companies take the same view.
We are more interested in the personality profile of the applicant and their experience and confidence in providing robust HR solutions and qualifications as usual only go part way to this end.
Lime One Ltd
http://www.limeone.com
0870 240 4325
CITP
Hi I’m presuming when you say CIPD you mean the CITP (certificate in Training practice), I’m currently three weeks from completion, and have not really found the course that hard, the assignments are fairly easy and the workbased project again isn’t that taxing, however, if you are or have a wide experience of training I don’t see that this course offers you much, I was asked what I had learnt on this course, and I said to a collegue I’m still waiting! I admit I’ve been involved in training for over 9 yrs and felt as was led to believe that this qualification is a must if you want to be taken seriously,I don’t think that is entirely true, but recently when applying for senior training development management positions the moment I mention I’m CIPD they are more than happy to interview! but I still believe that it’s what you do and how well you do it that will open up opportunities and expand your career path.
Good luck with the course.
Elena