Professional Qualifications

[FortuitousFluke]

Afternoon chaps, I appreciate that there might not be that many people working in my industry who can offer advice, but given that we have a good number of professionals and that this forum has come up trumps before I thought I'd float this here.

So, I work in a management/professional level procurement role as a Senior Category Manager for a framework provider working predominantly with public sector clients. I've got a bachelors, and will be MCIPS qualified hopefully in the next few months.

Having spent most of my career working in public sector organisations I'm in the weird position now of being with an employer with a much stronger training budget, but now that my professional CIPS qualification is nearing completion I don't really know what to apply for.

The standard next step in my industry is a Masters in Business Admin but I'm not ready to go down that route quite yet, and that sum of money would be a hard sell, but I can potentially pitch for around £5k with a good chance of success to undertake some other training. I've looked at project management, Prince2 6Sigma etc but don't know too much about these disciplines and am a bit worried they're catch all, everyone has one qualifications.

I should say I am looking at other ways to develop myself in this new role that are cost free such as trying to develop existing skills through the work I undertake but since the money is there for training I'd like to check out all avenues.

Anybody in a similar industry, or just working at a similar level to me got any suggestions on areas I could look at? Any ideas welcome.

 

[Scrutinize]

Depends what you want to achieve.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) is the best overall broad management / director based professional industry recognised institution; with various training and professional qualifications available. It's resource library is significant too.

For project management the Association for Project Management (APM) is a much better option for developing your broad PM skills across all sectors rather than just considering PRINCE2 etc. It also offers longer term training and development and recognised post nominals. PRINCE2 is an entry route though.

Institute of Directors (IoD) is probably more useful than an MBA with your background and situation although you would need some of the skills and competencies from MBA studies. They offer various training schemes and networking that opens up director roles.

An MBA is useful but the essential dynamic is finance + legal/commercial and there are other means of undertaking the core financial training including through the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). An MBA will also only functionally serve you well if you are the right character to hold the exec / leadership roles.

 

[FortuitousFluke]

Depends what you want to achieve.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) is the best overall broad management / director based professional industry recognised institution; with various training and professional qualifications available. It's resource library is significant too.

For project management the Association for Project Management (APM) is a much better option for developing your broad PM skills across all sectors rather than just considering PRINCE2 etc. It also offers longer term training and development and recognised post nominals. PRINCE2 is an entry route though.

Institute of Directors (IoD) is probably more useful than an MBA with your background and situation although you would need some of the skills and competencies from MBA studies. They offer various training schemes and networking that opens up director roles.

An MBA is useful but the essential dynamic is finance + legal/commercial and there are other means of undertaking the core financial training including through the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). An MBA will also only functionally serve you well if you are the right character to hold the exec / leadership roles.

This is cracking information, thanks for taking the time! I was given the opportunity to undertake a leadership qualification similar to some of the schemes run by the CMI, unfortunately, due to the nature of my role I was offered a level that probably fit the role itself but that didn't suit my current level of skill so I was a bit jaded about taking it on when I figured it would probably just be reinforcing what I already know. With this new role I think I can probably get them to look at it with more of an eye on what I could be doing in 2-5 years time for them so that's definitely of interest.

Again thanks for the advice, it's definitely given me some avenues to explore.