Becoming a CIP Training Partner

With the CIP now live, we've gotten quite a few questions about how to become a CIP training partner. The short version is: Become a CIP, develop your materials, and start teaching. There are some additional steps you can take that might increase your success - read on for details. 

In the personnel accreditation industry, there is generally a certain amount of "separation of church and state" between the certifying  organization and those that would prepare people to take the certification. One of the reasons for this is to underscore that the certification is not a house organ, but is rather based on industry best practices, subject matter experts (SMEs) from around the world, etc. 

This separation of exam from training is in fact one of the key differentiators between certificates and certifications. It enhances the value and prestige of a formal certification to have that separation. And it's such a strong tradition that ISO 17024, the standard for personnel accreditation, notes that certifying organizations cannot require *their* training as a precondition to take a certification exam. They can offer training, as AIIM does for the CIP, but others need to be able to offer it as well. 

Now let's look at training providers and partners. They are neatly positioned to manage that separation by offering training while being closely affiliated with the credentialing body. 

But because we want that separation of church & state, it makes the relationship between the certifying body and the training partner necessarily a bit looser than it otherwise would be. So in practice, anyone in the world who wants to teach a PMI, or A+, or [insert credential here]...or CIP preparatory workshop can do so, with no formal arrangement with the certifying body in most cases. That means no licensing fee, no train-the-trainer fee, no per-student fee, nada.

Let me say that again: If you want to teach a CIP preparatory workshop, you don't have to pay licensing fees to AIIM. You don't have to pay student fees to AIIM. You don't have to get trained by AIIM or pay a train-the-trainer fee. And you don't have to use an AIIM trainer. 

We do recommend that you be a CIP, of course. This is more for your marketing than anything else - who would take a PMP prep class from someone who isn't a PMP? 

We are also willing to review your training content against the exam outline to ensure that your content covers everything on the exam. There is no charge for this at present either. 

And we have the AIIM-produced training content including slides and a study guide. We can make the slides available to anyone interested in teaching CIP at no charge. There is a charge for the study guide, but we can give a bit of a discount for those buying it in bulk. 

We do also recommend that training providers price the CIP exam voucher into the workshop. This is how we are teaching our own CIP prep workshops and is pretty typical. We can then supply those vouchers for specific workshops. 

Training providers can also have the actual exam proctored live onsite as part of their event. This requires an AIIM staff member to do the actual proctoring - which means the provider would need to pay for that staff member to be there including travel. 

To summarize then, anyone interested in teaching a CIP preparatory workshop can do so with no links or financial commitments to AIIM. Get your trainer(s) CIP-certified, develop your materials or use ours, schedule and market your workshops, and ensure a quality experience for attendees. For more information on how to go about developing and delivering a CIP workshop, contact me at jwilkins@aiim.org.