In my last post, I reviewed what will be happening with the CIP in 2016 as we revise it. In this post I want to focus on how CIPs can help to ensure the success of the CIP over time.
At last count more than 1,000 people had earned the CIP in just over 4 years time. This is a significant growth rate for a new certification. But those CIPs who took the exam in 2011, or 2012, are already 3 years out of date on current trends in the industry. Like most certifications, we built in a continuing education requirement to ensure that CIPs do remain current on industry and technology developments.
Recertification. The first thing you can do as a CIP to help ensure its growth and success is to stay a CIP - by submitting your CEUs (form can be found here) and the required fee. I recognize that this has been challenging given the uncertain nature of the CIP in recent weeks, but now that we know CIP will continue to move forward, it's important to help build that momentum. The right number of CIPs, after all, is not how many took the exam and passed, but how many are currently sporting the letters and the lapel pin.
Wait - you don't have a lapel pin? Send an email to certification@aiim.org with a mailing address and we'll get one out to you. Wear it to your AIIM chapter events, your ARMA events - wear it to work!
CIP Continuing Education Credits. And we'd like to both raise the visibility of CIP and make it easier to recertify. One way you can help is to get your events preapproved for CIP credits. We award 1.0 credit for each contact hour of educational content, so for the typical AIIM/ARMA chapter meeting, we'd award 1.0-2.0 credits, while an ARMA Spring Seminar might be as much as 6-7 credits per day of the seminar.
Note that these events do not have to be AIIM events, and can even be vendor events provided that the content is a) educational and b) is related to the topical areas of the CIP. But we can't possibly know about all of your events, so send an email to me or to certification@aiim.org and I'll follow up directly.
Job descriptions. One of the more significant metrics for a certification is its inclusion in job postings. If you help to develop such postings, either for information management professionals or those who are significantly impacted by IM issues, please consider adding the CIP to the list of required/preferred qualifications. This helps your organization to understand the value of *your* CIP as well.
Visibility. Of course if all CIPs sported the lapel pin, changed their names on Twitter and LinkedIn to include ", CIP", and put the CIP logo on their business cards, blogs, and websites, that would be awesome, too. :) I know many of you won't or can't, but for those of you who have, thank you!
Have other ideas as to how you are supporting CIP? Let me know with a comment and I'll resocialize them as well.
4 comments:
Great to read your thoughts Jesse.
A couple of years back, I went through the process of attaining CBAP certification. A couple of things that I thought were a good idea were:
* The CBAP is not just an exam. It requires proof of work experience that aligns with the various knowledge areas in the BA Body of Knowledge. For the CBAP it's 1200 hours.
* There is a publicly available register that lists all the people holding certification. This is a great way to "authenticate" that someone holds the certification.
* Recertification is a nerve-wracking experience. There are several ways to acquire the necessary Continuing Development Units (CDU) that include attendance at Chapter meetings, presenting at BA events, publishing articles, work experience, etc.
I'm not sure if there is the same requirement for CIP. I do recall that the questions did require some "real-life" experience though.
And, as you pointed out, a lot of the questions were related to information exchange methods that, then, stood on their own, but are now ubiquitous.
I'm glad CIP is getting a complete overhaul.
Hi Mark,
We thought about the experiential requirement when we first developed the CIP. It's not uncommon (see e.g. PMI's PMP) but for a variety of reasons we ended up not going there - yet.
We're looking at the idea of a register - we have to check to ensure that we don't run afoul of any privacy regulations in the publishing of such a list. Think we're OK but wanted you to know it is on my to-do list.
We do have a continuing education process that takes into account a lot of different activities, including AIIM and non-AIIM activities...but no work experience. The problem there is how someone like me would be able to verify work someone like you submitted, if it were in an area with which I am personally less familiar. There are ways to address that, but at least in the short term we think 45 hours of CEUs over 3 years is a good start and one that demonstrates at least some willingness to stay up-to-date.
We're going to be discussing this in the next few weeks as we drive towards the revision but thanks for posting this - will add it to my growing list of "remember to..."s. :)
I'm really keen to follow the progress on this. When I moved into the world of "Business Analysis" I started paying less attention to the CIP. It lacked a certain drive, and also, recognition. However, since the recent activities surrounding the CIP, and the subsequent announcements, I am, again, very much a advocate of this professional certification. I believe that it's a great way to lift the profession above being vendor-specific/company specific.
Took exam 2012 in order to adress shaping the organizational memory at my workplace.
Living in Sweden where knowledge of CIP concept is really low (to say the least...) my certification became more of a personal matter like, YES! I did it!
Not had any business advantages from being a CIP but maybe CIP2.0 could be beneficial since I´m about to start consulting in Findability Area. Let´s see how life unfolds!
Post a Comment