31st October 2008, 05:05 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by andy.bicket
Just to have my pennies worth coming from the PostGrad side of things.
During a 3 year PhD, my institution requires 30 days of Professional Development training. This is reflected in a "skills matrix". Anything you do can feasibly be included in your PD training, but it's the time you've reflected on it that counts rather than the actual time spent in a training course. Within 3 years you'll notch up massive amounts over the required limit, so not a problem. How this relates to Commercial Archaeology might be an issue as each course may take 2 hours, half a day, a whole day or even a week of individuals time.
The ultimate benefit of this is that training across the academic community is to a large extent similar, so employers know where they stand in the future as everyone has recognisable skills. Individuals choose the skills they want to learn, unless it's compulsory training so everyone is different but with similar core skills. So the 'industry' essentially invests in itself, but so do the individuals, remaining competitive in a tiny jobs market.
The IfA is based in a university, so I imagine they are familiar with this kind of thing. Not being a member, can someone tell me if there is a similar thing available from the IfA, or has been talked about?
Sounds like from some of the posts there is a drive towards CPD but without a framework of skills to base CPD upon, but I'm sure I'm poorly self-informed. This would be a good way to lead the field, helping to boost standards across their membership, but perhaps inducing more people to join?
:face-thinks:
There's a skills matrix and associated information within the National Occupational Standards, which are fully available to all on the IfA website. This covers a variety of types and levels of jobs. I was involved in using it to develop a skills register within my organisation, which then fed into identifying (with the staff involved) what they could already do, what they wanted to develop (good for them and usually the company) and what we needed them to develop (good for the company).
And following on from comments just above, we did this for all staff on all types of contract. The biggest surprise to most people was just how many valuable skills they had.