"If you haven't trained in the last five years, you will be unemployed in the next five!"

CPD is the CIM's continuing professional development scheme
Practical and sustainable way to demonstrate lifelong learning
Essential for employment in a knowledge based economy

CPD broadens the base of what training means and ties it back to the continuing upgrade of our skills needed to reach and maintain Chartered Marketer status.

Everyone now must complete their form and submit it each year. Students can now also collect CPD hours, achieving Chartered status almost upon completing their studies.

What is Continuing Professional Development?

CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development, although the 'P' could equally stand for 'Personal' or 'Performance', depending on how you interpret and apply your learning and development. Continuing Professional Development is about planned self-development which embraces both personal and professional aims, and, in many cases, is intended to impact on performance. A personal professional development plan, or learning log (CPD Profile in this scheme) results from establishing what you want to achieve or where you want to go, in the short- or long-term, and identifying the need for enhanced skills, knowledge or competence.

Why is Professional Development so important?

Managers need to invest in their continuing professional development as they can no longer rely on their initial training or qualifications to carry them through employment. Nor can they rely on their employer to provide everything they need to develop skills and experience - the old security, if it ever existed, has gone. Increasingly marketing managers are taking responsibility for their own lifelong, continuing development - the bottom-line is that it is down to the individual. The new security consists of loyalty to oneself, to one's own skills and career progression. This is maximised when individual development needs and goals are aligned with those of the employing organisation.

The Chartered Marketer designation will eventually put the profession on the same footing as other chartered professions such as accounting and engineering. To achieve this status it is necessary to be a full member of the institute and to have completed CPD in the last two years.

In practice, this means that you must:

undergo 35-hours of professional development in each year (given the categories shown below)
log these hours in the CPD Record cards supplied by the institute
provide evidence of the hours when submitting the card

It is easy to clock up these hours, even if you work for a small company that are unwilling or unable to offer formal training. Check the ten categories below:

There are also bonus CPD Hours that can be gained if you undertake and achieve CPD under the areas such as Ethics & Sustainability, Marketing Metrics and Competition Law (up to 8 hours can be claimed for this).

N.B. No more that 28 hours may be claimed in total for categories 7, 8, 9 and 10. And if hours in any year exceed the required 35 hours, no hours can be carried forward to the next year.

Have you submitted you record of CPD for the past year?

Chartered Marketer logo Have you started to plan your next years activity?

The easy way to Chartered Marketer Status

Spend 8 hours reading marketing publications
Come to at least four branch meetings (they don't have to be ours, but you will be more than welcome!)
Do some work for the branch or write an article for a recognised website or newsletter
Train someone else
Join the branch committee

You are now 2/3 of the way there without really trying. See you at the next branch meeting!