Chartered CIPD - what is it equivalent to?

I totally agree with you Keith. I'm just playing devil's advocate and I work in an organisation where one particular employee tries to compartmentalize or categorise or compare so that he can understand in his own terms and no doubt make an assumption on ability or professional status. Thankfully, I no longer report to this employee.

But sometimes I do stand back and wonder what the 7 years of study have actually taught me. Personally for me, it was being in a peer group that could network whilst studying that was the main benefit. The knowledge was gained mostly on the job and verified by way of academic study. In previous employment, CIPD qualifications were decided by my bosses as the standard I should be aiming for. Most didn't know what those qualifications were or why I should be aiming for them! My current boss is the MD and he's not interested in qualifications, he's more about whether people have the ability to do the job.

Essentially as HR people were are trying to get the message across that we are qualified HR professionals and we have qualifications and membership to prove it, you the employer may not understand our qualifications and membership, so you have to take our word for it that it is worth the paper it's written on. And that brings us back round to how do HR people prove their worth in the organisation? Are we about "adding value"? Or are we just an admin function? Or can we prove our employers otherwise, even if they have a hardened view that HR is a waste of time?

Sorry if I'm rambling. This thread has sparked some interesting questions and concerns in my head and I felt I should share them.

No employer I have ever worked for has wanted to know this Jason so we must be working in entirely different spheres. Its perhaps because I have largely worked in medium and larger organisations who have other HR professionals who understand these things.

Similarly I am not sure I have worked with many recruiters who are going through a "tick box" exercise - normally they ask for a particular CIPD status because the client (aka HR) have demanded it. One assumes that HR understand what they are looking for.

Even if the CIPD Guru can make some link to the points value of being a Chartered CIPD compared to a first or higher degree I maintain its a pointless link and one that searching for won't provide any light or errudition.

I hold both a Masters degree and am a Fellow of the CIPD. I would not try and equate one to the other and as an employer an not sure many people would. They are different and we shoudl celebrate that difference. 

You will never persuade (in my view) the majority of people to equate in the sense of interchangeability an academic qualification to a professional membership. But I wish you well in your search just hope you dont need an improbability drive to find the answer

As one of my more estimable ex-colleagues often uttered to me:-

'Don't confuse the issue with facts' 

PS

Not at all David and you somewhat miss the point

You will never be faced with choosing between a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered HR bod therefore comparing the two is like comparing swimmers with runners. They do different things in different ways. A C.Eng doesnt claim to be an expert in anything other than engineering and likewise a HR Chartered Member, Claiming one is comparable to the other is pretty pointless and just a bar room argument.

There is little or no point trying to claim that all Chartered people are the same. Their value is entirely linked to circumstances and environment. Their perceived value is entirely in the eyes of  the observer as with degrees, Universities and the such like.

Or are you arguing that a Chartered Engineer has the same professional status and qualifications and standing as a Chartered CIPD?

Was merely suggesting, Keith,  that both Chartered Engineers and Chartered MCIPD purport to be third-party-certified, professional practitioners in their respective fields.

Were I to be recruiting engineers, I would (and very much have) hold / held Chartered Engineers in particularly high regard, because they have such accreditation.

Sure, those without it can be equally effective, but it ain't certified, so all that is down to my judgment entirely.

"IMHO, it doesn't matter a jot, whether the role is as an engineer or as a HR person - the levels of professional competence involved are, I'd think highly comparable."

That appears to be a different stance David to that quoted above. I just dont see them as comparable. They are different, using differen standards and measuring different things. they use very different routes to achieving the status and are held in very different regard both I would suggest by the general management population and also by practitioners. The only thing they share is the use of the chartered name.

I believe you are both right, gentlemen, because you are coming at this question from different directions.

The "swimmer-runner" (or chalk and chese) elephant in every  professional room is not level of qualification, or indeed comparability with other professions, but competence. 

So it is indeed essential for the "employer" (be they corporate head choosing an HR Manager, Speculator choosing an architect, or individual patient trusting their health to a Dr) to have some benchmark by which they can assess competence, irrespective of whether they personally have the faintest idea what that benchmark consists of.

But the reality is there is no such simple commonality

The common benchmarks we use are graduate (BA/BSc)  Masters, Doctorate etc. with post-graduate qualifications attaching "alongside", but even these common standards are of variable value as indicators of competence to practice in differing professions. 

Therefore in one context it is necessary that as measures of competence all qualifications be comparable, yet equally it is not just unnecessary but unrealistic to seek "like for like" measures of practice skill between them, since an HR Manager will never remove an appendix, a Physician will never calculate the stress factors in an aircraft's wing, an Engineer will never create the concept for the world's tallest building and an Architect will never negotiate a drop in pay and increased hours for all NHS workers with Unison.

This then brings the honest answer to the question back to squaring the circle of matching both the real world applied capability of practicing professionals and the theoretical capability a qualification indicates: Because academic knowledge indicated by letters is not the same as ability to apply that theory (a fact incorporated into medical training where no newly qualified "Dr" is independantly let lose on anything that breathes without at least one more year's closely supervised practice ...in its "trying out" sense).

So where does that put CIPD's qualifications?

In truth: in a limbo between misinterpretation and misunderstanding: In one interpretation as at least a Master's for Chartered Members, but in practical application for most "users" (corporate employers) not much above a BA. (Hence all those adverts saying "must be degree qualified..." and rejecting even FCIPDs), CIPD have not helped by messing with the qualification routes and awarding methodologies; but I believe it is time that the whole system was reviewed and a meaningful  measure of camparison between all qualifications; academic, vocational, professional and post-graduate, was developed.

P