• Replies 9 replies
  • Subscribers 9 subscribers
  • Views 2851 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

Level 7 drop out

Georgia

Hi all, 

I am looking for some advice from other professionals and perhaps others who have been in the same boat. 

In 2018 I moved from my rotational graduate role in a relatively small international business and into HR. I had had some limited experience in HR from a year's internship as part of my "sandwich" degree. I had completed a Bachelors degree and Master's prior to gaining my first graduate role and in both I achieved firsts. 

When I moved into the HR department at my organisation my manager suggested I enroll into a CIPD course. How hard could finding a course be? She suggested that as I was still to do some international travel I should opt for a distance learning course versus university/taught. Knowing very little about part time learning and the different providers I picked one of the immediate ones which came up. Speaking to their Sales team I explained the situation (that i already held a Master's degree) and they suggest I complete the Level 7 qualification. I believe that i enquired about this time as they had a sale on and I rushed through the approvals to get onto the course because I worried that if I didn't sign up before year end I would have missed the boat. 

Anyway, three years down the line, I have sunk in the work and had to extend the course multiple times. I found the examples required to demonstrate Level 7 working difficult and working through materials with no taught content utterly miserable. 

This week I finally "gave up" and told my tutor that I would be dropping out of the course having only completed the exam modules. I would need to discuss this with my employer but ultimately I didn't have the knowledge of resources to complete this very independent qualification. 

The provider has however, suggested that they would transfer me to the level 5 or 3 course. I'm not sure what to do. I do one day hope to be Chartered but I wished I'd have waited to do the Masters until I had a few years worth of experience under my belt. I suppose my question is - do I swallow my pride and start at level 3? Attempt level 5 (which I am still nervous of given the experience I've had at level 7) or put my studies on hold and come back to them when I'm ready to study level 7. I know now that if I were to go to Level 7 I would respond much better to a taught in person class.

If anyone has any experience of this I would so appreciate your thoughts. 

Parents

  • Hi Georgia
    It looks as though the inital decision to go straight to level 7 was the result of poor advice. The knowledge that you need to demonstrate at this level goes beyond the purely technical and specialist, it  is strategic knowledge about how to adapt the HR approach to very different contexts and why that approach is relevant in that particular context. For example, HR in a consulting engineering firm calls for very different set of HR responses and support than for operating Amazon warehouses and distribution centres; a centralised top-down mutinational management style calls for different HR organisations that in a multinational that is highly decentralised....
    Until you have lived through a range of different business contexts you are unlikely to acquire this knowledge which is more practice driven than theoretical (although there are sound advanced business theory reasons underpoinning the different approaches). Three years of HR experience is unlikely to have given you the right type of exposure to acquire these skills unless you have been a graduate high flyer attached to the HR Director of a very large firm with delegated major project work that impacts a large part of the organisation.
    Level 5 is more about deep technical specialist knowledge, with less of the business strategy dimension, and could be more appropriate to your current situation - having said that, it requires you to understand the operational ins and outs of the main HR specialities.....
    Sorry about your disappointment, but take a step back and evaluate whre you want to go before deciding

Reply

  • Hi Georgia
    It looks as though the inital decision to go straight to level 7 was the result of poor advice. The knowledge that you need to demonstrate at this level goes beyond the purely technical and specialist, it  is strategic knowledge about how to adapt the HR approach to very different contexts and why that approach is relevant in that particular context. For example, HR in a consulting engineering firm calls for very different set of HR responses and support than for operating Amazon warehouses and distribution centres; a centralised top-down mutinational management style calls for different HR organisations that in a multinational that is highly decentralised....
    Until you have lived through a range of different business contexts you are unlikely to acquire this knowledge which is more practice driven than theoretical (although there are sound advanced business theory reasons underpoinning the different approaches). Three years of HR experience is unlikely to have given you the right type of exposure to acquire these skills unless you have been a graduate high flyer attached to the HR Director of a very large firm with delegated major project work that impacts a large part of the organisation.
    Level 5 is more about deep technical specialist knowledge, with less of the business strategy dimension, and could be more appropriate to your current situation - having said that, it requires you to understand the operational ins and outs of the main HR specialities.....
    Sorry about your disappointment, but take a step back and evaluate whre you want to go before deciding

Children
No Data