Job Search: qualifications transfer

Tauraz asks: I am a Overseas Qualified Pharmacist, but due to regulations in the UK, I cant practice as a Pharmacist. I completed a Masters degree in Business from a very reputed UK University and I have 3 months experience as a Territory Manager selling Speciality products (Vaccines-Hormones). I presently work as a Butcher in a supermarket because I am not getting a job as a Medical Sales professional. I get numerous calls from consultancies saying that my CV is good, but they say I don’t have any experience in the UK Pharmaceutical industry and hence they turn down my application. I tried to get a shadowing experience, but nobody is ready to allow me shadow them as they say their companies do not encourage this practice. How I can get somebody to allow me to work shadow them and use their name in my CV, so that I can land a job as a Pharmaceutical Sales professional?

In answer:
As an overseas individual, you are not in a unique position. It is the same if a UK resident qualified professional decides to move overseas, then they have to localise their qualifications for recognition.

There are two reasons why localisation takes place. Firstly the standards of training, and secondly the standards and methods of operation. The first is a quality issue, the second is a local practises and regulation issue. Hence even if your qualifications are accepted, most have to spend between 12months and three years under some form of training/supervision. The process is the same for every professional, from electricians to surgeons.

Hence, at present you are not solving the employers problem, you are creating a bigger unknown one. Employers don’t like unknowns, hence they reject you!

Job Search: qualifications

The first thing to do is to register with the local regulating professional body. In the UK that is the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Each society has a standards and qualifications board, which you will need to take advice from re transferring your qualifications to local recognition. At some point, you will also need to register with the NHS as a pharmacist, but let the BPS tell you when. The BPS will advise you on the acceptance of your Masters degree locally, and may tell you that additional or transference training is required. Secondly they will advise on local procedures and methods acceptance, and how best to gain those.

Part of the solution is finding a professional society (ie: BPS pharmacist) mentor to supervise your localisation, which is the quickest route to a job. You will have access to a locally based and qualified professional in your area, who is a working in the profession. There should also be local groups who meet regularly, which I suggest you start attending: again, great networking/job opportunities.

No local employer in pharmacy will accept you until you have started localisation. When you apply, and can’t tell them what you have to do to localise your qualifications, they will see that as a problem/cost, and with lots of other unemployed people out there they will look elsewhere.

Secondly, as you don’t suggest in your answer that you have any form of sales training, the same reason for rejection will presently occur with sales posts. Further, if your accent is hard to understand over the telephone, and you have no apparent localised pharmacy connections, then again you will be rejected.

Job Search: transfer plan

I suggest as a plan forward, you contact the BPS and understand what you need to do to localise your qualifications. In three months time, once you have registered with the BPS, attended a few meetings, have a BPS mentor and a master plan on when you will qualify, then look again at jobs in the Pharma sector.

On last thought: very few medical professionals hang around Social Media. LinkedIn would be the best place to start, if you don’t know where the professionals for that body locally congregate on the internet. I have a few BPS friends over there who register for networking, although they tend to go elsewhere for pharma chat – LI is not secure enough.

Good Luck, and if you think I could help – just ask!

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PMP certification?

Steve asks: How does one go about PMP certification? Basic steps please…

In answer:
We have blogged before about grants for getting Prince2 training and project management certification, but simply almost anyone can become a member of the Project Management Institute, so why not find a local chapter and join?

The PMI recommend that you read their CAPM Handbook, which includes all of the details, but the basics are:

• Join the PMI, engage with a local chapter
• Make sure you have enough experience
• Make sure you have the required contact hours. Their are plenty of REPs that you can obtain this from
• Apply for full PMP membership/exam
• Read PMBOK
• Read another PMP book of your choice
• Take practice exams – You can find plenty of them online
• Take PMI exam

To pass the PMP exam, the PMI recommend 10 days/weeks for PgMP

Good Luck!

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Cambridge graduate?

Chin, the HR Manager for a Hong Kong based commercial organisation, asks: Some months ago, our company had a CV from an English man. This man was sent to a college of Cambridge University by RAF. He said he did physics course for 2 years there, which RAF tasked him in order for him to get promoted in more professional rank. Is he qualified as Cambridge University graduate? Can he (or the company) request for the certificate from the university?

In answer:

College dropout

Steve, a professional engineer, asks: What is the best way to explain dropping out of university in your CV? Even though I’m well on my way to gaining a degree through my job, and have vocational qualifications, I still feel that my unfinished degree looks bad on my CV.

I dropped out because I made a poor choice of course, and didn’t feel it was worth my time and money. I can explain the situation at an interview when asked (sometimes even in a positive light!), but I just can’t find a way to write my CV without it looking like an obvious gap or failure. Employers don’t want CVs with excuses on them…

I’ve tried leaving it out completely, but that results in an obvious gap in my career history. I’ve tried adding details of the modules I studied and passed, but that makes it obvious that I dropped out. And I can’t pass it off as a proper qualification because I didn’t study the right combinations to get a certificate or diploma. Although I did other things during that time, such as freelance work for university events and occasional volunteer work, I feel these aren’t sufficient enough to list under jobs and wouldn’t be happy asking for references from these. Any ideas? No matter how much I manage to add to my CV, this same issue keeps popping up every time I try to rewrite it.

In answer:

I don’t think there is an issue here, its just that you are making one of it and hence reflecting that in your CV. Think about it:

• As a young person, you made a choice
• You realised it was the wrong choice
• You decided the best path was to follow something else
• You are now successful and about to gain a degree

Unless you are applying for jobs in the future which is in the area of competency in which your degree study was, what’s the problem?

Employers want to know what you can do and apply, the most relevant bits of which are in the last three years of your career history. They don’t want or need to know what you proved conclusively – on a personal and academic front – that you could not do some time ago.

If you are really worried about this, then think about it this way: the academic/educational section of your CV is on page2. If they read that far on the first read, I will be amazed. Employers skim and reject job applicants on their proven ability to deliver the five core skills they seek to prove functional fit, and after that everything else is a bonus.

In summary: if you don’t put it in the past and concentrate on the what you bring to that job, how can you expect an employer to? Focus on what they want, not a personal learning experience

Good Luck!

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Career Planning

As we return slowly over the next eighteen months to an economy which is creating more jobs than it is shedding, and unemployment starts to fall, in the world of employment we will see two issues return to the table:

• the shortage of skills within the market place, resulting from reduced birthrate
• the need for job holders to return to career planning

This blog and website is about employment and CV’s, so let us put the first one aside: that’s for God and Mother Nature to solve!

But the evidence of the past 12months should have woken many up to the benefits of career management, and also the risks of reliance on a career based on just a few employers.

Career Balance

I read a blog post the other day, written by a Career Coach who focuses on IT professionals. The article proposed that you only needed a Professional CV Writer when you were in one of three situations:

• Career transitions
• Employment gaps
• (lack of) hands on experience

I won’t disagree with those suggestions, but the biggest problems I have seen during this ongoing recession are two fold:

• A lack of an ability to communicate skills
• A series of unbalanced careers: overly reliant on one employer, and their needs for the type of skill

Corporate Work

The worst victims or offenders – depending on your view point – are the corporate workers. Initially I had a number of similar chat over a coffee conversations, which I now undertake as a 10minute chats over the telephone, so numerous are the requests:

• Hi Ian, I have some great skills, but I am unhappy with my corporate career, and want to leave!
• “Why? Are you being threatened with redundancy?”
• Most often answered as No, I just feel it would be time for a change. When what they really mean is that their company is undertaking a review, and they are feeling the cold chill of loss of power
• “OK, what are your skills?” Which is met by a long list of corporate orientated to that specific company skills
• “Great, and what qualifications do you have in that skill?” To which I am met with a blank stare – or silence on the telephone. Then, after what for them is a cliff edge experience of all the training opportunities they turned down and now regret, is followed by an explanation that they stopped studying at school (cringe thinks I – this will be tough) or university (less of a cringe) or that they have two+ children aged X and 10, and that stopped any free time they had (less of a cringe, more of an inevitable = “love your kids” answer)

What none of these people have realised before this conversation, is that much as though their salary is great – probably over proportioned – and their total package even better, they only deserve those benefits for working with that company. If the company has a good year, their benefits go up, if the company has a bad year, their benefits go up slightly slower – they never feel the economic chill. It is only when the whole economy has been placed in the economic freezer, that they suddenly feel cold. That’s when career planning really pays off!

Skills, Qualifications, Experience

Employers don’t ask for much when seeking new employees. They want a combination of skills, qualifications and applied experience. What these corporate workers have is the skills and the experience, but not thesupporting or confirming qualifications.

Now, much as though you can sell yourself to an employer without the necessary qualifications, you will:

• Take longer to sell yourself without the necessary qualification
• Have to accept a lower salary/package, as you recognise the employer is taking a great risk

Qualifications are what are termed in the world of employment as transportable competencies. It would be true that you could go too far the other way, and just study for your entire life: in which the reverse problem of lack of experience would occur.

The only way I have seen any number of people jump successfully from academia to the corporate commercial world is on the back of a theoretical or technological development that they were involved in the research development of. Resultantly, they have a unique skills and application experience of the theory or technology, so a skill short market which needs to deploy it will accept the potential downsides.

Career Planning = SQE Balance

Any Career Planning needs to be undertaken with the view of always balancing your skills, qualifications and experiences. I always say to anyone thinking about leaping into a new job or career, is:

What could you write on your CV two years hence,

and how does that take you towards your ideal career?

If you can’t answer that question, or the supplemental of:

What combination of skills, qualifications and experiences

will you have additionally gained that an employer would want?

Then don’t take the job!

If many of the corporate career people we help on a daily basis had listened to that advice before this recession, they wouldn’t need us so much. But they do, and we are always happy to help in any way we can.

Good Luck!

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Would I Lie to You?

Often I find in our InBox and Postbag, as well as on the forums we contribute to, that some of the most commonly asked questions from Job Seekers are about how far they can in their Job Search actually lie on your CV or lie on your job application?

In part, this activity has been increased by the recession: comedian Ian Lee investigated for the BBC’s One Show in February 2009.

Questions start out with a simple “Could I increase my exam grade” or “should I extend a period of employment” to cover up or reduce a period of unemployment; and the understandable “should I miss out a period of employment” because I fell out with an employer? After that they extend to “should I add a period of employment” or “should I add an experience” to get more job offers?

They then extend into the down right dangerous of “should I add an exam or qualification?” Now, with some we are talking about adding a qualification they do not yet have, such as an RSA typing certificate. But I have seen questions on forums – Yahoo! Groups is the worst – where often what seem to be poorly educated school leavers think that adding a driving qualification or even a medical qualification is “OK, and just part of the process for applying for jobs: everyone does it!”

Lying, stealing, cheating!

I will come back to lying in a moment, but if you think here that I am exaggerating the problem, then let us step up the grade of crime for a moment and consider stealing.

Now, much as though lying may be acceptable to some, I don’t know how anyone can justify stealing. But apparently, 80% of employees think stealing from an employer is acceptable. Further, in the case of lay-offs and redundancies, a February 2009 survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute showed that 60% of employees stole company data when they left their job in 2008. Commenting on the studies findings, Mike Spinney told BBC News: “They (employees) are making these judgements based out of fear and anxiety. People are worried about their jobs and want to hedge their bets. Our study showed that 59% of people will say ‘I’m going to take something of value with me when I go’.”

What is the cost of lying?

So, if most of your existing employees consider it OK to steal from your company, the cost of lying on a CV or Job Application must be considered by Job Applicants low then. But what is the actual cost?

Depends really, but the legal reality of lying on a Job Application is that you can be sacked instantly: no rights, no pay, just out the door. If you lied in certain job applications, then you could also be sued, and jailed – getting a bit more serious now, is it not?

But what is your risk of lying on a job application? So you are unemployed now, get a few weeks/months/years of work, and then get kicked out the door. At least you got paid in between, and that pays for a few beers or pair of shoes and food on the table. Plus most employers don’t check such things any way, if they like you, you are employed.

The cost of checking an employees entire background now is: £100. For the average worker, that is less than a days gross wage. The cost of wrong hire is estimated at three times annual salary.

That’s the cold call script that every employer in the UK is presently receiving form a Checkwell Decision Corporation of Canada, who’s UK operational base is in Swansea, which claims to be “one of the world’s largest providers of Human Resources Interviewing Services, specifically through its background checking and employee engagement brands.” Statistic’s from their UK employee background checking website include the following:

• Reference Interviews: checking what you say your background is, actually is: 10% of job applicants have a red flag concern
• Employment Verification: checking your employment history – 30% have a red flag
• Criminal Records Check: court records of major convictions – 5% have a red flag (in line with general UK resident data of criminal convictions)
• Employment and Credentials: checking your qualifications – 10% have a red flag
• DVLA Driving License check: 35% of job applicants have a red flag

So, would a job applicant lie to you? I think it is safe to assume that yes, they would – and those that don’t will think its OK to steal from you once employed. When background checks are now so easily available from a number of suppliers, and even a simple GoogleCV check will bring up much information about a candidate, it still amazes me that more employers don’t make more use of these services. Secondly, as a job applicant, the definitive answer is becoming: Don’t Lie on Your CV and specifically your Job Application.

Good Luck!

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Graduate Trainee Recruitment

The life blood of economics and industry is – people. Unfortunately, as people both get older, get ambitious – and in part by a process where by organisations re-brand people as “staff” – in most organisations, there is a continual need to replace and add to people numbers. This is termed recruitment.

When faced with large and growing competition, and the simple fact that self-trained people stay longer than hired hand staff, the advantages of Graduate Trainee Recruitment are clear and obvious. The organisation gets an intelligent and young person, which even including the high cost of bespoke training at around three times salary, will stay longer and add greater competitiveness

Strategic Recruitment

The greatest task an HR department has, is then blending the young self-trained people with the existing people resources. Get it right, and companies don’t just survive, they thrive. Get it wrong, and there are though times ahead, such as when highs of experienced people leave, or technology changes bring about a need in the level of skills. But the aim of the HR department is to provide a continual flow of skills along and through the organisation, to enable it to compete.

Imagine then the number of HR Directors this year, faced with a note from their CEO which says: “No graduate Trainee Recruitment this year.” There they were a few years ago faced with a scraping for a few graduates from a former polytechnic, and now having reviewed a few Oxford and Cambridge University CV‘s, will now have to say no to people who could have been recruited for 10% less. Think also of that HR Director looking forward at the diminishing western world birth rate, which in a few years time will mean that there will not be enough young people coming out of universities to fulfil even basic company people needs, let alone those to compete. If they could recruit them then, they will cost double what they would train for today.

Recruitment – feast or famine?

In my own career, I have seen the feast and famine HR approach to Graduate Recruitment. I came into BT – an organisation which this year has imposed its own Graduate Recruitment freeze for 2010′s intake – as one of 32 apprentices in Gloucester. When we finished out training some three years later, there was no need for all these trainee’s, as someone seven years previously had started an experiment to install fully electronic telephone exchanges, which need around 1/3rd of the staff. I hence ended up driving a little yellow van around the Cotswolds, a good experience but one which when I got itchy and ambitious feet lead to me attending college in South Wales for four years. On my return, the lack of talent being offered to the companies internal groups meant there was a high level of internal competition for graduates, resulting in variation in base wage between what I left BT for some four years before to manage 120 people, to the one which I took which doubled that wage and added a car and a cellphone: guess which one I took? When I spoke to the manager of the district I turned down in explaining my reasoning, he agreed: his view was, as they had stopped the apprentice intake some six years previously, there was now a skills shortage and problematic age gap appearing. As a result, I looked at BT’s people intake, and he was right: every five to seven years, there would be a stop on apprentice intake. Then, between two and three years later, there would be quick and fsat reimplementation of the scheme, creating clear peaks and troughs in staff age – which then perpetuated, with the economic cycles, the need for more peaks and troughs.

Graduate Recruitment Jobs

What I can’t understand at the moment, given a number of short term pressures on graduates and long term birth rates, why companies are not hiring graduates this year? Yes, it may save money, but it doesn’t save the company. For instance, a graduate management trainee taken into the retail sector would spend some time at Head Office doing the rounds of departments, before being sent to the shop floor for a 12months period. If you look at most staff intake and awareness programmes, all follow a similar pattern, but some spend less time doing some items and more doing others – graduates get walked around head office, floor employees tromp around the shop. As graduates are faced with record debt levels, they will take almost any job over the dole cue. So, why don’t intelligent companies say to graduates:

Look, here is our graduate trainee programme. We are not signing you up as a graduate trainee, but what we are going to do is effectively give you the first year and pay you like a shop floor worker. You perform on the shop floor, and at the end of year1 you can come onto year2 of our graduate management trainee scheme.

I bet, this would result in a rush of cheap employed graduates who would love the opportunity: much like bagging good future people now, who will stay longer through thanks for the opportunity now. Will there be a turnover of these graduates? Yes, as different sectors come up at different speeds, other organisations will require graduate trainees sooner over others. But compared to the average shop worker, if a graduate felt that your organisation was the right one for them, and acknowledging that they took any opportunity with you over no opportunity, then the staff turnover rate will be lower than recruiting for the average non-graduate shop worker

Pity that closed minded “turn off the tap” thinking will result in a few years time of skills shortages. Companies and HR teams: Don’t turn off the water and dehydrate later, just bottle it in different ways!

Good Luck!

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Qualifications: James Bond?

The world of spying and that of employment rarely cross, but it occurs to me that today many spies are far more exposed thanks to the ease of verifying qualifications. When to do so successfully now definitively needs the power and authority of a national government, why do a number of job seekers and job applicants persist in falsifying qualifications?

Munich

I watched on Sunday the UK network premier of the Steven Spielberg film Munich, a film based on a book written by a supposed Israeli secret service Mossad agent. The book and film story tell how the Israeli Government authorised the assassination of the leadership of then Palestinian militant group Black September, after the massacre of 11 Israeli coaches and competitors at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Of the 11 Black September leaders, the group according to the book and film successfully tracked down eight in three years, but never managed to get the leader Ali Hassan Salameh, a Palestinian playboy who married a former Miss Universe.

What I have since read reveals that after five failures, Mossad used a supposed British national Erika Chambers, who having worked with refugee Palestinain charities in the UK was invited to Beirut in late 1978. With a back story of a degree from Southampton University and a 1975 British passport, in 1979 she took an apartment on a road frequently used by Salameh, and having engineered a meeting and getting close to him, played a part in the detonation of 100Kgs of explosive on January 23rd, 1979 which killed him. Chambers and at least 14 other Mossad agents then left Lebanon.

Verifying Qualifications

What intrigued me about the story, was that of background. Spies are only as effective in the field as defined by the credibility of their back story, and their field operations training. To have an effective back story, one which is credible with the target audience, they need the right paperwork, which includes supporting qualifications. Think about it, even things as far back as primary school would be needed to create an effective deep back story, and most posing as trading business professionals would need a degree level qualification or two from a suitable institute.

Now, accepting passports are difficult to verify, the ease of confirming an education thanks to modern internet based tools becomes far easier. For the sum of £25, the National Curriculum Authority will verify any UK qualification; for around £50, they will provide a complete educational history!

I don’t deal in the world of spies or spying, but I do deal in the world of employment, where credible qualifications are often high on most professional employers job description requirements. So, if a job applicant applies for a post, and a full background check costs less than £100, do you think that the fact you falsified the odd O Level, let alone a degree or a professional qualification, won’t come to light?

The problem actually with such errors is that not only are you excluded from job, you have probably excluded yourself from that employment agency, recruiter, head hunter, and employer. Many now share information in professional groups, so that is the minimum of damage to your future employment prospects.

When today employers operating insurance depends on their people having the right qualifications, do you think yours won’t get checked? You can be sacked instantly without notice period or compensation from any job after lying in your job application, and placed in jail in some instances.

So, when considering creatively improving your job application, think again. If even James Bond would be challenged to create a credible back story to save Queen and country, and be willing to lay down his life; are you prepared to sacrifice your future career for a qualification lie?

Good Luck!

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Criminal Records Check

For some jobs, or activities in the UK, you may be asked to undertake a Criminal Records Bureau Check.

Generally, anything job or activity which requires contact with children or vulnerable adults would require a CRB check. This would hence include teaching, children’s clubs, or many activities associated with the elderly or disabled. You could also be asked to undertake a CRB check if you work in certain professions, notably accountancy, health and legal professions; in some work areas, your partner could also be asked for a CRB check.

The area which normally catches people out, as many professional bodies note to their members the need for a CRB check on registration, is that of charity trustees who may volunteer to work in charities which work in children services or care for the elderly. You could also be asked for a CRB check if you apply for certain licenses, notably for handling explosives or providing a National Lottery machine. For the full list, check the full list on the CRB website

CRB Check Guidance

Now, CRB checks are good things, and mean our most vulnerable members of society are protected. There are also a few rules which needs to be observed when applying.

Firstly, the organisation which asks you to apply needs to be registered with the CRB. Part of this process means they agree to only apply for a CRB check where the job is assessed as one where a CRB check is required, and not for all jobs applicants. This means that if you apply for a job as an HGV driver through a recruitment agency which also supplies care workers, they can not use the CRB system to check you out

Secondly, there are two types of check, and the organisation which asks you to apply should – from the job advert onwards – include the fact that a CRB check is necessary for the successful applicant. A standard check involves disclosure of:

• Convictions, Cautions, Reprimands and Warnings held in England and Wales on the Police National Computer, the most of the relevant convictions in Scotland and Northern Ireland may also be included;

If the position involves working with children or vulnerable adults, in the sectors or areas which are able to access them, and the relevant boxes have been marked on the application form, in Section Y (Y3 or Y4), to indicate this:

• Information from the Protection of Children Act List (PoCA)
• Information from the Protection of Vulnerable Adults List (POVA)
• Information held by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) under Section 142 of the Education Act 2002 of those considered unsuitable for, or banned from working with children.

The Advanced check is only required where there is close contact with children, and additionally includes detailed local police information notes

Does a CRB check disqualify ex-offenders? No, not necessarily, and when one fifth of the UK population are estimated to have a criminal conviction, the focus is on checking defined activity and unspent convictions, not everything. Ex-offenders retain the protection afforded by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, so anything which is not relevant will not be disclosed. In addition, the CRB and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) have developed very useful guidance information for employers on CRB checks

Thirdly, be wholly honest in the information you insert into your CRB check. Use your full name or known names, and the same with addresses and all other requested information. The BBC Scotland reporter Arifa Farooq who was commissioned by Panorama to investigate care homes was arrested by Strathclyde Police for contravention of Section 123 of the Police Act 1997: in other words, giving a false name. If you are tempted to do the same thing, then much as though you might have a clean CRB check now, doing so will result in a conviction which would appear in any future CRB check, and hence invalidate your job application. So, be honest!

There is a fee to be paid for a CRB check, which most employers and agencies ask the employee to pay – some will reimburse the cost once successfully completed. As the form is co-signed by both the applicant (employee) and registered organisation (employer), both receive a copy of the CRB check. It can take around six weeks at peak for the paperwork to return (August, processing new graduate teachers), although a more normal time scale is around four weeks, so allow this is your job search time table.

If you already have a CRB check, then when applying for a new job where you know such a procedure will be required, state the fact high on the top half of the first page in your Professional CV and include it in your list of qualifications/training. It may transpire that the new employer requires a fresh CRB check procedure to be run, but stating you already have passed the procedure means your chances of passing the CV sifting stage are greatly increased

You can obtain more information on CRB checks, and good guidance, from the Criminal Records Bureau website.

Good Luck!

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How can I get into Project Management?

Andrew asks: After more than 3 years as a online journalist/copywriter, I want to make a change and retrain as a project manager, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Any ideas? I studied Politics at Uni (got a 2.1), and I have an MSc in Contemporary Russian and East European Studies.

In answer:
Project Management is an applied art, but its quite a disciplined art where employers engage people on the basis of experience in that field, and proven delivery – inside time scale and too budget. Secondly, most Project Managers progress from being a professional in that area, to being a Project Manager. Employers like this as this means they know the working practises before trying to manage them

I think therefore you have a number of challenges in being able to complete your desired career move:

• Your professional skills are in creative writing, not classical main stream PM areas of construction or IT
• Your base degree is not in a classical PM area
• In light of the current economic climate, younger/cheaper people are driving out older experienced hands from many operational area. This is resulting now in a present glut of good and experienced PM’s

Project Manager training

There are degree courses which offer first degrees in Project Management, which if you really are set on making this your career choice, would seem the best way in. The professional Project managet bodies would want to see either 5+ years of experience before certifying you or a suitable degree. No certification, and there is not a lot of chance of employment, let alone in well paid positions

The ultimate Project Management qualification is Prince2 – presently costing around £10,000 and taking 2weeks – which many employers require as it is a pre-requisite from their insurers. But without the background certification and experience in a base trade, there would be little point in you presently undertaking this.

Overall, I think you need to consider your options. To gain a PM position at a reasonable level equivalent to your current earnings would take 3years of study or hard graft inside the trade in which you eventually wish to become a PM. I think there are quicker options to a better career on a higher income with your background and experience. I would strongly suggest you explore your career anchors and aspirations via Career Coaching or Career Option Assessment.

Good Luck!

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