Becoming a professional

Last week I blogged about the 9 essential skills for ANY job.  But it is not that simple.  For self-fulfillment and recognition (income-earning potential), I became a professional.  I took the required education, joined the accepted professional association, gained the required experiences, and built the skills to be a professional.  This can be done for most any job out there & can help position yourself on the top of everyone's hiring list.

Here is how;

1.  Use an occupational profile site, typically run by your provincial government.  In Alberta, the site is called ALIS and can be found at http://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/Content/RequestAction.asp?format=html&aspAction=GetHomePage&Page=Home.  Under each job title are the duties, personal characteristics, educational requirements, and associations.   This can be used as a professional roadmap for education (including post-graduate), subject matters you may want to get experience in, and abilities that you may want to focus on.

2.  Use the professional association’s web-site for required capabilities. My association, CHRP, has 187 knowledge, concepts, skills, abilities and other attributes required for demonstrating success as an effective human resources professional. 

3.  As always, when in doubt, Google.  I found a great information source on HR Consulting from Alan Weiss   He has tonnes of free articles on his web-site about consulting best-practices http://www.summitconsulting.com/articles/index.php.  I have adopted many of them to the public sector with great success.

Best of luck becoming and presenting yourself as the consumate professional in whatever you do!