My experience doing Chartership

 

Barry Hall
Durham University

I recently submitted my Chartership Portfolio and while I await the outcome (fingers crossed) I've been thinking about how it all went. I've had a number of challenges that haven't made things easy - the most obvious one being the covid-19 pandemic. Being mostly trapped at home has meant some creative thinking when it comes to what kind of development I could do - the library visits I was looking forward to were no longer a possibility. I also started a new job soon after registering so much of my mental bandwidth went to learning the ropes while doing a new job from home.

For anyone else doing professional registration at the moment here are some tips based on my experience:

• Join a committee or network

It's great experience - not only can this help you address the wider professional context element of the criteria but you can volunteer to participate in and organise events, and  contribute to sharing best practice for example while Social Media Officer on the CILIP North East committee I've written social media best practice guidelines.

If you're looking for a committee to join in our region consider joining CILIP North East. You don't have to have a specific role - you can join as an ordinary member/events officer where you can volunteer to help with events, share your ideas and meet new people.

• Use the CILIP eLearning Hub

There are some great resources on the CILIP web page. I've watched several of the recorded webinars - the great thing is that you can filter by PKSB headings, sector and resource type which I found really useful. If you've not yet watched it there is a webinar all about professional registration that I watched when I first started.

• Don't get overwhelmed by the PKSB

When I first looked at it I thought I had to rate myself against every skill. Thankfully I was wrong. The good news is that no one expects you to master every skill - that would be madness - you just need to select a few. My main tip in relation to working through the PKSB is to read the guidance. Once I did that I felt much better about it.