Which Professional Qualifications have any cachet?

Out of the following qualifications, which are worth pursuing/which do anyone on this board have:

*CMI Chartered Manager

*Chartered Engineer

*PMI Project Management Professional

*PMI Program Management Professional

*Prince 2 Practitioner

*ISEB Certificate in IS Project Management

*APM Certified Project Manager

*MSP Practitioner

*IAPPM Certified Project Manager

*IAPPM Certified Project Professional

*IAPPM Certified Project Director

*Any of the ITIL qualifications

*BCS Chartered IT Professional

*Certified Management Consultant

*Certified Professional Manager

What in gods name is a certified management consultant? Is that someone that made it through an online application and 2 assessment centers?

It's a rigorous qualification that is issued to 'real' consultants (i.e. people who have references from satisfied clients and have been in the sector for some time) by the Institute of Business Consulting (formerly the Institute of Management Consultancy). It shows that you are committed to professional development, have good client references, have demonstrated performance against a set of internationally recognised core consulting competencies, and have gone through a rigourous assessment carried out by leading consulting practitioners.

What! Presumably by demonstating superior performance in the realms of process mapping, IT strategy, IT management, Change management.

ZB

They're mostly a load of @rse. Only a couple are proper professional qualifications and none of those are particularly useful to consultants.

Which are the proper professional qualifications in your opinion?

I would say Chartered Engineer, although it depends on the awarding institution. Don't see how it's relevant to consulting, however, any more than chartered surveyor / architect / physiotherapist / qualified lawyer / whatever, very worthy as they all are.

The BCS chartered IT professional is I would think a proper professional qualification. Others would include CIPD and MCIPS. CMI possibly - don't know much about it.

The rest are just bits of paper of varying usefulness and sit with the rest of your educational and vocational quals and the bits of training you've done.

Im a chartered engineer with a PhD and BEng and in all honesty cant see how any of this has helped me in consultancy yet

Most consultants don't use any of the skills over and above what you could reasonably expect a well educated 15 year old to possess.

In reality, most of these qualifications are undertaken by "One man band" consultants - who use the qualifications to plug the gap of having no recognised brand and so as a means of shoring up their credibility with potential clients.

If you are going down the route of securing permanent employment as a consultant then I would be wary of investing time and money in securing these qualifications. Try plugging them in as keyword terms in searches for jobs on this or other job sites and you'll find there are VERY few roles being advertised where the consulting employer is specifically looking for these qualifications. Firms that trade on staff having any of these qualifications will tend to pay to put their staff through the required courses.

If you are going to sink time and money into any form of self improvement, I would recommend you look at courses to enhance your sales skills - as these above anything else are what will mean you're never out of work in the consulting industry.

Tony Restell

<a href=http://events.top-consultant.com/UK/careerconference.aspx?ID=413>Revitalising Your Consulting Career --- Securing a Career Move in Consulting in 2009</a>

I would suggest learning as much as you can on the job and asking your employer to pay for quals as part of your continued personal development.

If you are interested in a general project management role, then Prince 2 would be a good choice. Also suitable for project management roles outside of consultancy. ITIL is a popular choice for the IT Service Management industry.

I believe some of the big 4 still ask their consultants to work towards the ACA, i guess good if you want to transfer into audit/accountacy later in life!

Dependent on what your speciality area is, other quals could include chartership or diplomas in specialist areas (e.g CIPD, CIPS, Six Sigma MBB, etc).