BCS Chartered IT Professional (CITP)

[SM5]

I am an IT Manager at a secondary school, with over 10 years work experience, and am considering applying to become a Chartered IT Professional (CITP) with the British Computer Society (BCS).

 

I have read through the information on the BCS website, and understand the criteria for applying. However I would be very interested to hear from anyone else that has either successfully obtained CITP or are in the process of applying, and are in a similar role to mine.

 

I am particularly keen to establish whether the role I am doing is likely to match Level 5 of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), as required by the BCS. i believe that it does, but would be interested to hear other people's experiences.

 

I would also be interested to hear people's experiences with regards to choosing a "specialist knowledge and competence in a specific area of IT expertise" and what level of detail was required at interview.

 

Thank you in advance!

[mikeprice]

I investigated this a couple of years when I was having trouble finding a new job. As far as I found out there seemed to be little point in getting the BCS status unless your work in an area that thinks it matters. In my case I have no IT qualifications as very few existed when I started in IT but I do have 35 years of experience in loads of roles and the BCS would regard this as relevenat so I could get letters after my name with little effort.

 

However I decided that the sort of jobs that I wanted would probably look for the experience first anyway and none of them seemed to take any notice of these specific letters.

I also talked to a few recruitment people ( proper ones - not the idiots that you often come across) and they agreed with me

 

It would be interesting to hear @witch 's opinion on this

 

Mike

[witch]

I am a member of BCS as is mrwITch. We did look in to doing the Chartered IT professional thing but decided that it wasn't really worth it.

I have not seen any jobs that even mention it. I don't know if it will be more of a "thing" in the future but at the moment I shan't bother.

I also felt that my experience wasn't easy to shoehorn into the skills framework.

[rich_tech]

I'm an associate member of BCS here after recently completing the rittech in infrastructure support, as it was a new qual and free registration for both instead of the 80 quid fee, the citp isn't worth the further effort I felt for me at this time

[JoeBloggs]

I've been MBCS for a few years, I see little benefits with it if I'm honest, if my work didn't pay for it I don't think I would bother.

 

CITP looks like jumping through hoops for little reward.

[SM5]

Thank you to everyone for your comments thus far. I am certainly not considering membership of the BCS without also acquiring chartership, and wonder whether it might be something that will be of use if I were to become self employed in the future.

 

Is there anyone out there that has obtained CITP and can share their experiences?

[john]

Also an MBCS Here and have looked at the Charter process and looked heavy going and not seen it referenced in many jobs recently so just put it to one side for now

[Gibbo]

Also an MBCS Here and have looked at the Charter process and looked heavy going and not seen it referenced in many jobs recently so just put it to one side for now

 

Same for me. Although the MBCS opened quite a few doors for me recently.

[SpuffMonkey]

It makes your business card look good

 

I'm MBCS & CITP by the way

[SM5]

:-)

 

Would you care to elaborate on how you achieved CITP?

[SpuffMonkey]

:-)

 

Would you care to elaborate on how you achieved CITP?

 

I'm not sure whether to be offended by that remark!

[SM5]

I'm not sure whether to be offended by that remark!

 

Apologies if you felt my question was offensive - that was not the intention.

 

As you have experience in obtaining CITP status, I would be very grateful if you could spare a few minutes responding to the questions I posed in my opening post, which will help me decide whether it is worth applying or not. Many thanks!

[SpuffMonkey]

I was only joking

 

Alas - I'm so old that I joined during the previous entry system - so none of the stuff I did is relevant to qualification nowadays.

 

To be honest - I've never found that membership was an asset when applying for jobs and I guess it probably won't be until some sort of accreditation is a mandatory requirement for leading IT projects - which I guess will be sometime never at this rate!

[mikeprice]

I was only joking

 

Alas - I'm so old that I joined during the previous entry system - so none of the stuff I did is relevant to qualification nowadays.

 

To be honest - I've never found that membership was an asset when applying for jobs and I guess it probably won't be until some sort of accreditation is a mandatory requirement for leading IT projects - which I guess will be sometime never at this rate!

 

They have been talking about mandatory qualification ever since I started in IT

and that was 1981 - and they still haven't done anything