PMP. PHR. CFP.
The acronyms that follow a person’s name after he or she has received a professional certification are increasingly sought after by employers.
As a result, a greater number of financial planners, human resource managers, project managers and others who work in a field that offers a professional certification are taking the national exams, local experts said.
“If I’m looking to move ahead in my company, if I sat for a national exam, and I have three little initials after my name, I have a competitive advantage,” said Annette Cerilli, director of Bryant University’s Executive Development Center.
Like the bar and CPA exams that lawyers and accountants must pass, passing the Project Management Professional exam or the Certified Financial Planner exam is a signal to employers that a job candidate is aware of best practices and has the requisite skills for a given profession, Cerilli said.
Unlike the bar and CPA exams, professionals working in financial planning, project management or human resources are not required to have these certifications – which have existed for less than a decade – in order to advance in their fields. But, increasingly, it helps.
In the last few years, employers have begun putting more emphasis on such national certifications as those professions have become increasingly specialized and complex, said Brion P. Carroll, director of the Lifespan Learning Institute.
Lifespan – like several other organizations that rank among Rhode Island’s largest employers – now sends project managers, financial planners and human resource professionals to earn professional development certificates at Bryant’s Executive Development Center.
Last year, 20 of Lifespan’s human resource professionals began the center’s human resource certification course. The six-class program, which takes anywhere from six months to two or more years to complete, concludes with an optional 13-week preparatory class for the Professional in Human Resources, Senior Professional in Human Resources or Global Professional in Human Resources exam.
Another cohort of 20 to 25 Lifespan employees will begin the center’s professional development certification program in the spring, Carroll said. While Lifespan does not require its HR staff to pass the national exam, it does encourage them to do so, he said.
“It is a helpful credential,” he said. “We believe that our human resource professionals need to be exposed to the broad range of competencies and content areas that now comprise modern HR.”
Of the handful of relatively new national certifications, the national Project Management Professional certification has experienced the greatest jump in interest over the past five years, followed by the Professional in Human Resources and Certified Financial Planner certifications, said Bryant’s Cerilli.
As a result, enrollment in those certificate programs at the Executive Development Center has been steadily increasing in recent years, she said. And about eight in 10 professionals who complete the certificate programs eventually take the national certification exam in their field.
Many people who study to become nationally certified in their field are in mid-career and looking to ratchet up to a higher job title.
Others see the certification as entry into a new career they hope to transition into, or are professional mothers returning to the work force full-time, Cerilli said.
Such was the case for Karyn Rhodes, who recently accepted a job as director of human resources for New England Ambulance in Johnston, after completing Bryant’s HR certificate program and passing the Senior Professional of Human Resources exam.
Rhodes, a former benefits manager at Citizens Financial Group, had been out of the work force for several years while raising children, and she decided to get the certification to make herself a more attractive job candidate.
The exam was rigorous; only 54 percent of those who take it pass it the first time, Rhodes said. She studied about seven hours a week while taking Bryant’s 13-week test-prep course and crammed around the clock in the days before the test.
Rhodes said she believes the acronym recently added to the end of her name helped her land the job she wanted. And, as another result of her strong performance on the national exam, she was recruited to teach the human resource certificate course at the center.
“In my opinion, it is something that you need if you are serious about your career and want to move it forward,” Rhodes said. “Companies are really picking up on the fact that a certification is an important addition to a person’s résumé.”
