CIPs Unite!

 View Only

Supporting the CIP Program

By Jesse Wilkins posted 08-26-2019 15:11

  
You did it - you passed the CIP exam. Congratulations! So how can you make the most of your newly acquired credential - and how can we help to make it more valuable to you? Here are a few things you can do - and some things we're working on as well that maybe you can help with.

Recertify. The first thing you can do as a CIP to help ensure its growth and success is to stay a CIP by recertifying. After all, in the end it's the number and visibility of current CIPs that will make the CIP certification more valuable. We are very flexible in what we accept for CEUs - generally the only requirement is that the event or resource is related to CIP or information management more broadly.

Add CIP to job descriptions. One of the more significant metrics for a certification is its inclusion in job postings. If you help to develop such postings, either for information management professionals or those who are significantly impacted by IM issues (HR and finance both come to mind), please consider adding the CIP to the list of required/preferred qualifications. This helps your organization to understand the value of *your* CIP as well.

Increase your organizational visibility. Make sure your leadership knows that you attained the CIP and what it means - that you understand your specific information challenges and how they relate to other departments and processes and their information challenges. Print your CIP certificate and put it up in your office or cubicle. Offer to mentor your colleagues on information management topics or even to help prepare them for the CIP exam. Lead lunch & learn presentations on information management topics.

Submit a case study. How has earning your CIP benefited you professionally? How has it contributed to the success of your organization? We'd love to share your successes with other CIPs, CIP candidates, and the broader AIIM community. I can send you a questionnaire, or we can conduct a phone or even video interview. If this is of interest, send me a note and I'll get it scheduled. Here are some examples of previous interviews we've done:

Get preapproval for CIP Continuing Education Units (CEUs). We'd like to both raise the visibility of CIP and make it easier to recertify. One way you can help is to get your events preapproved for CIP credits. We award 1.0 credit for each contact hour of educational content, so for the typical AIIM/ARMA chapter meeting, we'd award 1.0-2.0 credits, while an ARMA Spring Seminar might be as much as 6.0-7.0 CEUs per day of the seminar. An AIIM training class might be worth as much as 26.0 CEUs, and applies whether you attend in-person or via our self-paced online courses.

Note that these events do not have to be AIIM events, and can even be vendor events provided that the content is a) educational and b) is related to the topical areas of the CIP. But we can't possibly know about all of your events, so send an email to me or to certification@aiim.org and I'll follow up directly.

Improve your professional visibility. Of course if all CIPs sported the lapel pin, changed their names on Twitter and LinkedIn to include ", CIP", and put the CIP logo on their business cards, blogs, and websites, that would be awesome, too. :) I know some of you can't, due to corporate policy, but for those of you who have, thank you! At the very least you should add it to your email signature if that's appropriate.

Every active CIP has also received a digital badge from Accredible. This digital badge includes instructions for how to add it to your LinkedIn profile, your email, and many other social media tools. It also provides verification of your CIP status and whether it's current or lapsed. We strongly encourage CIPs to leverage this capability.

And if you're a chapter leader - for AIIM, for ARMA, for any other industry associations or chapters - consider promoting the CIP at your events.

Serve as a mentor. I mentioned mentoring your work colleagues earlier in this post - but you can mentor professional colleagues outside your organization as well. We're actively soliciting mentors through this community; you could also offer your expertise and experience to local chapter and event attendees. Again, this could be specific to CIP preparation or much broader information management topics. Mentoring is good for CIP CEUs, too.

Have other ideas as to how you are supporting CIP? Let me know with a comment or email me at jwilkins@aiim.org.
#CIP
0 comments
34 views