Record of skills development
Your chance to show us how you are developing personal and managerial skills, as well as technical competence.
The Record of Skills Development forms the fourth and final section within the Career Profile. Its purpose is to allow you to demonstrate to CIMA, the breadth and depth of your whole experience. It therefore provides an opportunity to reflect on how your career and managerial skills are progressing and, if appropriate, to identify gaps which you can then discuss with your employer in the wider context of your career progression.
Using the template provided, you must describe how you have developed each of the following behavioural skills while you have been working:
- Personal
- Interpersonal
- Organisational
'Behavioural skills' are acknowledged as playing an important part when developing a successful career in financial management. Although 'behavioural skills' can be harder to measure than other skills, they are regarded by many as being of equal importance to technical and knowledge based competences. The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) recommends that all professional bodies acknowledge and assess the development of such skills in professional education programmes.
The task of assessing your practical experience remains a holistic process, within which the Record of Skills Development is just one part of a picture conveyed within the Career Profile about the relevant work based experience you have gained. Your overall balance of experience is what counts and your exposure to 'hands-on' management accounting activities is very important. The new style four section Career Profile offers you the opportunity to present us with a more rounded view of your work as a prospective Chartered Management Accountant.
The 'behavioural skills'
You will need to describe how you have developed each of the following behavioural skills:
- Personal skills (self-management): For example, your ability to manage your time effectively, to meet deadlines even when under pressure; to adapt and cope with difficult or challenging situations when perhaps things do not go to plan, etc.
- Interpersonal skills (interacting with/managing others): For example, your ability to work well within teams or to lead teams, your ability to communicate complex ideas and issues effectively to staff at a number of levels in the organisation, including non accountants, your ability to negotiate or achieve compromise, etc.
- Organisational skills (managing organisational resources): For example, your ability to manage organisational resources so as to add value to your work, your ability to gather organisational information, to identify opportunities for improvement, your ability to network effectively, to manage processes, etc.
To complete the Record of Skills Development, you will need to reflect on your work experience and provide a minimum of one/maximum of three examples of how your skills have developed, through the work you have done, for each of the three skills areas. If, when carrying out a particular piece of work or project, you demonstrated more than one of the three skill types, you can refer to that example in each of the relevant areas.
The following link provides a template for the Record of Skills Development (DOC 61KB) and further examples.
Please note that the Record of Skills Development must be completed by all applicants including those using the old RPE format.
