The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) has unveiled plans for a major revamping of its educational qualifications.

The new qualifications will be truly “fit for purpose”, and are essential if the REC is to achieve Chartered status, according to REC chief executive Kevin Green.

From next summer the trade body’s Certificate in Recruitment Practice will be superseded by a new entry-level qualification. A new professional level qualification, to supersede the current Diploma in Recruitment Practice, is set to come in next autumn.

Green told Recruiter: “Once every 10 years or so, we need to go back and look at our qualifications to ensure they are fit for purpose, and consider whether they are giving consultants the right skills and competencies.”

“If we are going to have an institute with Chartered status we have got to have world-class qualifications,” he said.

Once every 10 years or so, we need to go back and look at our qualifications to ensure they are fit for purpose, and consider whether they are giving consultants the right skills and competencies

KEVIN GREEN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, REC

BA and MA qualifications in Recruitment Practice available through Middlesex University are not due to change.

The announcement of the new qualifications follows an extensive consultation exercise between the REC and its members, and members of the Institute of Recruitment Professionals. This included face-to-face meetings, focus groups, sector meetings and questionnaires. The views of the wider recruitment community were sought through a letter in Recruiter.

• Judith Armatage, the REC’s director of professional development, told Recruiter there were a number of important differences between the old and the new qualifications:
• the new professional level qualification will be “more challenging” and will “go into more depth” - for example, on contracts of employment
• it will provide a number of core modules, but then allow students to go down either the sales or the management track
• the new entry-level qualification will expand coverage of social media, and will focus on “unravelling the regulations”.

It will also cover managing people and look at what makes consultants successful. Armatage said this was one of the key messages to come out of the consultation. “Owner-managers said they wanted individual recruiters to be more responsible for how they worked and that this would be of enormous benefit,” she said.

The qualifications would also be designed to fit in with the busy lifestyle of consultants. “We want to put the qualifications into bite-sized chunks, so it’s very much a flexible programme,” said Armatage.
Staffing companies will also have the opportunity to prepare their candidates for the exams in-house, or to use external training providers, she said.

Green added that the plan was for the new qualifications to get final sign-off from the REC board at the board meeting on 8 December.