Jobs & Careers with Piers Linney - 111

From an employer perspective
how do we view professional
qualifications and certifications?
1. Professional qualifications/certs - what do we mean by
this? What does this cover?
2. Why are they important to us as an employer?
3. How do we support people in developing these?
The UK is an increasingly service based economy across a broad range of
sectors, within this Attenda is a UK-centric knowledge based information
technology services business. The success of the company depends totally
on our people; their knowledge, skills, experience and attitudes are all clearly
focused on meeting and exceeding our clients' business needs
and expectations.
There are many ways in which our current and prospective employees can
demonstrate their existing or potential capability and competence. One way is
through the attainment of relevant qualifications; the successful attainment of
these provides a clear illustration of a person's capability.
What do we mean by professional qualifications and certifications? Our
business is staffed by a large number of specialist technical professionals
with experience in a range of leading-edge technologies. We are constantly
striving to develop and hire the brightest talent and look for people who can
demonstrate that they have achieved high levels of certification from vendors
like Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, SAP, Oracle, HP, Unix, Amazon Web Services,
and industry standards such as ITIL Service Management, Prince II, etc. This
culture of professional development also permeates across our supporting
functions where we expect people to continue to develop through professional
accreditation in areas such as HR (CIPD), finance (ACCA, CIMA), purchasing
(CIPS) and management (CMI). We hire from across the spectrum with

apprentices and graduates, as well as fully qualified and experienced people,
likely to be appointed with a view to developing their capability further. In 2013
Attenda joined The 5% Club to demonstrate its commitment to a programme of
recruitment with at least 5% of its workforce being graduates and apprentices,
to increase investment in building a workforce for the future.
When we meet and interview people we look for those individuals who have
a clear understanding of what qualifications they have achieved, from which
institutions, when and why; as we believe this is all part of having a well
thought-out career plan and understanding what professional development
would benefit you in your chosen role and career. We recognise that not
all people will have progressed through professional qualifications and
certifications, and value demonstrable equivalent experience; however, we
do look for individuals who are aware of the pros and cons of experience
versus qualifications.
It is a fair question to ask why these certifications are important to Attenda.
We are a strongly process-driven business and have a multitude of
certifications that demonstrate to our clients that we are the right company
to manage their Business Critical IT solutions. These include ISO9001,
ISO20000, ISO22301 and ISO27001 accreditations, with a raft of specific
industry certifications from organisations including, HP, Microsoft, SAP and
VMware. We are audited regularly by our clients and regulatory authorities and
these accreditations all have a significant people element as we have to be able
to demonstrate that employees are progressing and developing capabilities
and have the correct qualifications to perform theirs roles effectively.
As well as looking to hire talented and qualified people into our business, we
also invest a great deal of time and money into ensuring our people have the
correct depth and breadth in the right qualifications, for example all of our
Service Delivery Managers have completed the ITIL Service Management
qualifications to Practitioner and Manager levels, our accountants are
ACCA/CIMA qualified, and our technical people have the relevant technical
certifications. We want people to plan their careers and develop with us
professionally; our growth and success provides every opportunity to do this.

"We are committed to
increasing investment in
a workforce of the future,
through continued hiring
and development of
a significant pool
of apprentices and
graduate talent."

Recruitment@attenda.com
www.attenda.com
http://www.attenda.com
Jobs & Careers with Piers Linney

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Jobs & Careers with Piers Linney
