Professional Registration: 13 most frequently chosen competencies
Are you thinking of applying for professional registration? Which competencies would you choose to demonstrate in your application?
The first step is to benchmark yourself against the ARA’s competency framework, which sets out 39 key competencies for all those working and volunteering within archives, conservation and records management. Benchmarking is a great way to identify your strengths and weaknesses; it’s also an opportunity to think about the direction you would like your career to travel. What roles are you interested in, and what competencies should you develop to increase your chances of gaining an interview?
We looked at 90 applications for Foundation, Registered and Fellow to see which competencies members had chosen. The table above presents the 13 most commonly chosen competencies used in all applications. It may come as no surprise to see that ‘arranging cataloguing and/or describing archives’ (B9) was the most frequently used competency, appearing in 67 applications. It was closely followed by ‘developing and using policies and procedures (A2)’, which appeared in 59 applications.
Just outside the most frequently chosen, appearing in 18 applications, was the ‘developing specialist knowledge and skills’ option. Members applying for professional registration can use this option to demonstrate a skill or area of knowledge that doesn’t easily map to the competency framework. This helps to ensure that ARA recognises as broad a range of skills and experience as possible. Some of the skills demonstrated using this option include developing digitisation workflows, academic writing, palaeography and the evaluation of historical library, archive and museum collections. Why not take a look at the competency framework and think about which competencies you could demonstrate at the Foundation, Registered or Fellowship level?
For further information, please visit the ARA’s Professional Registration Programme, our online application and assessment platform.