Training and Continuing professional development.

Byline: bobby pickering

Training and Continuing

professional development

As the new year begins, savvy information professionals will be weighing up the state of the profession to see where the threats to their livelihoods might come from, where the opportunities lie, and what career development they can pursue to stay ahead of the game.

Commercial recruitment and training specialists Sue Hill, TFPL and Tribal Group all think the status of the profession within organisations has been undermined.

TFPL's Richard Pinder says the main threat is skills dilution: "The continued blurring of roles in the information world means that there are more stakeholders in the information world and increasing competition for roles with others from non-information backgrounds."

Sue Hill's eponymous founder cites the biggest dangers as "the influx of other professions and skills into information-handling roles; the continuing change of view of 'information' by those at board-level; the inability of many information professionals to forge strategic alliances with the business drivers; and the increased outsourcing and offshoring of information functions".