CPD & Employability

CPD is a driver for Employability

CPD is commonly thought of as a practice that is only applicable to individuals once they have completed a professional qualification or charter with a professional body. Whilst this has been the case historically, the CPD Standards Research Project has found a growing trend of ‘CPD’ activities focused on young people aged anywhere between 9 to 25yrs.

Younger people are increasingly undertaking CPD and training activities outside of what’s available in schools, colleges or universities. The main driver is employability, and developing skill sets to become ‘work ready’ and more competitive within the job market.

It is important to remember that CPD is not a qualification, it is simply a practice for undertaking bite size pieces of learning to build skills, knowledge, information or behaviours. The learning can start at ‘beginner level’, this means that anyone at any age can start undertaking CPD activities regularly.

‘A degree is no longer enough’

Within a saturated graduate market, CPD enables students to stand out from the crowd to employers when applying for jobs or positions on graduate schemes.

Undertaking CPD training in any topic, in addition to qualifications, is a way of showing that an individual is invested in, and committed to, their learning and progression;


The CPD Standards Office has conducted extensive research in this area, and strongly encourages students of all disciplines to seek regular CPD across a range of topics and activities.

The research found that CPD is directly linked to employability, and adding a CPD section to a CV can improve job prospects significantly, with the opportunity of securing a dream job increased by 10% (the CPD Research Project 2010).

Employability skills are often focused on building the following skills:

Self-management

Communication and Literacy

Team Working

Application of Numeracy

Design and Innovation

Business and Customer Awareness

Problem Solving

Application of Information Technology

The CPD Standards Office welcomes training providers who offer training activities to young people, or who are focused on employability.

“The value of having a broad range of skills to offer your prospective employer is extremely valuable and can give you the winning edge when applying for that dream job against your peers. Drawing helps people to become more creative in general so having a CPD Accredited certificate in drawing is a great asset to your resume when seeking employment in a huge range of industries.”

Cindy Wider

Course Founder at DrawPj.com


“The CPD sessions strengthen our students’ personal branding, and employability skills for the global environment, their CV and add as a key differentiator in their professional career profile (…) we strongly support the important value of the CPD accredited course and their valuable addition to the students’ learning and development study journey.”

Dr Azam Ali and Dr Eric Chan

Programme Directors MA in Management & MA Global Management at Regents University London