Leonardo Da Vinci

European Professional Marketing Expertise: Accreditation of informal learning in the Marketing area

Target group: Professionals who develop their career in any areas relating to marketing, and more specifically those who do not have any formal training in marketing or lack academic recognition and/or certification, and so have gained their competencies at work.

Aims: The aim of the proposal is the development of a process of certification which gives marketing professionals the opportunity of accrediting their competences across Europe, particularly those acquired at work. This process tries to:

        Provide individuals that work in the marketing sector with the opportunity to achieve recognition and valorisation of their competencies, clearly adding value.

Facilitate the recognition of the competences of the marketing professional.

Aid in the development of marketing professionals.

Facilitate appropriate and relevant training for marketing professionals.

Establish European standards about the competences needed to practise professions relating to marketing.

Facilitate the comparison of the competences of marketing professionals beyond national frontiers, and therefore contribute to their geographic mobility.

Contribute to raising the standards of professionalism in the functional marketing area throughout  

        Europe.

Provide with higher transparency and efficiency in the process of selection or head hunting.

Contribute to the development of marketing through the update of competences and exchange of experiences.

Raise awareness of the social dimension of marketing, integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches and practices in the certification process.

 In relation to the aims of the program, the proposal contributes to:

• The improvement of the individual competences by providing marketing professionals with recognition, which will facilitate the development of their professional career. Likewise, the process of certification will result in an important intellectual challenge and motivation for the update of their knowledge and competences. In this sense, the proposed certification process will greatly focus on upgrading these professionals’ competencies by integrating the very necessary social dimension of marketing.
• Reinforcing the contribution of vocational training to the innovation process, as it will promote the exchange of experiences and good practices among the accredited professionals. This, together with the requirement that the certification process will mean to the professional, will promote the development and transparency of innovative practices in the marketing area.
• Formal vocational training in Marketing is relatively recent in many EU countries, and in any case receives disparate treatment in the different systems of vocational education. Therefore, many professionals in this area have a variety of academic backgrounds, and so their competences have not been formally recognised, being that in many cases they have been acquired through their own professional experience.