the cima student

It was over 12 months ago when I wrote a blog post on the CIMA PER – Practical Experience Requirements.

It would be an understatement to say,it’s been a popular topic! As I received quite a few additional questions on how to complete the PER.

With that in mind, I am revisiting the subject again today with a view to provide you with a more hands on, (hopefully) clearer view on what’s required from you as a student on how to complete your CIMA PER.

Introduction to PER

I covered the basics and the principles in my blog post from 2018 and likewise you can find a direct link to the official guidance from CIMA here.

However, the CIMA PER in nutshell is a summary of the practical experience you have gained in your career so far.

This has to be verified by two separate people who were in a senior postion to you at the time of the experience.

Below I show you an overview of my own PER submission, let’s remind ourselves of the CGMA Framework that is used for the PER and the requirements for submission.

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• The first slide shows the CGMA competency framework (Level 1 & 2 for the PER).
• The next slide illustrates the detail from Knowledge Area (Level 1) to the Competency itself (Level 4).

The CIMA PER – A hand’s on guide to completing it

PER Requirements

You will need to fulfill the following criteria to submit a completed PER to CIMA.

• A minimum of 36 months verified relevant experience , across the 4 Knowledge areas.
• At least 4 competency categories (Level 2) must be selected between Technical and Business Skills (min 1 from each) , covering the minimum 36 months.
• At least 1 competency category from both People and Leadership skills must also be demonstrated.
• Of the minimum 36 months required, at least 18 months experience must be gained between the Technical and Business skills from the Intermediate, Advanced or Expert levels.
• The remaining 18 months can be gained across any of the levels within Technical and Business areas.

My Employers

Once you have entered your personal details on the PER form (when you login to your CIMA account), you will then be required to enter your employer details that will cover the minimum 36 months time-frame.

Here is my example, I am using my current employer where I’ve had two different roles over the last four years. Then when documenting my experience, I will choose which role it applied too.

My Practical Experience

Now we start to pick the competencies we want to document, so remembering the CGMA framework we need to start with the Level 1 (knowledge area) all the way down to Level 4 (competency).

Here is an example of choosing;

• LEVEL 1: Business Skills
• LEVEL 2: Process Management
• LEVEL 3: Intermediate
• LEVEL 4: Ensure standardisation is applied to all process…

Once you have selected the competency, you will need to select what role/company you are going to document this competence against.

Documenting the Competency

This is perhaps the most tricky part as I had a lot of questions on this.

You’ll need to add a full, clear, and concise example on how you met that competency – here is what I documented for the competency “Ensure standardisation is applied to all process….”;

As part of the robotic process automation, my team suggested an improvement to automate the intercompany invoice process.

However, to achieve maximum efficiency with this RPA idea, I lead workshops to bring other teams within AtR shared services in line with our process for issuing inter company invoices.

This involved me;

– hosting AtR meetings with all countries to present RPA idea and current process for issuing invoices.

– Work with RPA team to ensure they have all required information regarding process automation for intercompany invoice process.

– Help support other AtR teams with implementation of standard process so they could also adopt the RPA solution.

– Write SOP and documentation on standard to ensure there is sufficient support and backup for the process.

*This is just my view on how it should be completed, please note at the time of writing  my PER is still to be approved by CIMA.

Once you have added all of the experience into the PER, you can check the status of your application to see if you have fulfilled all of the necessary criteria by clicking the “Is my experience ready?” button.

If it’s ready for verficiation, you will be greeted with the above message.

Overview of “Ready” PER Application

Here is an overview of the competencies I have used on my application that successfully met the criteria. I felt this maybe an easier way how to illustrate one way on how to satisfy the requirements.

TOP TIP: If you want check the status of your application, click on the Is my experience ready? button and it will give you a breakdown of what criteria you still have to met.

Conclusion

I felt it was very much a trial and error exercise when completing the PER, so I’d recommend getting your hands dirty and start completing your application.

You cannot submit an incomplete application as there are checks during the PER process that will prompt you to either add additional experience or approvers if you verification doesn’t met the requires standards.

If you run into problems or remain unsure, you can always check the status of your application to see what you need to do next.

Good Luck with your PER application – I hope this answers the questions from last time – and is a more hands on guide.

But please feel free to ask any more questions in the comments box.