Monday Musing: Invest to impress

We all want to improve, whether to move up the ranks, or to impress someone, or perhaps instead it is to make your current role easier.

Investing in yourself can boost confidence, enhance your credibility at work and make us more creative.

A career within the parking sector can provide you with an interesting, challenging and rewarding job and put you in a position to influence the future development of areas such as sustainable transport, town and city planning, and tackling congestion and pollution within our urban areas.

Parking poses unique professional challenges and having resources and a solid foundation of knowledge is key—we frequently need answers and solutions right here, right now.

There are lots of resources available to us through professional organisations to continuously develop professionally, but here are some quick suggestions:

Events

• As an attendee – you can attend seminars and workshops to expand your knowledge and skills in your business. This will also give you the opportunity to network, to meet and interact with individuals who are like-minded, improving your ability to communicate with people at all levels of business.
• As a speaker at an event – you can improve and hone your presentation skills to different audience types, improving your communication skills. By presenting you will also reaffirm what you know or further develop your understanding of a subject.
• As an exhibitor – you will be communicating to attendees and selling your product, developing your communications and sales skills.

Our Annual Conference is coming up on Thursday 5 October. With an array of exhibitors who will be on hand to discuss the latest in parking technology, products and services with you. You will also have the opportunity to hear from some fantastic speakers and take part in work streams that will be exploring ways to further raise standards and improve consistency, promoting partnership working within the sector.

This event is not just for parking managers or strategy planners with some of the programme focusing on marketing and media relations.

Education opportunities

• Qualifications - As you know we currently have two qualifications; Level Two Award for Parking Enforcement Officers and Level Three Award in Notice Processing. There are also many qualifications for writing skills, marketing, media, customer service etc. Explore and find what would suit your role.
• Internal business development – Internal knowledge sharing sessions or discussions with colleagues will further develop your knowledge. Similarly if you impart knowledge to a colleague you may see something in a different way, you will reaffirm your knowledge and improve your communication skills.

Reading

• Latest news from the sector – There are plenty of magazines, news websites and blogs in which the latest news, products and services are shared. Keep abreast of the latest topics and you will not only be aware of new opportunities and best practices but you will ensure your knowledge and understanding of a topic is at its peak. Parking News is out this week, don’t miss it!
• Parking books – There are plenty of parking books, so take a look and delve deeper into a subject.
• Research – Reading publications in the form of reports, research and statistical findings involving parking, will inform you of the latest thinking and potential new ideas for the future. This may assist you in thinking creatively and you may be able to use this to suggest new ways of working.
• Read anything related to the talent or skill you want to work on. It may not be directly related to parking but it may provide you with a different perspective and a deeper understanding.

To assist you in your career we have recently refreshed our Careers Hub, this provides some useful information to assist you in applying for jobs in the parking sector. And refreshed information for individual members on Continuous Professional Development (CPD) which includes lots of ideas on different types of CPD.

Keep an eye on these pages as we look for new opportunities to assist our members with professional development. In true development style I will leave you with a quote to think about: “The most important investment you can make is in yourself.” Warren Buffett