Supporting your career development – up or across

Whether you are seeking promotion or looking to expand your role capabilities, continuing professional development comes with lots of options within policing.

As an officer, you may want to move from response into another role, perhaps investigation or intelligence. As a member of police staff you may want to consider being a civilian investigator or take your first step into a management role.

The key question is ‘How do I do it’ and that’s where the College can help.

Our career pathway case studies help you to understand what a specific role involves and to hear about the routes different people have taken to get to where they are today.

The policing professional profiles give you an overview of the role and details of the skills, knowledge and competencies you will need to make your move. It will also help to identify how you can maintain and enhance your skills in your existing role. If you are a member of staff, you might be considering joining the force as an officer – what better way to find out what is really involved in the job?

The College has resources on leadership that are suitable for all levels. It can involve anything from getting a qualification from the Chartered Institute of Management to learning about the networking opportunities that we facilitate.

The College library has books and online resources that can help you get to where you are going, supporting you to find information about development and policing in general.

Some people who work in policing want to stay in roles that keep them connected to their communities, but are able to accept that moving to more senior posts can take them away from why they first signed up for the job. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t CPD opportunities to enrich the role. There are opportunities to develop in a training role and pass on your skills and experience.

The College is here to help everyone in policing to get to where they want to go.