“In general, employers are looking for higher levels of education and more formal professional qualifications, even for entry-level positions.” 

So, says Mark Spencer, director of compensation and benefits at Revera who also teaches HR and labour relations for Humber’s continuing education division.

According to Spencer, the difficult thing for a job candidate is to demonstrate industry knowledge, transferable skills, and knowledge of the professional stream. Although it sounds like a cliché, the pace of change is such that employers increasingly value the ability to be flexible, to continue learning and growing. Participation in continuing education demonstrates this. Besides gaining specific knowledge the student remains flexible and adaptive while showing an interest in lifelong learning. That’s all upside to an employer, and it helps lower the potential employer’s risk when hiring a particular candidate.

Based on his human resources experience, which includes a recruitment portfolio, Spencer disputes the old chestnut that most jobs are never advertised. “If just from an internal governance requirement, most jobs that do not represent internal movement are posted on the Internet. The effect of the technology is to vastly increase the number of applicants, but who gets considered depends on other factors.”

That’s why networking remains important: It helps employers filter a very large number of candidates and pay attention to a particular CV—yours. In each continuing education class you’re likely to find 20-30 people with similar interests but different backgrounds. That provides the perfect networking opportunity.

Spencer knows continuing education inside out. After years of work he undertook formal training, completing an HR certificate at Humber. As a student, he was able to provide extra in-class value by relating his industry experiences. Now his teaching is animated by his commitment to training and mentoring, to helping people learn and become better HR professionals. By giving back he hopes to enhance the HR community—at an individual level and more broadly in Canadian business.

Spencer likes to provide hands-on experience through role-play. This lets teams of students work through case studies to get different results from other teams with competing interests.

That’s raising the bar in the classroom.