Don’t let them go! In this case, I’m talking about your certifications: Hazmat, Instructor, EMT-I or P, etc. Several years ago, I let a few certifications go because:
- I wasn’t going to use those specific skills any more for personal reasons;
- I was young and thought it was too much trouble to keep up with the continuing education (CE) hours required to maintain the certifications;
- The full time job I work for did not—and still does not—require us to use the skills for the certifications anyway.
- Not using the skills, and thus not having the opportunity to maintain proficiency with the skills, I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to maintain a certification for a skill set I could not perform when necessary and wasn’t allowed to do anyway. (A note about CE hours here: Keeping your CE hours current does not mean you’re keeping your skills/knowledge current; it simply means you were able to perform a skill or answer a question to the minimum degree required to get credit. Let’s be honest, some of the 40-hour CE programs out there can be completed in a few hours.)
So, I let a few certifications go ...
But now, I have to spend much more time and money to re-acquire the certifications than it would have taken to maintain the CE hours. Sixteen years later, I’ve changed my position on Nos. 1 and 2 above. As far as item No. 3, I now work part-time for a service that will pay me more, and let me use the skills I once had. As for item No. 4, I still feel the same way about CE hours. However, as I’ve matured over the past 16 years, I’ve realized that my values would have prevented me from making the claim that I was proficient at a task simply because I had maintained a set number of CE hours for it.
The bottom line: Do whatever you can to keep your certifications, even if you swear you’ll never use them again.