As a facilities professional, when you think of “resilience,” the word most likely conjures up thoughts of buildings that can stand up to extreme weather and other threats.
But there’s another kind of resilience—personal resilience, or your own ability to withstand, adapt to and recover from personal setbacks. Often defined as a personal reservoir of strength that helps you handle stress, personal resilience is key for overcoming significant life challenges. Personal resilience skills can also help you develop career resilience, or your ability to adjust and adapt to career changes.
One way to improve your career resilience specifically is to pursue additional educational opportunities outside of the on-the-job learning you’re doing every day. Busy facilities and property managers may have a hard time finding enough time in the day for continuing education, but it’s an important part of growing your career and making sure you have strong enough foundations to handle whatever comes your way. Here are three ways you can increase your career resilience with continuing education strategies.
1. Go Back to School
There are several options to study facilities management and/or property management at the post-secondary level. One of them is the MSRE (that’s a Master of Science in Real Estate) program at the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate, headquartered at Roosevelt University.
Obtaining formal education can be especially useful for people in property and facilities management because people in both fields tend to fall into them after pursuing another line of work. A degree in architecture or business may not always be useful day-to-day for property professionals.
“I’ve been in the industry for a while, but what changed is that I’d been working with my own set of tools all those years that I’d learned by experience. Every day is something new, and every day something pops up that you’ve never dealt with before,” said Bradley Borowiec, vice president at Zeller, who earned his MSRE in 2018. He was later named “Property Manager of the Year” at the RE Journals 2021 Real Estate Awards. “I needed a new set of tools. It’s always something that’s evolving and new, and that’s when I decided to go back and get my master’s.”
2. Get a Certification
Professional certifications are great resume builders, and they’re available for every stage of your career.
New to the field? You might be interested in the Certified Manager of Commercial Properties (CMCP) certification, which is specifically targeted at early-career property professionals who are looking to grow.
People who are a little further along in their careers and need next steps have a wealth of opportunities to choose from. IFMA offers the Facility Management Professional (FMP), a foundational course for people who are new to facilities management, as well as the Sustainability Facility Professional (SFP) and Certified Facility Manager (CFM) credentials.
BOMI International, an independent institute for property and facility management education, offers five designations for property managers:
- Real Property Administrator (RPA)
- Facilities Management Administrator (FMA)
- Systems Maintenance Administrator (SMA)
- Systems Maintenance Technician (SMT)
- High-Performance Sustainable Buildings (BOMI-HP)
3. Get Creative with Continuing Education
Don’t have time to pursue a designation, or simply need a few credits to maintain the one you already have? There’s a wealth of CEUs out there that apply to various designations, including the ones curated by BUILDINGS.
If you’re simply looking to learn a bit more and aren’t concerned about earning formal credit, you have even more options. Consider bringing in a rep from the manufacturer who made your HVAC or security system for a lunch and learn, or gather your staff around for a webinar from the U.S. Green Building Council or the National Fire Protection Association.
When it comes to career development, the sky’s the limit—so start building up your career resilience by learning some new skills today.
