Posted By andrew hill Natasha, I was looking through messages and saw yours. I expect anybody reading my reply to you will reply very irately but here goes. I am a late starter, joined a food manufacturer in production and then shifted in to H & S full time. I also did my IOSH and NEBOSH. I did not pass with flying colours and decided not to advance to the diploma. If you are in a ordinary industry with no dramas those two qualification will be quite sufficent. If you are looking to become the H & S director for ICI or Shell, the diploma would then be appropriate. I did go on to get my IOSH Noise Assessors Certificate, very useful in the current climate; I got a CIEH certificate in Stress Management, which if you work in an office environment such as banks, building societies, insurance etc, is a big must; I became a Manual Handling Assessor/ Train the trainer. All these may sem a little lame but have served me well in my day to day duties. I also got my traing certificates thru a local college; writing training courses, presenting training courses. So my message is that there is a lot of simple courses out there, tailor them for your needs. Just as a final message, I was made redundant in February, very big group of companies cost cutting, within one week, clutching my very nice cheque, I was snapped up by another company, lot better deal, they fell over themselves to get me because my CV showed a pageful of these certificates FOOD, HYGIENE, CHEMICALS, STRESS etc etc etc. I was out of work seven days, hows that. Andrew from Lincolnshire

Posted By TBC Nice one Andrew - Train on what you can use effectively, no need for fancy titles.