- According to ISCO88 administration personnel is classified under other associate professionals (Category 34 Other Associate Professionals and subcategory 343 Administration associate professionals) which (according to CEDEFOP: Future skills supply and demand in Europe) is the first profession in demand up to 2020.
- HRDA Cyprus (Human Resource Development Authority) research on the employment forecasting 2010-2020 demonstrates that Administration and support services is the fourth sector with the greatest average yearly increase.
- This is aligned with the fact that the labour market training programmes co-funded by the ESF focus on the training of unemployed people on secretarial skills .
- This sector is easily accessible and very attractive to unemployed women (Unemployment is a major issue in EU. The rate of unemployment is higher for women, especially those with no skills).
- Administrators are employed by all companies and organizations in EU regardless of size and industry and its role is vital.
This important sector is NON-REGULATED. Administrators may be secondary school graduates or may have a college diploma in secretarial studies. It is not rear to find administrators with academic credentials in other fields. All administration personnel, even if they do not have (or do not have relevant) academic qualifications, need to validate their knowledge, skills and competences in order to move from one job to another or from one country to another. Often it is the case that these people progress (career wise) as they develop more skills and competences from admin personnel, to executive secretary, personal assistant or even office manager. Again they should be able to validate knowledge, skills and competences in different levels.
It is noted however that the sector of Administration Personnel is used as a case study as our main objective is to find ways to achieve validation of non-formal and informal learning for any non-regulated sector.