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Demand for human performance technology (HPT) practitioners is growing at the same time as their numbers are increasing. Yet no standard repertoire of professional skills exists, nor is there any agency with authority to define required skill sets. A number of sources do, however, offer guidelines. These are observation of current practice, a rich and expanding literature, professional societies, recognized practitioners and knowledgeable clients. These sources provide us with strong indicators as to what constitute skill sets for both current and future practice. This article presents suggested basic and advanced skill sets, identifies future skill needs, and concludes with suggestions for maintaining and enhancing proficiency as a human performance technologist.

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Curriculum development is usually associated with educational institutions. As a result, there are few curriculum development models that have been specifically created for the business and industrial setting. Those that have been published tend to adopt a “let's begin at the beginning” approach. They prescribe starting as though nothing previously existed within the organization to provide personnel training and development. The Professional Development Curriculum (PDC) model presented in this article starts with what already exists organizationally. It adopts a convergence strategy. It begins by systematically matching known needs with known resources and then, over a series of generations, creates closer fits between needs and resources. The model has been applied to two very different settings in General Motors: all GM wholesale divisions and GM's Latin American retail and wholesale operations. The results have been positive in creating coherent curricula tied to career path progressions for all employees in these organizations. Evolutionary and practical, this PDC model can be applied to any business or industry to build competency‐based curricula that not only provide personnel development support systems for today's needs, but for tomorrow's as well.