Adapted from Tom McKune’s LinkedIn commentary.
“The registration path can be tricky and long — but with the right mindset and a group of dedicated mentors there to guide you, the road need not be long.”
I wrote those words to congratulate Nadine, a candidate who recently reached professional registration through the Maselulekane programme. They apply just as well to every candidate engineer, technologist and technician working towards ECSA registration today.
Why candidates stall
Most candidates who struggle to register do not lack technical ability. What they lack is structure: a clear development plan, regular progress tracking, and evidence that is gathered as the work happens rather than reconstructed in a panic before submission. Workplace experience only counts when it is mapped deliberately against the competency outcomes ECSA expects — and that mapping is hard to do alone, in between project deadlines.
What makes the road shorter
In the Maselulekane programme I watched candidates like Nadine and Mosa reach the finish line ahead of their peers. The difference was never talent. It was commitment plus guidance: mentors who knew the process, honest progress reviews, and a group of peers walking the same road who kept each other accountable. Mosa’s story made the point just as well — she not only applied herself, she helped others along the way, and that willingness to guide each other is exactly what the profession needs more of.
What this means for employers
If you employ candidate practitioners, you already have most of the raw material: real projects, real responsibility, real mentors in your senior staff. What turns that into registrations is structure. That is the work we do every day through ECSA Candidate Management — development planning, competency mapping, mentoring support and submission preparation — and it is why we are building the Candidate Portal to make that structure easier for employers to maintain.
The road to registration does not have to be long. But nobody should have to walk it without a map.