Hi, your comment is a bit long and I am not quite clear what is still a problem for you or not.
Professions as a gather requirement and exp awarded are both working for me in my test project. Both of these require [CGMZ] Professions if you are not already using that plugin. If you are using that plugin, make sure the profession is a party-wide profession and that the Profession's Name matches exactly the gathering node's Profession parameter is, including capitalization.