Before you say, “I’m just a Supervisor, what’s this got to do with me?”, bear in mind that your job as Supervisor or Counsellor is to assess competence. How else can you plan your candidate’s training? How else can you judge your candidate’s progress? How else can you confidently certify that they are competent enough to go to final assessment?

Many employers tell me that they quiz their candidate at a mock interview just before the real thing. It’s all very well testing your candidate like this (the way that you were tested?) but all that this does is to test their Level 1 knowledge. Not their understanding; not their opinion; not their awareness of relevant alternatives. These are all the things that RICS must test if they are going to confirm competency achievements in line with the definitions in the Guide. A quiz the week before interview is too late to discover that your candidate hasn’t had the Level 2 and 3 experience that they need.

You will be quizzing them throughout their training because you need to ensure that your people have an up-to-date and developing knowledge of relevant legal and technical matters. You know that they are no good to you without this.  That’s why RICS, on your behalf, have incorporated that statement in the Candidate’s Guide. But final assessment should be a professional exchange, not a quiz.

Maybe you didn’t think about it like this, but you assessed your candidate before you hired them. This was when you concluded that they knew nothing about what you regard as the fundamentals of the job. In those circumstances, the candidate must re-read their lecture notes and contact the RICS library, so that you can test them again, and relax.

 

You should also have assessed them before you agreed to support them towards qualification. That’s when you decide on their current competency levels and plan their training to ensure that they get to final assessment as soon as possible.

Finally, you assess them every quarter when you review their progress. When you sign off your candidate’s competency achievement record, you are expressing your professional opinion, so it is worth reminding yourself what you are signing, and satisfying yourself that they are competent enough at a particular level for you to sign it off.

In this context, assessing is easy if you refer to the Competency Guides. The definitions can all be turned into questions, and your candidate’s records will also prompt you. You have seen from their diary what they have been doing in the quarter, so “Tell me how you did ….?” is a good starting point. (You probably did that anyway when they brought in the work for your approval.) Relevant knowledge can be tested with “Why did you do it that way?”, and “How else could you have done it?”. Complicated scenario-based questions can be replaced with “What if…..?”  (“What if it was a flat roof?”, “What if the client went bust?”, “What if they planned a filling station next door?”, “What if current legislation changed?”) This line of enquiry will allow you to confidently sign off competency achievement. It will inevitably identify gaps in the candidate’s knowledge, which the candidate must fill. But if the gaps are in your candidate’s experience, then it is up to you to arrange for them to be filled.

Members in Scotland can contact Alan at RTAScotland@ricsonline.org. Others should seek out their local Regional Training Advisor.