I am in Cheltenham today; carrying out final assessments for the RICS. There are normally four candidates seen by the panel, but today we have only three – so I get a lie in…
I enjoy assessing – it gives me a chance to keep up-to-date with current practice and legislation. It also helps me to help my own firms candidates – by giving them some insight as to what is expected of them at interview.
We know it is a fairly pressurised environment, but all candidates should come into the room assuming the have passed. In theory they have at that point if they have done the required hours of competency based tasks. They have also been ‘signed off’ by two members of the Institution. What tends to catch people out is that they have perhaps exaggerated the work they have done – 29 days of experience in February 2011 is not a good start! The common reason for referral (you don’t ‘fail’ in this uber-PC world) is that the candidate couldn’t demonstrate that they had achieved the competency level.
We know that every candidate is nervous – and we take account of this.
Interestingly the RICS give feedback to assessors on the last session sat. Last Autumn 70% of all candidates passed, 746 on their first attempt. There are no quota’s – but as a generality I have found that we tend to pass three out of the four we see ( We have referred three out of four – that was a bad day!). You hope that all of the candidates will pass…
So, I look forward to meeting the three candidates today. It will be a long day for me – but it will be longer for them! And they have to wait for three weeks before they hear the result.
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Thanks for a great post, its not that easy to find good RICS related blog posts at the moment, so I will look forward to reading more from you.
I hope it helped; are you about to sit final APC?
thank you Tim. i can relate to laurey that there really ain’t many forums or blogs talking about RICS assessments…
No problem, the issue is that I have to try to keep on the side of the RICS rules! I simply try to re-assure people about the role of an assessor and how I approach things. I’m always willing to chat through with candidates, you can easily contact me through the blog….