How to Gain Experience as a Newly Qualified Assessor

Katie Gray Career Opportunities, End-Point Assessment, Useful Stuff August 13, 2019August 23, 2019 0 Comment

If you’re thinking about becoming an Assessor or already are a newly qualified Assessor, chances are, you’ve been looking at what kind of job opportunities there are. Much like any other jobs, some vacancies may ask for ‘experience’.

Having ‘experience’ as a requirement for a job as an Assessor can be seen as unfair for some. How can a newly qualified Assessor gain experience if they need the experience to get a job in the first place?! If you are having this issue there are options available for you to explore.

Shadow an Assessor

This would involve you in observing another Assessor carrying out their day-to-day job. This Assessor would need to be qualified. It would be most ideal to be watching the Assessor actually carrying out assessments with their learner. You wouldn’t be required to do or say anything as the shadower you are simply watching and taking notes.

Whilst this is volunteer experience and therefore unpaid, shadowing is a great way to get your foot in the door. It will also get some well-needed experience under your belt. It’s great for newly qualified assessors and will maximise your chances of getting an Assessing job, so it’s definitely worthwhile!

Plenty of training organisations and/or local colleges are happy to allow newly qualified Assessors to shadow their Assessors; mainly because it doesn’t cost them anything. So all you would need to do is approach these types of companies. Another thing to consider is if you have any family or friends that work in Further Education; have a chat with them and see if they can help you out with any shadowing opportunities. Even consider asking your connections on LinkedIn.

( Sorry because of the way we deliver our courses we are not able to offer shadowing opportunities.)

End Point Assessment

Another route you could try is End Point Assessment. End Point Assessors (EPA’s) are the people who do the final checks to ensure that an apprentice has passed their apprenticeship. This is a different job to being an assessor and is in huge demand at the moment. Have a quick search for End Point Assessor jobs and you will see what I mean.

To be an EPA you need three things;

A recognised Assessor such as the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement.
.Occupational competence in the relevant sector.
An appropriate occupational qualification.

Within EPA your occupational competence is far more important than your assessing experience. In most cases just having the assessor qualification is enough. This makes it an ideal job for a newly qualified assessor who has worked in their sector for a number of years.

What skills a newly qualified assessor will need to be an EPA

There are a few new skills that you need to have to be an EPA if you area newly qualified assessor but you can learn these quite quickly. Until recently there was no easy way of learning these new skills. That is why we have started running a series of EPA Workshops.

In our EPA workshops, you learn all the new skills you will need to be an EPA and get the opportunity to put them into practice. Importantly it also counts as a full day of CPD. Our next workshop is in Manchester on the 11th October but please be aware they do book up very fast so you will need to be quick if you want to get on it.

If you like the idea of being an End Point Assessor take a look at our End Point Assessment Knowledgebase which has a lot more information for you to read through.

And one final point. Even if a job advert does ask for experience, don’t let it put you off from applying. Put yourself forward for jobs regardless of their expectations of your experience – it won’t hurt! There are employers out there that will still consider hiring you even if you don’t have much experience.

Where Do I Begin With Setting Up A Training Company?

Katie Gray Career Opportunities, Useful Stuff February 26, 2019March 7, 2019 2 Comments

At Brooks and Kirk, we have over 20 years of experience in running our own Training Provider. It’s quite possible that you’re considering running your own – which is great! Now, your initial thought may be ‘where do I begin with setting up a training company?’ and if it is, you’ve come to the right place! We’re going to use the experience we’ve gained over the years to help you with everything you’ll need to know about starting your own training company, right from the beginning.

What Type of Courses Do I Want To Deliver?

The first thing that you will need to decide about setting up a training company is what type of courses you want to deliver.

If you want to deliver Bespoke Courses (ones that have been written by yourself/your company), then you and your staff are not required to be qualified or have any existing training experience. If this is the route that you want your company to go down, then take a look at our page on Bespoke Courses.

However, if you want to deliver Accredited Courses, then the route you need to go down is very different. It will involve qualified members of staff…

What Qualified Staff Do I Need To Deliver Accredited Courses?

If you want to deliver Accredited Courses, such as BTECs or NVQs, then your company will need to be registered with an awarding body. You may have heard of some popular awarding bodies, such as Pearson Edexcel, or City&Guilds.

However, before you register with an awarding body, there are a couple of things you will need. In terms of members of staff, you will need an absolute minimum of:

1 Qualified Internal Quality Assurer (IQA)
1 Qualified Assessor

The Internal Quality Assurer

The IQA of your company will be responsible for monitoring your centre’s assessment practices and procedures. Your IQA will be the person who organises visits from Awarding Bodies as mentioned above. One of their main responsibilities will be to internally evaluate, maintain and improve the quality of assessment.

This person will need the Level 4 Certificate in Leading the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practices.

The Assessor

The Assessor of your company will be responsible for assessing your learners in their place of work and/or their learning environment (whichever one is relevant). This means that they will be able to take your learners through their qualification and ensure that they have the knowledge, skills, and behaviours necessary.

This person will need the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement.

In any event, the IQA and the Assessor for your company CANNOT be the same person. You may find it beneficial to have more than one Assessor within your company. Especially as the company and the workload expands. It’s also important to note that you as the company owner do not necessarily have to be the IQA.

For more information on delivering Accredited Courses, take a look at our page on Starting Your Own Accredited Training Company.

What’s The Best Career For A Parent?

Katie Gray Career Opportunities August 23, 2018 0 Comment

As a parent, balancing your career with your children, the rest of your family and your social life can be a real struggle. You might even be looking at reducing your hours to part-time work instead, just to cope with it all. Don’t worry – we’ve got the perfect career for a parent…

Become an Assessor! If you’ve got job experience or qualifications in any sector, you’re halfway there already! Although, we should probably explain what an Assessor is first; an Assessor is someone who supports and guides a person training in your sector in order for them to gain a vocational qualification. As an Assessor, you’ll need to offer your learner advice, give them feedback, and if necessary deliver training to help them become qualified in your area of expertise. So, here’s why it could suit you as a busy parent…

It’s Versatile

We know, you’re already thinking about that experience thing we just mentioned… Just to clarify, by experience we advise a recent background of 2-3 years at least in one sector. Now, we say recent because this is where it becomes a bit of a grey area. If you had 3 years of experience working in retail 15 or so years ago, a lot of things will have changed since then. It’s unlikely you would be competent in that area without taking some kind of refresher course.

But, if you do have fairly recent experience and/or qualifications in a variety of sectors, you’d be competent to assess learners in all of these areas. For parents, this will be music to your ears to know you don’t have to spend money on childcare whilst you attend boring night classes at a college only to gain a qualification in something you’re perfectly competent in!

Oh, and then there is the Assessor qualification which you’ll also need – but that’s just as pain-free to obtain. You just need the CAVA qualification; but with no time limits and 24/7 support, you can study whenever you like, for as long as you like.

Great Job Flexibility

Whilst we’re on the subject of things being versatile and what not, now’s a good time for us to mention the flexibility an Assessing job has. This is something we find is an important part of a career for a parent. If you are a Freelance Assessor, you can work as and when suits you and your family needs. This way, you won’t miss out on valuable time with your family because of work commitments. You could take off all the time you need during half terms and school holidays to make sure you’re always there for your children. If it suits you, you could work evenings when the kids are in bed! The options are endless, and having that flexibility within your job allows you to work when you are feeling your best.

Healthy Work-Life Balance

If you were an Assessor, you’d find that besides from that all important family and work time, you’d be able to balance things out to find time for yourself. So, whether that be an afternoon of your favourite hobby or a day out with some friends, your social and alone time will be easy to balance out. You could spend your morning getting the kids ready for school, having coffee with friends, do a few hours of work in the afternoon and still be ready to pick the kids up at 3!

If you need more detailed tips on how to find the perfect work-life balance, give our 8 ways to achieve a healthy work-life balance post a read!

Extra Income

The struggle; you work full time, perhaps your partner does too, and you still can’t make ends meet. Especially when it’s the school holidays and you’re having to pay for childcare! But you don’t necessarily have to quit your job to become an Assessor – it might be more beneficial for you to assess on top of your normal job. This way, you’ll gain more income and the comfort of being financially stable. Perhaps the extra income will help out with paying for a babysitter so you can enjoy a night out!

There’s A Demand

But of course, you may be reading this thinking ‘is there actually a demand for Assessors?’ There absolutely is! Just as an example, Reed currently has over 1,600 Assessor jobs available, Indeed has over 4,600, and LinkedIn has over 4,700! That’s right – social media platform LinkedIn advertises jobs too. In fact, they offer the most Assessor jobs!

Assessors are, of course, most needed in areas which you need an NVQ, such as:

Health and Social Care
Childcare
Hospitality
Hairdressing
All Trades

But regardless of the industry that you work in, it’s highly likely that there’s an Assessor needed in that area.

That’s our reasons for why we think becoming an Assessor is the best career option for parents! So if you’re ready to take the next step, our FAQ page on becoming an Assessor should clear up any further questions.

9 Ways To Keep Your CPD Record Up To Date

Lauryn Dawson Career Opportunities, Useful Stuff June 7, 2018October 29, 2018 0 Comment

As an assessor, it is important to keep your CPD up to date. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been an assessor for 6 months or 6 years, Continuing Professional Development is essential. Luckily for you, we have 9 ways you can keep your CPD record up to date! But first, just in case you’re new to this whole CPD shebang;

What is CPD?

CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development. CPD is the process of undertaking activities to maintain and develop, new and existing skills within your occupation. Whilst continuing your professional development you could come across new skills that could be used in daily life as well as your job role.

Normally, your evidence of CPD is collected in a portfolio. This can either be stored electronically on a computer or as a hard copy with documents in a folder. This then becomes your CPD record.

Why is CPD important?

CPD is important for quite an obvious reason really. It is a way of ensuring personal development. As a professional and as an assessor, more specifically, you need to constantly be looking for ways to improve. You are seen as an ‘expert’ by your learners, so live up to that title! At the end of the day, you want to become the best assessor possible; and maintaining an up to date CPD record is how you can achieve that. Furthermore, prospective employers will want to see your CPD record. So, it is a necessity!

9 Ways To Keep Your CPD Record Up To Date:

Standardisation Meetings

If you are working as an assessor, it is a requirement that you attend standardisation meetings. In fact, it is recommended that you attend at least two per year. Standardisation meetings ensure that all assessors are updated on any changes that may affect then and that they are working and assessing to the same standard. These meetings also provide a great opportunity for assessors to share best practices and personal assessment techniques. It would generally be the Lead IQA for your centre who would arrange and chair these standardisation meetings.

CPD Events & Conferences

You never normally need to look too far to find CPD Events or Conferences/Networking meetings that you can attend. This goes for both events specific to your area of expertise and those that are specific to your role as an assessor. This kind of CPD activity can be very useful when there are big changes on the horizon for the qualifications you deliver.

Generally speaking, these kinds of events also tend to have industry experts as speakers. If there is, then you will also have the opportunity to discuss any areas you need advice on as well. By attending these conferences, you’re giving yourself the best chance of being one step ahead of everyone else.

Feedback > Reflection > Evaluation > Action

Going through those four stages can be an extremely useful CPD activity in itself! Let’s take you through each stage;

Feedback – This is priceless. When given correctly and taken on board, Feedback can be a great resource for identifying areas for improvement; which at the end of the day, is what CPD is all about! Whether it comes from your colleagues, learners, or just people around you, constructive criticism can be a good thing and something you can learn from. So, make sure you record and store any feedback you receive, good or bad.

Reflection – Now that you know what other people think your strengths and weaknesses are, you need to ask yourself; Have you made any mistakes? If so, how could you avoid them again in the future? Have there been any questions that you have been asked and unable to answer confidently? By reflecting on your past work, you can identify weaknesses that others may not have spotted. This will then make the next step easier.

Evaluation – By taking the feedback you have received from others and your own self-reflection, you can evaluate which areas you can improve in and how. This process should then leave you with some form of an action plan. Hopefully, some of the areas that you identified as weaknesses will already have been resolved to an extent. Because sometimes, just going through this process and making yourself aware of an area for improvement is enough. It might just have been a bad habit that has been pointed out to you whilst you’re communicating with your learners for example. This is an area to your practice that you can improve on just from realising that it is happening if you like. But for any other weaknesses, you have the final step.

Action – The most simple, but most important stage. You need to action any areas for improvement, that was highlighted by your evaluation, through the most appropriate CPD activity. This could be any of the other 8 in this post, it just depends which will be the most suitable.

Newsletter Subscriptions

Subscribing to newsletters is a good way to keep on top of any changes, whether this is changes in your sector or your role as an assessor. There could be big changes within the Further Education sector as a whole which you need constant updates on. Just like there has been in recent years with the Apprenticeship Reform! Also, if you come across something in one of the newsletters that you are unfamiliar with, then you might need to do some research into it. This leads me on to my next point…

Research

It is crucial you keep up to date with what’s going on in your sector and in further education. Things can change so quickly or go out of date. Like I mentioned above, it may just be a case of receiving an email that mentions something which you are unfamiliar with. Actually spending some time doing some research into that could end up being extremely beneficial. After all, it could end up being something that you integrate into your day-to-day assessments. Probably the quickest and easiest way to do your research these days is just to have a Google and see what blogs are out there. You don’t have to spend a copious amount of time researching, just an hour here or there will do.

Courses and Qualifications

Are your qualifications looking a bit dated? Well, let’s look at updating that rusty ol’ CV then! It’s always good to have recent courses and qualifications on your CV. Maybe you haven’t studied English or Maths since doing your GCSEs or even O levels? As an assessor, it’s always good to be able to demonstrate competency in Maths and English. There are plenty of small CPD courses available online. You just need to find a MOOC and a course ideal for you. “What on earth is a MOOC?” You’re probably thinking…

MOOCs – MOOCs stands for Massive Open Online Courses. There are a variety of different courses out there on the internet. Often these courses are free, which is a bonus! Maybe one of your employees or learner’s first language isn’t English. Learning the basics of a different language could help both you and the other person out and make working or assessing run a bit more smoothly. One of the best MOOCs out there is Open Learn. They are connected to the Open University and they offer hundreds of free online courses.

As an assessor, you may have learners with specific needs such as a hearing or visual impairment. So, if you are looking for course inspiration, maybe a sign language or braille course would be a good idea? As well as picking up new, valuable and transferable skills, it would help to put both you and your impaired learners at ease.

Last but not least… Another area to consider when looking into small courses is Technology. With Virtual Learning Environments now being the norm when it comes to delivery methods, it can’t be ignored. So, it would certainly be worth looking into what IT-related courses are out there.

New Technology

New apps, computer programs and devices can all compliment your role as an assessor. It is just a case of knowing what’s out there and how to use it! For example, one of your learners finds it difficult to read on paper as they’re dyslexic. But you heard about a new app which can scan the writing and format it into speech. Therefore, the learner can listen to a piece of text instead of struggling to read it. Before putting these apps or new technologies into practice, I would recommend spending some time having a play around testing. This is normally best done in your own time. Because the last thing you want to do is sit there learning on the job, looking like you haven’t got a clue what to do. Instead, make sure that you turn up looking like a tech-expert.

Social Media Groups

Speaking of technology, you could join groups on different social media websites such as LinkedIn or Facebook. These groups could be specific to the Further Education sector and Assessing field in particular, or they could be related to the industry you assess in. These groups provide a platform for almost a kind of on-going standardisation meeting. People share news stories that relate to the purpose of that group. In addition to that, it is also a great way to gain more contacts and seek advice from like-minded professionals.

Read, Read, Read

As well as researching online, completing small courses, attending standardisation meetings and all of the above for that matter, you could read. Read, read and then read some more. Whether it be journals, textbooks or even your own course specifications! The journals and textbooks that you choose to read could be to do with assessing or your area of expertise or both! By reading, you can broaden your understanding in areas that directly relate to your job. For example, one of your responsibilities as an assessor is to know the specifications of the qualification you’re assessing. It doesn’t sound like the most entertaining bedtime read admittedly. And to be truthful, that’s because it really isn’t! However, the better you know a specification, the quicker and easier you can plan and carry out assessments.

That’s A Lot of CPD!

We’ve taken you on a long CPD journey during this blog. Starting with what CPD is, then all the way through our 9 ways to keep your CPD up to date. Now you have no excuses as to why you can’t keep your CPD record up to date. We hope you have learned something from this blog. Until next time, happy assessing!

6 Top Tips for Newly-Qualified Assessors

Sam Sleight Career Opportunities March 28, 2018March 28, 2018 3 Comments

So, you’ve recently completed your assessor course and you are now a qualified assessor… Happy days! But you may be thinking, “what do I do now?” or “how can I give myself the best possible chance to get a job as an assessor?” There’s no need to panic, we’ve got your back! Here are our 6 top tips for newly qualified assessors:

1. Shadowing Opportunities

One way of gaining experience in assessing is through shadowing other assessors. If you’re not familiar with this term, shadowing an assessor basically involves observing another assessor within your industry carrying out real-time assessments on a learner. If you were shadowing, you wouldn’t be required to say or do anything, just watch and take notes. Obviously, it is going to be unpaid experience, but it’s all good experience nonetheless.

One of the best ways to find shadowing opportunities is simply by approaching learning providers such as your local colleges or independent training providers and asking the question. If you have any family or friends that work in Further Education in some capacity, then see if they can arrange a couple of shadowing sessions for you. After all, a lot of the time in this world, it is all about who you know! Alternatively, you can always ask around on any relevant Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Which brings us nicely onto how you can…

2. Take advantage of LinkedIn

Now, if you don’t have a Linkedin account, then this tip isn’t much use to you at the moment. That is why you should go and create a Linkedin account right now!

For those of you that don’t know, LinkedIn is a social networking platform; specifically designed for the business community. Basically, it’s like Facebook for businesses and business people. The main purpose of LinkedIn is for companies and members to build working relationships and networks. Anyway, that’s enough on what it’s all about, more on how LinkedIn can be incredibly useful for you as a newly-qualified assessor.

Give off the right impression

Your profile is basically a virtual CV. So, even if it takes you a good few hours, you need to optimise your profile to appeal to the right people. These days, it’s not uncommon for companies to use social media when they are looking at filling job vacancies. Whether it be just to research candidates that have applied for a job, or even for crawling LinkedIn and headhunting prospective employees based on their skills and experience. That is why you are going to want to big up ALL of your strengths and especially those that are particularly important for an assessor.

Be a LinkedIn groupie

It is okay to be a LinkedIn groupie – In fact, it’s more than okay, we would strongly recommend it!

Join as many relevant groups as you can; that includes groups that are both relevant to your industry and to your role as an assessor. Every group has two sections, one for discussions and one for jobs. If you really want to ensure that you have access to every possible job opportunity, then it’s down to you to make sure that you are in all of the right places. Who knows, you may find assessor jobs within these groups that aren’t showing elsewhere online. In addition to this, the ‘discussions’ section within these groups is an ideal place to ask about opportunities, voluntary or paid.

To get you on your way, here are a few links to some useful groups for you to become a member of:

Connect, Connect, Connect!

You don’t follow or befriend people on LinkedIn, you ‘Connect’. So this piece of advice is a simple one, but also possibly the most effective when it comes to taking advantage of LinkedIn.

The more connections you have, the more potential for opportunities to arise. It is as simple as that. So, connect with family, friends, colleagues, people within groups… just connect away!

Here at Brooks and Kirk, we have had past learners who have been headhunted on LinkedIn whilst completing the assessor course. They’ve gone on to connect with important people and get the assessor job they were hoping for. All just for having a LinkedIn profile and connecting with people.

3. End-Point Assessment (EPA)

This new assessing role can be an ideal way to gain experience in vocational assessment. But before we go into the ‘How’ and ‘Why’, we should probably cover the ‘Whats’.

What is an End-Point Assessor and what do they do?

An End-Point Assessor is an independent assessor who is responsible for determining what type of grade an apprentice achieves upon completion of their apprenticeship (Pass, Merit or Distinction). Only once a learner has completed all of the qualifications that make up their apprenticeship, do they go on to the synoptic assessment with the End-Point Assessor. This is a one-off assessment that will likely comprise of 3 or 4 different types of assessment.

Just to clarify, the End-Point Assessor isn’t involved in the assessment of the apprentice’s NVQ in any way, shape or form. It will be the college or independent training provider that will be responsible for that.

Okay, so how and why?

For those of you that are short on experience in assessment, providing you are eligible to work as an End-Point Assessor, there is no better way to pick up the experience you need!

Generally speaking, it isn’t as crucial to have extensive experience in assessment for EPA jobs as it is for NVQ Assessor jobs. If you have a read through the blog post we did on End-Point Assessments, you will see that the requirements for End-Point Assessors do vary from apprenticeship to apprenticeship. So, whilst we can’t say that this is the case for all apprenticeships, MOST End-Point Assessments don’t require an experienced assessor to carry them out. There tends to be a lot more focus on the amount of years experience you have within your industry as opposed to experience in assessing.

There is a lot to take in and understand when it comes to End-Point Assessments, so if you would like to find out more, we would recommend having a more in-depth read about The New Assessing Role here.

4. Recommended Job and Recruitment Sites

When looking for assessor jobs, we recommend looking on both Job and Recruitment sites. There are specialist job and recruitment sites for the Further Education sector which quite a few people aren’t even aware of.

To make it as easy as possible for you to find your perfect assessor job, we have included a list of recommended recruitment agencies and job sites below. You will see that some of these sites are FE specialists and the others just have too many assessor jobs to leave off the list. Furthermore, we have close relationships with the majority of specialist companies that are listed below, so we are confident that you would be in safe hands.

Recruitment Agencies:

Job Sites:

5. Strengthen Your CV with the AET

We appreciate that the FE sector is a nightmare for acronyms! So, just to clarify, when we say ‘AET’, we are referring to the Level 3 Award in Education and Training. This qualification replaced a qualification that was commonly known as the ‘PTLLS’ Award.

If you have already got this qualification, then you can skip to the final tip. If not, here’s why you should…

The Level 3 AET is essentially the first stepping stone towards becoming a qualified teacher in adult education. For example, the AET on its own is enough to get your foot in the door at a Further Education college; so it’s certainly not to be sniffed at! If you have been having a look online for assessor jobs, you may well have seen that quite a few say having a ‘PTLLS or AET’ qualification is also ideal. And that is because it compliments the role of an assessor so well!

Think of it like this, your main role as an NVQ assessor is to assess a learner’s vocational knowledge and skills. What happens when you identify gaps in your learner’s knowledge and skills? Well, you should be able to teach them what they need to know to fill those gaps. This is where the AET is ideal because it provides you with the skills you need to be competent in the teaching aspect of your role as an assessor. Plus, you get an accredited qualification to evidence that competence as well.

The requirement for an assessor to be able to teach where necessary is becoming increasingly important as well. Especially for anyone that is involved with the assessment of qualifications as part of the new apprenticeship standards. Please click on the following link if you would like to find out more about our AET Course.

6. Apply Regardless

So, now you’re scanning through assessor job adverts and one catches your eye… The only problem is, it says you need ‘2 years minimum experience in assessing’ and you don’t have that. Don’t let this put you off, apply regardless!

Every learning provider has different policies for their own assessors. For the majority of qualifications, there is no ‘set-in-stone’ rule for what an assessor must have to be able to assess learners completing it. We discuss this in more detail in our blog post that discusses the question; ‘After I have completed my assessor course, what level can I assess up to?‘

But again, just to reiterate this point, even if the job description says ‘Experience required’, it is still worthwhile putting in an application. There are employers that will take you on without having much experience in assessment, even if it says otherwise in their job advert. Put it this way, if you got yourself an interview from an application for a job that stated ‘Experience required’, it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened and it certainly woouldn’t be the last…

That’s you all tipped up!

And that brings us to the end of our 6 top tips for newly-qualified assessors. We hope that you have been able to take at least one action point away from this blog. All things being well, this time next month you’ll be wanting 6 top tips for settling into a new assessor job!

Carillion Collapse – Finding Your New Career Path

Katie Gray Career Opportunities February 7, 2018February 6, 2018 0 Comment

As you’re probably aware, Carillion, one of the UK’s largest construction companies, collapsed under an enormous debt pile of £1.5 billion last month. Just last week, it was revealed 377 people would lose their jobs. Now, in more recent days, it has come to light that a further 452 people will also be losing their jobs. This takes the total to more than 800 workers. figure increase

Carillion, which employed around 20,000 people in the UK, was connected to a variety of roles. These were in both the public and private sector and some back-office functions.

If you have unfortunately been affected by Carillion’s collapse, here is where Brooks and Kirk come in. We may have some good news for you and a potential route of getting back into work…

Become a Construction NVQ Assessor

We should probably start by explaining what an NVQ Assessor actually is;

An NVQ Assessor uses their professional background and vocational skills and knowledge (from any industry) to help learners gain the desired qualification. They work closely with their learners so that they can give them necessary feedback to meet the standards required. If you have more questions about what an Assessor does, visit our FAQ page!

What would you need to become an NVQ Assessor?

First of all – occupational competence! This would be in whatever area you are wanting to assess in. Seen as though Carillion was the largest Construction company in the UK, let’s take a construction worker for example. As a construction worker, occupational competence would be evidenced by past work experience and/or qualifications in that sector. It’s as simple as that!

But it’s not just Construction workers who can become Assessors. If there’s a sector that involves a vocational qualification, there’s an Assessor role to go with it.

Second of all – the Assessor qualification. More specifically, the most highly regarded Assessor qualification, which is the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement. Or CAVA, for short. This qualification would qualify you to assess your candidates in any learning or work environment!

We understand that it’s not easy to ‘just get back into work’. But you can see from job sites such as Indeed and FEJobs, there’s a high demand for Assessors in trades including Construction. So, whether you’ve spent a small or large amount of years in your sector, why let those years go to waste? Becoming an NVQ Assessor can allow you to use all the skills and knowledge you’ve learnt over the years to guide others in the same sector.

With Brooks and Kirk, you can take all the time you need to complete your qualification and find the best route for you to get back into work. If you would like more information on the Assessor qualifications, try our CAVA page. Alternatively, you can give us a call on 01205 805155 and we’ll be more than happy to take you through anything you need to know.