6 Ways for an Inexperienced Assessor to Gain Experience
You’re a newly trained NVQ Assessor. You go onto the job sites, find an ideal role, and get hit with that ultra-frustrating requirement: Proven experience needed. How do you gain experience as an inexperienced assessor, if proven experience is always necessary? It’s an impossible condition!
Fortunately, there are ways of gaining experience without having worked in the role before. Here we’ll go through just a few options to bolster your CV so you can land your dream job as an NVQ Assessor.
1) Shadow an assessor
Lots of organisations are happy to let a newly qualified assessor shadow one of their experienced members of staff. This allows you to go through the assessment process in a real setting and gain invaluable experience that you can showcase on your resumé. Send out some emails, go through your contacts network, or pull in a favour to get yourself into the assessment process as an onlooker. It’ll go a long way.
2) Volunteer
After all that study, you’re ready to reap the rewards as a newly trained NVQ Assessor. You probably don’t want to be giving away your new skills for free. However, volunteering as a fully-trained Assessor is one way to quickly get some experience under your belt.
3) Do some freelance assessment
You may find it’s easier to get a couple of one-off assessment gigs than to land a full-time Assessor position straight away. Setting up as a freelance assessor gives you the chance to gain experience, build a portfolio and gather some references to put in a good word for you when it comes to applying for those permanent positions.
4) Lean on your industry experience
One of the prerequisites of training to become an NVQ Assessor is industry experience. So, if you’re looking to apply for NVQ Assessor jobs and are finding your experience in assessment is lacking, draw attention to your industry expertise. Use your years of experience and qualifications to really show why you would be a good NVQ Assessor.
5) Offer a trial shift
Trial shifts are a great way to prove your ability in a role when your experience on paper isn’t doing your skill justice. Some employers will consider offering a trial shift if you make the suggestion.
In summary…
The only way to get experience in assessment…is to get experience! Unfortunately, this often means working for free in the beginning or giving up your time to see assessment in action. Other options are to structure your job applications with a focus on your industry expertise and with the offer of a trial shift to qualm any doubts of a potential employer.
If you’d like to learn more about training to become an NVQ Assessor, get in touch with Brooks and Kirk today. Call us on 01205 805 155 or send an email to training@brooksandkirk.ac.uk.
Steve is a Chartered Manager and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.
He provides Educational Consultancy to the 19+ sector as well as being an Assessor, IQA, EPA and Digital Marketing Professional. When not doing any of these he finds time, every now and then, to write blogs and articles.