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What is today's blog about?
In this week’s blog, we take a look at our top 5 tips to ace your AssocRICS Summary of Experience. This is essential reading for all AssocRICS candidates.
1. Refer to the Pathway Guide
Our first top tip relates to the content of your Summary of Experience. You will need to write a statement for each mandatory and technical competency.
Your starting point for what to write for each competency stems from the relevant AssocRICS pathway guide, e.g., Residential Survey & Valuation or Building Surveying.
Each pathway has eight mandatory competencies:
Client care
Communication & negotiation
Conduct rules, ethics and professional practice
Conflict avoidance, management and dispute resolution procedures
Data management
Health & safety
Sustainability
Teamworking
You will need to write a statement for each of these, with the exception of Conduct rules, ethics and professional practice, which is assessed solely by the RICS Professionalism Module (and, of course, ensuring that what you write elsewhere in your submission is ethical and professional).
Each pathway also has a number of technical competencies. Some of these are core, where you have no choice over the competencies, whereas others are optional, where you have a choice over which competencies you choose. Some pathways have no optional competencies, so it is essential to refer back to the pathway guide at all times.
The pathway guide sets out a description, requirements, examples of likely skills, knowledge and experience and examples of tasks undertaken for each competency. This is your bible for knowing what to write and it will help you to split your experience into the right competencies.
2. Structure
Structure is the next key consideration when writing up your Summary of Experience.
Referrals are frequently based on a lack of practical experience demonstrated in AssocRICS submissions.
Therefore, when writing up each competency statement we recommend adopting the following structure:
Knowledge – what do you know? This should refer back to the examples of likely knowledge detailed within the pathway guide for each competency. This will need to be fairly concise given the limited word count.
Examples – you need to include at least two examples of relevant experience in each competency statement. You can use the examples of likely skills and experience or tasks undertaken to identify which examples will be appropriate to include in each competency.
Your examples should be very specific, i.e., on a property / project level, and written in the past tense and the first person. For example, ‘I valued a residential property in Bristol using the comparable method…’.
3. Signposting
It is helpful to your assessors to signpost all of your examples mentioned in your Summary of Experience with a clear title, e.g., ‘Valuation - Filton, Bristol’ for the example in 2. above. Doing so using bold formatting can help to identify your examples and ensure that they are highlighted within your Summary of Experience.
4. Written Style
Your Summary of Experience needs to be written in your own style. However, given the limited word count there are lots of ways that you can ensure that you are writing concisely and fluently.
We recommend downloading the How to Write in Plain English guide, which provides a helpful overview of how to write effectively.
You can also download our style and proof reading guide here.
However, we recommend using the first person, ‘I, me and my’ to demonstrate that your experience is your own, rather than that of anyone else.
5. Experience
When selecting examples, they need to be relevant to the competency you are writing about. We also recommend selecting examples that demonstrate breadth and depth of experience, rather than using very similar examples in the same competency.
For example, in Valuation we would recommend selecting examples covering more than one valuation method, purpose or building/asset type.
You do not, however, have to demonstrate experience of every type of example on the list in the pathway guide – but a range of examples will help to ensure that your AssocRICS submission is successful.
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Stay tuned for our next blog post to help build a better you.
N.b. Nothing in this article constitutes legal, professional or financial advice.