Transcript
The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.
Matt Nally
So in our final topic, we’re going to look at how you can effectively prepare for the different routes or levels of memberships when you’re going into qualifying. I suppose one of the things we’ll look at is the types of resources available to people to help them prepare, whether it’s rsgs resources, you know, that you’ve got a book out, and so on. But did you want to touch on the types of things that are available? And then perhaps we can also look at, you know, your story behind how you’ve progressed through the levels? And, you know, how, how you’ve prepared and how that’s changed over the years? Yeah, sure. So
Jen Lemen
probably the spot starting point for any candidate is, is going back to what the RICS provides. So any candidate looking at associate or the APC 100% must have read the candidate guide. It tells you what you need to do how to do it basically gives you everything you need to know, the RICS also have a webpage for each qualification. That’ll give you a link to the online Ric s assessment platform where you submit your documents. There’s some great user guides on how to use the platform and how the counsellor counsellor sign off process works as well. The RICS on the website also have a pathway guide for every single pathway. And that’s there’s a different pathway guide for associate and MRCs for all the different pathways. It tells you about all the competencies, it splits it down per level, and it will tell you what you need to know, what do you need to have done? So level one, level two? And then level three? What would you do? What have you advised on for associate? That will just be what do you need to know and it gives plenty of examples of different types of work that fit within the different competencies. So as a as a very bare minimum candidate guide, our ICS website, and on the relevant pathway guide. Outside of that, there are some great resources available. Candidates might have seen a book I’ve written called How to Become a chartered surveyor. It literally does what it says on the tin. There are sections on all of the different the membership levels, routes, how to write it your submission, what happens in the interview. It’s got everything in there. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this but I feel that I want to announce it. So so I’ve got another book coming out. Hopefully, maybe next year, I don’t know the publication date, but it’s going to be looking. So this is a special one for you on this, which is on the mandatory competencies. So that basically takes the RSS pathway guide and gives you anything, everything you need to know, on those say soon. Other, other good resources. So obviously, you need to build it your CPD record, and obviously a really good knowledge base. So we’ve got a blog, on our website, I’ve written it every single week for the past seven years, which if you do the maths is quite a lot of blogs. They’ve got podcasts, and just an audio recording on YouTube you can listen to, there’s so many good podcasts just like this one, surveyor, Herb, our ICS YouTube videos, there’s there’s so much good content out there. Some of the law firms do excellent webinars, papers, blogs, et cetera, on a wide variety of topics. So I’d say, a really basic Google search on, you know, a specific area of knowledge can the candidates down down a rabbit hole and a rabbit warren of, of information, I think the key thing, you know, if you’re reading the candidate guide, if you’re reading a blog, if you’re listening to a podcast actually is start a Word document and make your own notes on what you hear. So you’re building out your own, your own your own knowledge base, something that you’ve processed, you’ve understood, and then you can keep that and use it throughout, you know, drafting your submission, and then going to interview if you’re an APC candidate. Nice.
Matt Nally
And this is a good thing to be able to look back at and review actually, I think it’s more exciting that you’ve got another book coming out and potentially have to have another discussion when that comes out. To go around the topics around that. I suppose one thing that might be useful to cover shortly will be sort of what are the things people tend to do well, around preparation and what what they don’t do as well, typically. But is it worth touching on on your story? Because I know you mentioned I think it was in our first topic around you know that your motivation for going for RSS was because your family was it at all done it it says your grandparents and granddad did you wanna give us a bit of background first, I suppose on what your process looked like and, and motivations and so on, then we can potentially look at how that looks for others in terms of preparing in the best way.
Jen Lemen
Yeah, sure. So when I was growing up, I always remember the school holidays, my, my dad had cartus around different shopping centres. He was a He’s now retired, but he worked in shopping centre management. So we go round, blue water, we go around white rose, in Sheffield, we go we’d literally just go around shopping centres in the school holidays. You take the behind the scenes, we’d see all the you know, the cool stuff in the centre. We you know, I went with one a couple of work trips, we went to Portugal. It was brilliant. But I I saw what he did. And I thought it looks really interesting. You know, he gets to meet people he gets to travel appears to like what he does. But he never, he never said to me, you know, I’d love it. If you were going to be a severe I was just, my parents always kind of just let me do what my heart told me I should be doing. So I actually went to university and did sports science at the University of Bath. Love sport, love science. It’ll do but I absolutely hated it. Interesting. So after a year and a half, I dropped out and I said I remember saying to my dad can’t do it. I’ve got you know, I’ve got I’ve got to quit, and I you know, I don’t know what to go and do next. And at that point popped into my head of well, my dad’s a surveyor, and he seems to like it. And I remember what you know, watching him being a surveyors. Well, I can do that, because that sounded like a good idea. And it looked like there was a more solid career path, you know, good. Good salary, good benefits, it’d be interesting. So I didn’t didn’t do it kind of the traditional way. I applied to University of the West of England and went for a part time course. So it’s five years. First couple of years it did on day release. The same time I was really lucky to get a job. In Bristol, I worked for a sole practitioner supporting him on really general practice, surveying, mainly commercial but you know, a couple of bits of residential. After a couple of years, I moved on and that’s when I started for my now business partner Rachel And actually that she’s one of the people who really mentored me and supported me through through all of this. And eventually she said to me, Well, you’re on day release, but I’d actually quite like it to be in the office five days a week. So I said to you, Well, I’m not I’m not coming in anymore. Can I kind of do it by distance learning, which went down? Very well, with some people not very well, with others. It was maybe before the before the advent of anything really being online? Yeah. Pretty much sitting, you know, sit in the classroom, and learn. So that was interesting. But
Matt Nally
was that quite challenging, then trying to do things remotely, then? Well,
Jen Lemen
you know what, I absolutely loved it. Because I don’t know, I don’t know whether if I’ve just got a short attention span, or I’m just so I’m so self motivated, just to get it done. Motivation wasn’t really a problem. And I just did everything I could to make sure that it worked. But 100% That wouldn’t work for everybody. And you did put a bit of a stop on life for you know, especially the last few years to just go well, you know, this is my focus. I’m going to get through this. And I think about everything else later on. So yeah, so I graduated brilliant first class. Yet first class did really well, really pleased, moved at the Career ranks at that job, which may be because we’ve talked about qualifications, I’d say my job role at the time didn’t reflect the fact that I wasn’t qualified to not being qualified didn’t hold me back. And it probably did in the end, in terms of moving up to the much higher levels. And I think, you know, politics has always but probably, no, I don’t know it must have been, must have been 12 months after that. There must have been the earliest that I could have got qualified. So earliest date occurred. Demo submission, went to interview passed. And then when, probably maybe in a year or so after that, we left to set up our own firm and that’s when I did my FRCS. And to be honest, I was just so I was just so proud. Yeah, yeah. Dad and granddad both both Chartered Surveyors, and it was just a really lovely jet. Yeah, just really lovely to, to say, I’ve done, I’ve done something and you will understand how, how challenging it was to get there. So I can imagine. It’s quite good story.
Matt Nally
It’s a lovely story, actually. And it’s funny how a path you might set out on it when it doesn’t go. How you thought it might initially actually ended up being, you know, going in a better direction, but you can’t you just have to sort of, you know, accept the journey you’re on, I suppose is. But it’s, it’s interesting how you end up getting moved back to the right thing. You know, you can’t try and force something. But when you get the motivation there, you can really drive yourself forward and achieve what you want to. Yeah. I suppose I suppose my question from there then is, from your experience of having gone through both Emmerich’s and Neflix. And when you work with people, obviously, regularly going through the process, what what do people typically do really well? And where do they put where they potentially fall into pitfalls? Going through the process? Yeah,
Jen Lemen
sure. I think it really depends. I think it really depends on you as an individual. So I know some people really, really struggle with writing up the submission, you know, they just can’t put a bit of writer’s block. They can’t write, or they find it really difficult to write in the way that our ICS want to see. I’ve seen we do see some really, really poor submissions. Sometimes Sometimes it is due to a lack of support and guidance from the counsellor you know, looking at examples in competencies and the right knowledge. But sometimes written work is it’s just something that people struggle with. Really, really good way you know, obviously, apart from getting some support is actually the Grammarly app. Yes. Which, I’d say particularly the paid version because it adds on, you know, things like fluency and phrasing. If you’re not amazing at being able to, you know, write something that’s, you know, Pulitzer Prize winning actually, the Grammarly app can really help you to learn how to do that. So there are some great tools out there to do a good submission.
Matt Nally
Yeah, definitely. Maybe
Jen Lemen
some of the candidates who struggled a bit with the written work actually perform really well at interview because, you know, they can they can talk the way around the work, they can explain things, you know, they come across really well. All. On the flip side, some candidates just hate that pressured interview environment and nerves. Confidence. Stress around the interview really, really affects some candidates. And in a way, there’s sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it, but it’s putting yourself you know, through lots of mock interviews, lots of practice, looking at ways that you can reduce nerves. You know, some of the things like mindfulness, meditation, visualisation, all of those things, and just getting some extra support to to help you through it can be a really, really good thing to do.
Matt Nally
But on that note, what do people tend to do wrong? In the end? If it’s an interview route? For a membership level? Is it prep? Or is it? Is it just being nervous on the day? Or is it not having the right examples? Or not answering the question perhaps is,
Jen Lemen
yeah, sometimes nerves do get the better of people. But as assessors we’re, you know, we know, we were nervous, we know that you’re going to be nervous. So really well trained assessor will, will help the candidate through that, you know, given time to answer questions, you know, ask questions in really direct, direct way. So nerves, I wouldn’t say would be the number one reason, I think some candidates just don’t know their submission. So they’ve written it, they’ve put it aside and they’ve treated the interview like an exam. So they might know lots, but if you’ve put an example, I don’t know, a level three in Bristol, and we ask you about it. And you go, sir, I don’t, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Not knowing what you’ve written up can be, it can be a real, a real challenge. So that prep around knowing what you’ve done, and the knowledge behind it is really important. Versus a some candidates just failed to listen. So I don’t know, if we ask a question. And a candidate doesn’t listen, we find they sometimes either tell us about something completely different. Or they just tell us everything they know. And there’s a there’s a real skill in says it’s active listening, but just honing in on what am I being asked and just giving that one answer.
Matt Nally
Can pausing. Yeah, yeah,
Jen Lemen
it is in really? Yeah, just giving that answer the same as if you’ve got a client in front of you. The client doesn’t want to know everything, they’ve got very specific question. And that professionalism on being able to answer what you’re being asked, often, often trips candidates up.
Matt Nally
It’s interesting when you say on just general emails quite a lot where you send something across, and then maybe someone finds back response quite quickly answering the first part or what they think that you meant by the first part of the email. But because they’ve not properly gone through the context, you then have to go back and go, no, actually, this is what I need from you not not what, what you’ve responded with. And I think that’s possibly the same thing. And whether it’s the pressure or just the eagerness to start an answer. Where people don’t focus on what’s the actual question. I think pausing is quite an important one to really reflect on what’s been asked before you feel the need to sort of feel you have to start going through an answer. Yeah,
Jen Lemen
it’s always that not panicking, because or just being so keen to give an answer. It’s got to be, it’s got to be the right, it’s got to be the right one. And that’s not. That’s not to say that everything technically has to be 100%. Because let’s face it, we’re all human. But it’s, you know, if somebody doesn’t know the answer to somebody, it’s actually being able to say, well, I don’t know the answer. You know, it could be well, it’s not within, it’s not within the scope of competence, I’d ask, you know, I’d ask somebody else or it could be, I’m just gonna write it down and come back to it at the end of the interview. So it’s almost it’s, it’s, it’s knowing how to answer difficult questions. And yeah, you’re right, not just ploughing in and then not Yeah. Not reading the second part of the email.
Matt Nally
The I suppose the scenario where perhaps it doesn’t go so well. You know, you don’t get the desired outcome. What’s the best thing you can do in terms of the reflection part on that in terms of them preparing for the second the Thames, if that makes sense? Yeah,
Jen Lemen
of course. So. So referrals are can be really disappointing. In frustrating, stressful, upsetting loads of different things, you’ll always get a referral report from our ICS that tells you what happened, what went well, what didn’t go so well. And I know lots of candidates get them and there’s a very immediate, emotional reaction to it. So I almost think read the report, put it down, go and be angry, gonna be upset, go and be whatever you need to be, and then come back to it with a fresh head. Ideally, sit down with counsellor friend counsellors in APC, cancel associate friend, family, colleague, somebody and go through it, even go through it logically and work out. What do you need to do to get through next time? The report gives you so much advice on you know, it might be specific questions, it might be, you know, how you listened, how you answered questions, and that will give you a really good set of objectives to work work on for next time. Sometimes you might not agree with what’s in the report, you might think it might think that it doesn’t really reflect what happened. There, I think in a way that sometimes we need to take things with a pinch of salt, take from it what you need, and then move forward. And then your focus really needs to be on Well, is it that I just had a bad day in the office? Is it that I actually didn’t, you know, I didn’t have the right experience or wasn’t ready, and then you can make a plan to go forwards? Whether it’s, I’m just gonna go for it again, do exactly the same. You know, and hope that it’s, you know, have a much, much better day, or is it? Do I need to go and do some more work in a specific type of instruction? You know, do I need to go learn more about X, Y, or Zed? So I think taking the report, let yourself feel whatever you need to feel, but then coming back to it with a plan, and the the candidates who succeed are the ones who plan?
Matt Nally
Yeah, yeah, I think it’s, I suppose you can liken it to a driving test. It’s a bit more serious, but it’s one the driving serious do I think, but, you know, if you don’t pass that first time, it’s, it’s frustrating, absolutely. But equally, the, the benefit of not passing is actually you end up a better driver, by the time you pass, then you’re in a better position when you go out. And I suppose it’s trying to view it in that, despite the frustration, trying to view it in that night, and then Sunday, actually, you can be better at the end of it. Once you’re through, I think, on that note, then obviously, if you if you fail a driving test, or don’t pass or whatever you want to say, then quite clearly, you know, you’re gonna get some more lessons, practice a bit more, and then, you know, resubmit. So with the, you know, the different pathways are there, where can you go and get sort of more, I don’t know, mock interview, practice, or Where’s best best to then sort of app once you’ve analysed, I suppose, look at what steps to take in terms of preparing.
Jen Lemen
So I’d say one of the one of the really good things you can do be Book, book a call with our ICS Lionheart. They’re really good. They won’t give you technical advice or advice, you know, specifically on what went wrong, but actually, they can just give you some really good support on you know, if it is nerves, confidence, getting over the referral, loads of those things, that’s a really good thing to do. You definitely need to sit down with your counsellor, and employer. You know, make a plan if it is things that you need to get some more experience of. I’d also say candidates often come in send us they send me their referral report, I have a look and give them some it’s free some advice on from an assessors point of view from a community, a completely independent third party, what it what I think might have gone wrong, just to try and give them another perspective on it. So yeah, and even just discussing the experience and the rapport with somebody who wasn’t there can often help to just highlight some of the things that they might need to go away. nd
Matt Nally
Awesome. Okay, nothing that’s been really helpful. Is there any sort of, I suppose final bits of advice you’d like to provide candidates around preparation? So I think the
Jen Lemen
key stumbling block, I would say is the planning towards submission in interview. So let’s say if you know you’re going to be submitting next February. Get your calendar, get an Excel spreadsheet and just plan out each week realistically with what you’re going to do to have a submission completed in good time. Candidates often face trouble with the counsellor sign off. Everybody’s busy and And, you know, when we review submissions, and it takes a long time, we need time to review it, put it down to come back to it to reflect on it, to give good advice. And the same same absolutely applies to your counsellor. So it could be getting getting your submission to a counsellor, a month, a month and a half before the deadline to make sure that they’re able to support you, rather than we do see some candidates go out the window, the submission window closes in three days, we signed me off and suddenly, you know, the answer is is is no.
Matt Nally
So it’s not trying to do an all nighter with a lot of Red Bulls. No,
Jen Lemen
not at all. I know if it was just us submitting something, it’d be fine. But when it needs when it needs somebody else to put their own letters on the line to go. I you know, I genuinely believe that this person is ready to go forward and I’ve you know, I approve your application. It’s just just not going to just not going to cut it.
Matt Nally
Awesome. Thank you for coming on and giving your insights on the different topics if if anyone wants to get in touch with you to learn more, whether it’s finding more resource or speaking to you how do they get in touch?
Jen Lemen
Best way go to Google and put in property elite or put gentlemen, take you to our website which is property hyphen elite dot code at UK and all my contact details are on there. You’ll also find us on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and probably some other social media channels have gotten about as well but just put property late and we should should come up first time we get absolutely delighted to anybody’s got any questions about routes, membership, referrals, support, etc. Always happy to always happy
Matt Nally
to chat. Fantastic and good luck with the second book and hopefully we can discuss that on another episode when that comes out. Deputy
Jen Lemen
Thank you very much for having me.