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Assistant Recording Technician: Preparing for your Assessments

By Dave Tracey – AIM EPA Assessor, Internal Quality Assurer and Subject Specialist

I’m Dave, one of the industry specialist assessors for your Assistant Recording Technician apprenticeship here at AIM. In our other blog we shared some top tips for Assistant Recording Technician Gateway, now it’s time to think about getting ready for your two assessments. Unlike your exams at school though, this doesn’t involve lots of boring revising, but being prepared for the assessments will allow you to perform at your best and show your assessor how good you are at your job as a recording technician. Because that’s all this is, it’s an assessment to see how well you know your own job!

1. Try a mock project

You don’t have to wait till the project assessment to have a go at writing a report, doing a presentation and answering questions about a recording project. You’ve been involved in lots of recording projects, so why not have a practice go at the assessment? All the details you need are in your apprentice pack and your training provider can mark the report and presentation and pretend to be the assessor for a questioning session. The feedback you get could really help you approach your real project assessment.

2. Practice using PowerPoint

Doing a mock project assessment will allow you to get to grips with Microsoft PowerPoint, which you’ll use for your presentation. If you’ve mastered DAWs like Logic or Pro Tools then you’re clearly pretty handy with software, so it shouldn’t take too long to sus this out. You could even develop or decide on the visual theme to save time later. A top tip is to not get carried away with creating too much animation – keep it clear!

3. Make bullet points for your professional discussion

Because you’ve got access to the Assistant Recording Technician assessment record, you’ll have a really good idea about what the assessor will ask you in order to prepare for the professional discussion part of your assessment. Because your assessor has read your portfolio, they will relate the questions to what you’ve done in your apprenticeship, so it’s worth making some notes for each grading criteria. You won’t know exactly what questions will be asked, but you’ll have a good idea about what they’ll be about!

4. Do a mock professional discussion

The Professional Discussion is a bit like doing a job interview, but hopefully not as scary! Your assessor will ask you questions that give you the opportunity to evidence the grading criteria. They may ask an initial question and then a follow up question to clarify what you’ve said or to ask for more evidence. They’re definitely not there to trip you up and confuse you, but if you haven’t done anything like this before then doing mock professional discussions with your training provider will be invaluable. The more confident and comfortable you are, the more you’ll be able to give detailed and clear answers.

5. Get confident with video conferencing

Both assessment methods will involve video conferencing, which can feel unnatural the first time you do it so why not get used to it before the day? We use a system called GoTo Meeting, but any other system like Zoom or Teams will feel similar. Using video conferencing to do the mock assessments with your training provider will get you used to seeing yourself on screen, getting your room lighting right and sharing your screen for your presentation. None of it is complicated, but it’s all things that you’d feel better about if you’ve practiced them all before the big day.

Discover more about the Assistant Recording Technician apprenticeship standard.


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