You need to provide a statement outlining your employed or voluntary roles and say how your current role demonstrates the four areas of the competence matrix – see below. It is the most important part of your application as it tells the Validation committee how your skills and experience demonstrate the criteria and helps them reach a decision.
You can use the Statement of competence template to write your text and upload this to the online form, or write directly into the boxes in the online form.
Please note that draft new applications online cannot be saved and returned to, so it may be easier to complete the statement template and upload this to the online form .
For further information on how the competence categories apply in specialist areas of practice, please see our supporting specialist competence matrices. You can use these alongside the main competence matrix to see how your work fits into the criteria and to help you write your statement of competence.
Employed or voluntary roles
Please give detailed information about your role and responsibilities for your current and most recent roles over the last two years. Use each heading of the competence matrix (below) as a guide. You need to explain how you demonstrate the four areas – knowledge, autonomy, coping with complexity and perception of professional context – giving specific work examples.
You can find detailed guidance and examples of what you should include in the performance criteria (MCIfA) and some example statements in the ‘Templates and further guidance’ section below.
For any roles you’ve undertaken more than two years ago, please give a brief description of the responsibilities held, including any career breaks where relevant.
Writing your statement
You can approach your statement of competence in different ways, but we recommend you use the four areas of the competence matrix as headings, write something for each and describe a specific example of where you applied this in your role.
Competence matrix for Member (MCIfA)
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Knowledge
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Autonomy
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Coping with complexity
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Perception of professional context
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Substantial working and background knowledge relevant to area(s) of historic environment practice. Demonstrates a depth of understanding of sector and competence within a broad range of historic environment practices. Understands, contextualises and applies professional standards to own work and, where appropriate, that of others
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Substantial autonomy, takes full responsibility for own work. Where applicable, will also have significant personal accountability for others and/or the allocation of resources, in a wide variety of contexts
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Deals with complex situations holistically, demonstrates confident decision-making in a broad range of complex, technical or professional activities
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High level of understanding of overall ‘picture’, sees alternative approaches and how they might be tackled
Demonstrates professional judgement and ethical behaviour across a wide variety of complex situations, supporting and encouraging others to do the same. Can anticipate, recognise, and resolve potential conflicts of interest. Promotes the values of the Institute to work in the public interest with colleagues, clients, and stakeholders
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Qualifications (where relevant)
Please list any relevant qualifications, including title, institution and date of completion and a brief outline of the areas covered.
If you work in academia, please provide a more detailed outline of your qualifications.
If you do not hold any qualifications, you are still eligible to apply.
Additional relevant information
Please include any additional information that may be useful for the Validation committee to take into consideration when assessing your application. For example
- any additional volunteer work in the sector
- any societies or organisations you are involved with, including volunteering for CIfA
- if your experience has been gained outside the UK, please include some background information about how the profession operates in that country and how your role fits within the profession
You can upload a job description or CV to the online form, but you must still include a statement of competence (above).
List of projects/publications/grey literature
Please list any relevant projects, publications or grey literature from your work in the last two years. Where work is co-authored or the authors are not defined, please indicate which part(s) you were responsible for.
We also suggest you highlight the examples of work (see section below) you are providing to support your application.
If you do not have any publications, you are still eligible to apply.
