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. These can be used alongside the main competence matrix to see how your work fits into the criteria and help 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 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)
| Knowledge | 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. |
What you need to demonstrate | - Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of archaeology and the historic environment relevant to your area of historic environment practice
- Give examples of your work showing the depth of your knowledge and how you apply that knowledge and understanding in a broad range of historic environment practices.
- Use the professional and technical language that you know and use in your role.
- Demonstrate that you understand and apply the legislation, policies, frameworks, strategies, professional standards and industry processes and procedures relevant to your work.
Where applicable, explain how you monitor others using these techniques.
- Give examples of the work that you do/have done and set out the legal, policy and professional context you work within.
- Describe the processes you use to review and verify that your work and that of others, where applicable, meets those standards.
- Demonstrate how you analyse and apply underpinning theory and/or current research to your work and how you evaluate established and new techniques and approaches.
- Give examples of your approach to keeping up to date with theoretical and methodological developments in your area of practice. Discuss relevant research and how it has informed your work.
- Give examples where you have taken an innovative approach or adapted an established methodology in response to a particular challenge.
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| Autonomy | Substantial autonomy; takes full responsibility for own work in a wide variety of contexts. Where applicable, will have significant personal accountability for others and/or the allocation of resources. |
| What you need to demonstrate | - Describe how you plan, manage and assure the quality of your work and explain the approaches you have used to achieve successful outcomes in a leading role.
Where applicable, include your accountability for other people’s work. - Give examples of your approach to your work and how you ensure it meets professional and organisational quality standards.
- Give examples where you led colleagues or stakeholders to deliver a piece or work, project or initiative and what the impact of that work was. Did the work achieve the outcome intended and can you show how you contributed to that?
- Demonstrate that you take responsibility for assessing gaps in your own knowledge and/or skills and that you address them through Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Where applicable, include your responsibility of CPD for others. - Give examples of your approach to keeping your knowledge and skills up to date.
- Give examples that demonstrate how you ensure that you have the knowledge and skills to successfully deliver your work and, where applicable, your team’s work.
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| Coping with complexity | Deals with complex situations holistically; demonstrates confident decision-making in a broad range of complex, technical or professional activities. Can anticipate, recognise, and resolve potential conflicts of interest. |
| What you need to demonstrate | - Explain how you manage your workload when there are multiple demands, interests or sources of data to be taken into account.
- Explain how you approach decision making and managing your workload. How do you balance multiple and/or conflicting demands or data sources to achieve outcomes which are consistent with the Code of conduct?
- Describe and critically evaluate how you have addressed complex areas within your work and the sources of information you use to support decision making.
- Give examples of particularly complex problems or issues you have encountered and describe how you approached them. These might be archaeological problems, or they might be complex competing interests or priorities. What are the frameworks and techniques you draw on to resolve complex issues? Reflect on whether the approach you took or the decisions you made were successful – were there any outstanding issues and what might you have done differently?
- Demonstrate that you can take responsibility for exercising professional judgement to solve problems.
- Explain how you use the Code of conduct, CIfA Standards and guidance or the competence matrix as a guide to measure and evaluate your own competence and ability to make decisions and exercise professional judgement. How do you balance tried and tested methodologies with innovation and continuous improvement?
- Demonstrate that you can anticipate, identify and resolve potential and actual conflicts of interest, collaborating with colleagues and/or stakeholders to achieve a resolution where relevant.
- Give examples of actual or potential conflicts of interest you’ve encountered and how you approached or resolved them, with reference to the ethical frameworks you used. Are there instances where your obligations to your organisation, client or employer appear to conflict with your professional obligations? What is your approach in these cases? Who was involved? Whose ‘buy-in’ did you need to reach a solution and who needed to be informed? How do you ensure that others learn from your experience?
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| Perception of professional context | 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. Promotes the values of the Institute to work in the public interest with colleagues, clients and stakeholders. |
| What you need to demonstrate | - Demonstrate that you can evaluate your professional judgement, that you understand the importance of ethical behaviour and that you support and encourage others to do the same.
- Give examples of how you evaluate your decision-making against the CIfA Code of conduct to ensure you, and others where applicable, are practising ethically.
- Demonstrate that you understand the wider context of your work and its impact in relation to stakeholders.
- Explain how you ensure that you establish your conclusions on a sound evidence base, and that they are supported and defensible in relation to the Code of conduct, Standards and guidance and other relevant sector guidance or expectations. Are these strands of guidance mutually reinforcing or are there areas where they conflict?
- Explain how working to a professional standard helps to deliver greater benefit to your stakeholders, including the public, and/or why professional accreditation is important to public confidence in your work.
- Explain how you have balanced competing interests and maximised opportunities for positive impacts.
- Give examples of who the beneficiaries are of the work that you do. Who is affected by your work and is there potential for that to be negative?
- Explain how you ensure that you balance competing stakeholder interests, maximise the positive impact of your work and minimise any negative impacts.
- Discuss how you create public benefit and deliver value to society
- Give examples of how you have created new knowledge and/or where sharing your knowledge has had a real impact on an individual, community or the public in general
- Explain how you decide on a course of action which will deliver the greatest benefit within time and cost parameters. Is there an example of a case where you argued for a change of approach to maximise public benefit? Who did you have to convince and how did you do it?
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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 2 years. Where work is co-authored or the authors 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.
