Graham,

There is a lot of sense in what you say here and in other posts, but (as someone who only PRAs) I would take an issue with your 'controversial view'. I am not going to completely disagree but rather say that it is more difficult and may take longer to grasp what the EC are looking for. I was greatly assisted when I started by the fact that my employer had just switched to a competency based appraisal and I had therefore undergone intensive training to be able to carry out such appraisals. I hate to think how I would have coped with the PRA role without that in my back pocket. However a PRA of long standing may have a better in depth understanding than an interviewer in his/her early days.

The real problem with being a PRA is the lack of feedback - if a candidate is successful at interview was it because of your advice or despite it? If a candidate is unsuccessful they are often passed to a second PRA, which has the advantage of providing a second opinion but prevents the first PRA from finding out the reasons for decline. Interviewers and assessors work as part of a team (two interviewers and I am not sure how many assessors) and so there is inbuilt peer review. However the one big advantage the PRA has is the ability to discuss potential problems in an application with others (other PRAs or, if contacts are known, with interviewers or assessors). I have done this in the past such as where I had an opinion about one aspect of the application which I felt would be rejected as suitable evidence by Assessors and Interviewers but asked a friend who is an interviewer for his opinion (which was pretty much exactly as mine - I did have to anonymise the question just in case my friend ended up as the interviewer). However there is no official network set up to allow this to happen.

Alasdair

(Edited to change to 'his/her' - did not mean to be sexist)

 

Graham,

There is a lot of sense in what you say here and in other posts, but (as someone who only PRAs) I would take an issue with your 'controversial view'. I am not going to completely disagree but rather say that it is more difficult and may take longer to grasp what the EC are looking for. I was greatly assisted when I started by the fact that my employer had just switched to a competency based appraisal and I had therefore undergone intensive training to be able to carry out such appraisals. I hate to think how I would have coped with the PRA role without that in my back pocket. However a PRA of long standing may have a better in depth understanding than an interviewer in his/her early days.

The real problem with being a PRA is the lack of feedback - if a candidate is successful at interview was it because of your advice or despite it? If a candidate is unsuccessful they are often passed to a second PRA, which has the advantage of providing a second opinion but prevents the first PRA from finding out the reasons for decline. Interviewers and assessors work as part of a team (two interviewers and I am not sure how many assessors) and so there is inbuilt peer review. However the one big advantage the PRA has is the ability to discuss potential problems in an application with others (other PRAs or, if contacts are known, with interviewers or assessors). I have done this in the past such as where I had an opinion about one aspect of the application which I felt would be rejected as suitable evidence by Assessors and Interviewers but asked a friend who is an interviewer for his opinion (which was pretty much exactly as mine - I did have to anonymise the question just in case my friend ended up as the interviewer). However there is no official network set up to allow this to happen.

Alasdair

(Edited to change to 'his/her' - did not mean to be sexist)