Somewhere around the fifteen or twenty year mark, a lot of electricians, nurses, welders, care workers and plumbers get the same offer: come and teach the next lot. The job is real, it pays, and it often suits a body that has done enough ladders or night shifts. The trouble is that the CV that got you your last site job is almost useless for it, because it describes you doing the work, and the new employer wants to see you judging other people doing it.
The credential the move usually asks for
Most training and assessing roles in regulated work sit behind their own qualification, separate from your trade ticket. Your trade card proves you can do the job. The training credential proves you can bring someone else to that standard and sign it off fairly.
In the UK, the route typically starts with the Level 3 Award in Education and Training, the short entry-level qualification for teaching adults in further education and work-based settings. If the role involves signing off competence, colleges and training providers usually expect an assessor award such as the CAVA (Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement), which covers assessing people both in the workplace and in a simulated setting. Internal quality assurance is a further step, often asked of people who check the assessors.
Other countries have their own versions. France has a formal trainer title for adult education, Spain has a state certificate for vocational trainers, and many sectors run their own instructor schemes. The details change, so check with the provider you want to join. The point for your CV is simple: if you hold the credential, it goes near the top. If you are halfway through it, say so, with the expected completion month. "Level 3 AET, completing March" is a real line. Leaving it off because you have not finished is a mistake.
Some employers will hire you before you hold it and fund it in your first months. That is common with apprenticeship providers who are short of assessors. Your CV then has to prove the ability, not the paper.
Turning years of practice into evidence you can train
Here is the part most tradespeople miss. You have been training people for a decade. It just never had a title.
Go back through your working life and look for these moments:
- Onboarding apprentices or new starters. How many, over what period, and did they pass? "Supervised 11 apprentices through to their NVQ Level 3 between 2016 and 2024" is a training credential in all but name.
- Toolbox talks and safety briefings. If you ran the Monday morning talk on a site for two years, you have planned and delivered around a hundred short sessions to adults who did not want to be there. That is harder than a classroom.
- Mentoring juniors. Newly qualified nurses on a ward, junior technicians on a rota. Who did you bring up to independent practice?
- Writing procedures. A method statement, a ward protocol, a checklist for commissioning a boiler. Writing a procedure other people follow is instructional writing.
- Sitting on a test panel or trade test. If you have ever watched a practical test and said pass or fail, you have assessed. Put it on the page with the standard you judged against.
- Being the person people ring. Harder to prove, but if you were the named competent person or the go-to for a system, write it down with a scope.
Each of these becomes a bullet that answers the only question the hiring manager at a college or training provider is asking: can this person get a learner from not competent to competent, and can they tell the difference fairly?
Numbers help, but only honest ones. Count people, sessions, pass rates you actually know. If you do not know the pass rate, write the number of people you signed off. Do not invent a percentage.
The part-time and hybrid version
Plenty of people do not jump. They keep practising three days a week and assess or train for two, or they take a zero-hours assessor contract with a provider and fit visits around their own jobs. This is often the smarter move, because your currency in the trade is part of what makes you credible as an assessor. Many awarding bodies expect assessors to stay occupationally competent, and doing the work is the cleanest way to show that.
On the CV, show both roles running at the same time. Do not bury the training work as a line under your trade job, and do not pretend you left the trade. Two entries with overlapping dates is honest and easy to read:
- Electrician, self-employed, 2009 to present
- Work-based assessor (sessional), regional training provider, 2023 to present
Then write the summary so it explains the pairing in one sentence: a working electrician who assesses Level 3 apprentices on site two days a week. A reader instantly understands why the dates overlap.
Stop listing tasks, start listing standards
This is the real shift, and it is where most trade-to-trainer CVs fall down.
A trade CV lists tasks: installed, maintained, repaired, fitted, dressed wounds, administered medication. That tells a site manager you can do the work. A training provider already assumes you can do the work. What they need to know is which standards you know well enough to assess against, and at what level.
So the CV has to be rewritten around standards, units and frameworks:
- The qualification or apprenticeship standard you know inside out (for example, a Level 3 installation electrician standard, a Level 2 adult care standard, a welding code you have tested to).
- The units or competencies you have supervised or signed off.
- The regulations you are current on and can explain, not just follow.
- The assessment methods you have used: observation, professional discussion, questioning, product evidence.
A college hiring an assessor is often matching you against the specific qualifications it delivers. If your CV names those standards, you get through the first filter. If it lists forty tasks, the reader has to translate, and most will not bother.
Before and after
Before (trade CV):
- Installed and tested domestic and commercial electrical systems
- Carried out fault finding and repairs
- Supervised apprentices on site
After (trainer and assessor CV):
- Assessed and signed off installation and inspection-and-testing units for 11 Level 3 electrical apprentices, 2019 to 2024, using observation and professional discussion
- Current on the wiring regulations; ran 40 plus site briefings on the most recent amendment and its practical changes
- Wrote the company's inspection-and-testing checklist, now used by every new starter in their first month
Same person, same career. The second version tells the reader what you can judge, for whom, and against what.
What the rest of the CV should do
A few smaller changes finish the job.
Put a short profile at the top that names the move: "Gas engineer with 18 years in domestic and commercial work, moving into training and assessment. Holds the Level 3 AET; CAVA in progress." Hiring managers at training providers read a lot of applications from people who have not made the mental switch. Showing you have made it is half the pitch.
Move your trade qualifications into a single block rather than scattering them. They still matter, because they prove occupational competence, but they are now supporting evidence, not the headline.
Keep the length to two pages. You will be tempted to list every job since your apprenticeship. Older roles can collapse into one line each.
If your LinkedIn profile still reads like a trade profile, it will contradict the CV when the recruiter checks. Update the headline first. A tool like Postulit can turn the updated profile into a CV draft, which is a quick way to check whether the two now tell the same story.
What to do this week
Open your current CV and count how many bullets start with a task verb like installed, repaired or fitted. Then pick the three qualifications or standards you know best and rewrite at least five of those bullets around them: who you brought up to that standard, how you checked it, and how many people passed. If you have not started the training credential yet, find out which one the provider you want asks for and book it. The CV change and the qualification together are what get you the interview.