Working in Housing

The housing sector requires a wealth of skills to provide affordable housing in sustainable communities.

Will I be right for Housing?

If you are interested in people’s living conditions, if you have strong communication and negotiation skills, if you are flexible and adaptable, if you can work under pressure on your own initiative, and if you want to learn new skills and can handle the responsibility that comes with understanding and helping people from the broadest variety of cultural backgrounds, you could be exactly right!

Do I need to be qualified?

Not necessarily. But there are a range of flexible and accessible housing qualifications available at all levels - more details of these can be found at the Chartered Institute of Housing.

Moving into a career in housing is similar to moving into any area of work. You’ll have to demonstrate you have the necessary skills. Employers will not always expect formal qualifications in their field. Of course, core skills are the same as for most careers or professions: basic literacy and numeracy, IT and communication skills.

But they will expect applicants to be able to confidently address the tasks, projects and issues that make up the job. You'll need to demonstrate a professional approach, self-confidence, good people skills and organisation. Specialised knowledge can be gained later; employers will appreciate this.

What if I want to move into Housing from another area?

Skills you’ve acquired as part of your career and life to date can be applied to a new career in Housing. Customer contact is a major area; particularly the ability to tactfully handle difficult situations. Team working is also important, along with liaison with external agencies or suppliers. Commonly demanded skills include working on your own initiative, an ability to organise workload and work to deadlines without supervision. The ability to supervise, manage and co-ordinate other people is also important.

Think hard about your CV. Rather than listing all the jobs you have done in great detail, with full accounts of duties, try altering the format. Work history is important, but first you should list your 'Skills and Abilities'. Highlighting the skills you’ve gained and presenting them as a single picture will help employers understand more about you; what you can do is far more important to an employer than where you did it and for how long.

And don't forget to include skills you’ve gained outside work. The useful organisational and complaints handling skills needed to be a youth group leader or football referee, or the IT skills you have gained teaching yourself to build a website could just swing it for you!