RSA certification

I recently completed my RSA certification (Responsible Service of Alcohol) with EOT. In Australia, it is mandatory for anyone who works in the hospitality industry that serves alcohol (which is essentially almost everywhere) to be RSA certified. While my main object of this adventure is of course to complete and learn more about farming and the work involved in our food, I thought I should complete this certification to give myself more options in case the farming thing doesn't work out. The thing about RSA certification is that while it is generally universal for all states in Australia, to be RSA certified in VIC and NSW would require you to jump through a few more hoops. And since I am currently in VIC, the generic RSA certification will not do and I had to pay slightly more to get certified for VIC.

As you can see, if I were to get a RSA certification for WA, it would have been applicable in all states in Australia except for VIC and NSW. Which means that had I gotten my RSA then, I would not be able to use it to apply for a hospitality job here in Melbourne.

Moving on to the more 'extra' states of VIC and NSW, if I had gotten a VIC RSA cert, it would alllow me to work in all states except NSW. The same applies for NSW as you can see below. After working through the certification, it seems the only difference is that the VIC government (or rather the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Registration or VGCCC) requires us to go through and pass a 15 question quiz after we have completed our general certification as a form of 'refresher course' to be granted the certificate to serve alcohol in Victoria.

Thankfully, I am not based in Sydney because, look at the cost for getting a NSW RSA! Not sure what additional steps there might be for that since I didn't apply to do it nor do I think I'll ever need a NSW RSA.

Usually (pre-COVID), the RSA is conducted via F2F lessons. However, due to COVID, many of the accredited training centres have switched to conducting online courses. After registering for the course, we are immediately given access to a 105 page course notes/ training manual. Beyond browsing through the course notes, there was also a numeracy and literacy test of sorts - which was really interesting from my POV because the questions asked don't seem necessarily directly important in the object of the course which is to allow us to serve alcohol at licensed premises. Although I'm not certain if this test is conducted only by EOT or also by other centres. However, it is true that as a training centre, you might get people from all walks of life/ nationality and experiences and therefore a simple test as such may provide a certain superficial understanding of the candidates' level of English proficiency and general Math sense. This test also reminded me of my cousin's textbook on GeneralSome of the questions were slightly tricky also.

Here are some examples of the numeracy and literacy quiz.

Once you are done with that, you can then proceed to read the course notes and do a 150 question assessment. This is the bothersome part because a lot of the multiple choice questions are really close to each other and should you respond wrongly for more than 2 times, you will be locked out of the assessment for 2-3 minutes and asked to re-read the course notes. 

Once that is completed, comes the fun part - the audio assessment. With a set scenario given to you where you are to refuse service to a particular patron, you are then to record two short (1-1.5min) video/ audio clip of yourself responding to the scenarios and send them to the assessors. Here's an example of it on youtube. 

Lastly once that is completed, there is the live assessment. I had to book an assessment timeslot with the centre where an assessor will call you up at the alloted timeslot, provide you with a scenario and then you are supposed to speak to the assessor as if he/she is a patron of the premise you are working at. For my case, the first scenario was on a refusal of service to an already intoxicated patron, how I was supposed to deal with someone who refused to leave the premise even after refusal of service. For the second scenario, same thing except this time, the patron has not had a drink but has been to the toilet a few times and has bloodshot eyes etc (i.e. on drugs). Cleared this in 15 min :)

Anyway, at the end of it, I got what I needed - which was the general RSA certification + the certification from the VGCCC which will allow me to work at any hospitality premise serving alcohol. So backup plan to the farm thing done!