Application form help

iamagirl

iamagirl

iamagirl

Associate
Joined
19 Jan 2012
Posts
17
Reading some of the other similar posts I see some you are good at this sort of thing. I am struggling to come up with something good.

This is a question I have to answer on an application form. A friend only told me about the vacancy today and it has to be in by 12 PM tomorrow at the latest. Luckily I am emailing it.

The values of The ******* company are: Inspiring, Valuing Difference, Creative, Courageous, Honest, Thoughtful. Describe a time when you have demonstrated these

Now I have to ask a bit of a stupid question as well. Do they want me to describe one time incident when I demonstrated all of them at once?

How would you answer that question?
 
iamagirl said:
Now I have to ask a bit of a stupid question as well. Do they want me to describe one time incident when I demonstrated all of them at once?

How would you answer that question?
Click to expand...

If you've got a story that incorporates all of them then well done, you're too good for the company already.

More seriously I wouldn't expect that you've got to demonstrate them all at once although I'd be surprised if you couldn't link a few of them into a few examples.

E.g. for valuing differences, creative and thoughtful you might be able to show a time when working in a group you came up with an innovative solution to a problem because you considered the different backgrounds of the group members carefully and worked to their (and your) strengths. Inspiring, courageous and honest seem to fit together fairly naturally to me too - that's not to say you've just got to come up with two examples, it might be you can fit it all into one example or you might want an example for each but if they're not giving you much more information than that it seems pretty flexible to me unless your friend can give you a steer.

Edrof said:
I hate that kind of stupid ****.
Click to expand...

It's extremely annoying, questions like "when did you face a difficult situation and how did you deal with it?" don't really appeal to me but I think the answer of "difficult situations for me consist of coming up with stories to fit the checkboxes, the rest of life I just get on with..." probably isn't within the spirit of what they're going for. It's one of those things that as an applicant it is extremely useful to be good at because in many businesses it seems to be taken as a proxy for ability in the job when it arguably displays nothing of the sort. I know there has to be some way to weed out applicants but it tends to seem a bit lazy to me on the part of the business.
 
Thanks you.

How would you answer this one?

What are your strengths and areas for development?

It is hard to put things that are not a cliche.
 
Your strengths are... well I don't know but you do!

Your areas which need development will be one of the above... You can't be perfect at everything. And if all else fails... "your areas for development are the areas for identifying areas for development" :p
 
iamagirl said:
What are your strengths and areas for development?

It is hard to put things that are not a cliche.
Click to expand...

At the risk of asking the obvious - what do you do well? Do you listen well, can you problem solve, are you tenacious about completing projects, are you ...?

Areas for development - it's about as complicated as it sounds, what areas are you a bit weaker on. Try not to pick something that makes you sound completely hopeless e.g. "I've got no drive or determination and I've never completed anything in my life" but equally I'd advise against picking the "I'm too much of a perfectionist" example, principally because it's a load of cobblers. Maybe you need to learn better man-management skills, maybe you've not been able to put your theoretical learning into practice as much as you'd like (you've learned how to do PRINCE2 is but you've never used it in anger so to speak), maybe you need ...?

I don't know you so I can only give very general cues to help you think about it a bit more I'm afraid.
 
they always ask these questions on application forms, sometimes for jobs were it doesn't matter one bit, you could just turn up and be qualified
 
iamagirl said:
I am struggling to make up a story lol. Any good story tellers here lol.
Click to expand...

Don't 'make' something up just in case it comes back to bite you in the bum, you need to pull from your experiences even if it was something you did when you were 12.
Take each keyword (Inspiring, Valuing Difference, Creative, Courageous, Honest, Thoughtful) and look them up in a dictionary which may prompt you better.
Valuing Difference would probably mean Diversity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom