Apprentiship Application Form questions - help!

Styles

Styles

Styles

Soldato
Joined
16 Mar 2005
Posts
2,889
Location
UK
Hi,
I'm filling in an application form for a modern apprentiship and I do actually want to make a good impression here but always get really angry with the stupid questions that fill most of the form. On this particular form there are 4 questions.

These questions have written underneath them that the max number of characters is 2000 each :O Now is this because some people just waffle on abou t irrelevant rubbish or is it because i need to be aiming near this level?

The questions are as follows:

QUESTION 1
Please think of a task or goal that was complicated to achieve. Describe how you decided what needed to be done, identified what help you needed and how you carried it out. If you could do this again, what improvements would you make? (This question looks at your approach to how you go about getting things done).

QUESTION 2
Describe a situation where you have been part of a team of people, who together had to achieve a task. How would you describe your contribution? (We want to know how you work with others). Please tell us about your team working, influencing and other interpersonal skills.

QUESTION 3
Please tell us about your hobbies and interests and in particular any you feel will help you in a working environment and why. Indicate how much time you put into each hobby.

QUESTION 4
Why have you decided to apply for this particular apprenticeship? What do you think you will be able to offer and why? (This gives you the opportunity to describe why you are applying for this work in BT. It is a chance for you to match your own skills with those of the job on offer).


It's really the first two questions that 'grind my gears' :p

I mean for the first question i could answer that being born was difficult to achieve. what the hell do they want me to put? something in life? something in work? anything they would be looking out for?

the same with the rest of the questions, if anyone could give me pointers at which sort of area i would want to be looking at for the rest of the questions that would be excellent.

I mean, my main hobby is bodybuilding, how the smeg is that going to help me in the working environment? should i lie and say my main hobby is scaleling telegraph poles and replacing shoddy BT equipment in my spare time because i am in love with the company and want it's child.

as you can tell, i am stuck. help me please!
 
I just filled this out, tell me about it took me days to complete the thing. I didn't have a clue what to put. I just talked about things i've done at work, and things like my rugby tour and stuff how we achieved it etc. Probably a load of rubbish when i think about what i've written.
 
I started the application on the 5th and got it done today, i had 90% of it done. Just these damn questions to do which i finished today.

And yeah i'm applying for BT :p
 
It's the same for graduate schemes. I really hate the questions they ask. I made a word doc with my answers in because they all ask similar questions :)
 
Question 1 is asking for something like rebuild a car engine or other technical task (build your first RCT car maybe).

For instance my morris minor is misfiring, I began by checking the all the leads, next I checked the plugs were clean, etc until you finally checked the timing with a timing lamp and found the timing was wrong. So I adjusted the distributor angle until the timing was right. You could then say how in retrospect maybe checking the spark gap would have been a better test to do before checking the plugs because of the relative amounts of work or ease of access and display that you have learnt knowledge from undertaking the task not just reading about it.

Question 2 is asking about interpersonal stuff like Duke of Edinbrugh's Award expeditions where you're dealing with different levels of ability in a group and managing expectations and abilities to maintain the group spirit.

These are fairly standard questions in recruitment so you should spend some time coming up with good examples and if you have none you should spend some time acquiring some good examples, it will pay off in the long run.


Oh and I found these sorts of questions hard to answer when I was leaving Uni, but in retrospect it all becomes so much easier so don't worry about it unduly.
 
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