I was having a discussion with a head teacher about job applications and I asked her- how do you choose who to interview? She had previously mentioned that the school had recieved 300 aplications for a KS4 English teacher which astounded me, 300! What was interesting was her reply.
From the initial scanning of applicatons she could immediately see who had copied and pasted information from a different application form as all the text was mismatched and some sections stopped mid sentenced as they hadn't been copied properly. She translated this as someone who was lazy and didn't proof read their work, and probably wouldn't be someone she would like working in her orgainisation. By doing this over half were immediately rejected.
Tip number 1: Take time and care in filling out application forms and make sure you or a friend proof reads them for you.
The next stage of her assessment involved looking for spelling errors and typos as in her opinion a teacher who cannot spell (especially with the aid of a spell check on the computer) is not up to standard to work in her school- she is looking for excellence, and excellence is starting with the basic foundations of learning and teaching. This brought her down to 40 applications left to read.
Tip number 2: If the form does not let you use a spell checker- write you application in a word document first, then ask someone to proof read it before you press send.
The third stage of her "elimination" process was to read the personal statements and see who was who. The best applications, she said, were the ones that had read the job specification carefully and written to fit what they were looking for- with examples or evidence to support their claims. This way she knew that these people fitted the job description, not just in qualifications but in their ethos and everyday practice.
Tip number 3: Read the job and person specification carefully. Tailor and structure your personal statement around the specification of each job rather than having a generic statement.
This enabled the head teacher to whittle down applications to a final 15 and after discussing these with her team, invited 10 to interview.
Reading this it seems pretty obvious however it is so easy when filling in lots of applications to start cutting corners to get them done quicker. Sometimes doing things quickly is only benefitting you in that moment and can actually have a detrimental effect long term- such as not getting that illusive interview.
