OK, so it is apparently 1 year since I started filling out an electronic 
application form for HMGCC. When the form is completed, it gets 
submitted, but I got stuck on two points:

- They demand references. I have none.

- They want some wordy stuff.



Quoth the form:

"References

Normally only work and/or education related references should be given. 
Enter the names, addresses and telephone numbers of people who may be 
approached for references, to cover a period of the preceding 5 years. 
One of these must be your present or most recent employer, someone who 
knows you in a work related/voluntary or educational capacity, or 
someone able to comment upon your suitability."

Nice multi-part sentence structure there. So does that mean that I can 
submit any two people who are "able to comment upon my suitability"?



Anyway, I was wondering if anybody here can give me some hints for the 
other section:

"COMPETENCIES
The following questions relate to some of the interests and skills that 
are required to perform effectively in the role. Your responses to these 
questions will be used to assess your application, so it is very 
important that you provide the best responses you can. We will also be 
assessing the quality of your written work from your responses.

Your examples can come from any area of your experience; for example, 
paid employment or voluntary work, at university or college, or in 
connection with your hobbies or interests. Please ensure that you give a 
specific example for each question, and that you answer all of the 
supplementary questions. Your answers should be no more than 300 words 
per question.

Works with others:
The ability to be able to work collaboratively with others inside and 
outside of a team is an important skill for this role.

1. Please describe a time when you have worked with others in order to 
solve a complex problem or fault
- What was the problem or fault?
- How did you work collaboratively with others to solve the problem or 
fault?
- What was your role in the team? What contribution did others bring to 
the team?
- What was the outcome?

Plans and organises:
In this role, you will be required to take responsibility for your work 
and to manage and organise your time effectively to achieve high quality 
outputs.

2. Please describe an example of when you delivered a high quality piece 
of work that you were proud of
- What was the piece of work?
- How did you plan and organise the work so that it was delivered to 
high quality?
- How did you review the detail of the work to ensure you had completed 
it accurately?
- Why were you proud of the outcome?

Adapts to Change:
Demonstrating openness to change and tackling the unfamiliar is an 
important requirement when working at HMGCC

3. Please give an example of when you tackled an unfamiliar problem or 
task, and learnt something new
- What was the problem or task and why was it unfamiliar?
- How did you tackle the problem or task?
- What was the outcome?
- What did you learn?

Develops Organisational Capability:
An active interest in the type of work that you will do, and showing 
commitment to develop your technical capability, are also critical for 
success in this role.

4. Please describe a time when you took on a task that illustrates your 
active interest in this area of work and allowed you to develop new skills
- What specifically did you do?
- Why did you do this?
- How did this develop your skills?
- How would you like to develop your skills moving forward?

Should you be successful with your application, you may be required 
carry out a programming test. Of the following two options, which would 


Any hints, guys?

As you all know, I don't work with other people, and I never have. I 
don't plan or organist anything. And although I tackle unfamiliar 
subjects all the time, none of this is to solve a "problem", it's just 
for the hell of it.

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On Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:19:38 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Nice multi-part sentence structure there. So does that mean that I can
> submit any two people who are "able to comment upon my suitability"?

That's the way I read it.

> Any hints, guys?
> 
> As you all know, I don't work with other people, and I never have. I
> don't plan or organist anything. And although I tackle unfamiliar
> subjects all the time, none of this is to solve a "problem", it's just
> for the hell of it.

Well, we all work with other people in some capacity.  Your DR document 
is a plan, so use that with regards to planning/organisation.

As for things you tackle as unfamiliar subjects, the "problem" you're 
solving is a lack of knowledge that you wish to fill.

Jim

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Invisible wrote:

OK, so let's take these apart one at a time then.

> Works with others:
> The ability to be able to work collaboratively with others inside and 
> outside of a team is an important skill for this role.
> 
> 1. Please describe a time when you have worked with others in order to 
> solve a complex problem or fault
> - What was the problem or fault?
> - How did you work collaboratively with others to solve the problem or 
> fault?
> - What was your role in the team? What contribution did others bring to 
> the team?
> - What was the outcome?

OK, this is going to be a problem.

In a professional capacity, my work consists of me sitting in a little 
box, doing my thing, with nobody actually communicating with me. 
(Indeed, if people were to *talk* to me, my job would become 
significantly easier.)

I like how point #3 basically rules out any situation where you were 
merely "in" the team but you didn't actually do anything, or where you 
were "part of a team" but you did all of the actual work. Were it not 
for that, I could use, say, the programming project I did at uni. We 
were tasked with designing and programming a small application - but 
since I was the only person in the team who knew how to program in any 
language, I basically designed and programmed the entire thing by 
myself. The other team members couldn't really offer anything useful, 
aside from filling out all the PERT charts and so forth which we were 
actually being assessed on.

 From time to time people ask me to fix faults. But that's usually a 
case of a fault being reported, I sit there and poke the computer, and 
when it's fixed they don't say thankyou. You can't exactly call that a 
"team".

I could try to pretend that I was actually involved in the planning and 
execution of various hardware rollouts. (In truth a bunch of guys 4,000 
miles away decided what would be done, without bothering to ask me, and 
then they came over and did it, usually without telling me what they 
were actually doing. This is the antithesis of "team work".)

> Plans and organises:
> In this role, you will be required to take responsibility for your work 
> and to manage and organise your time effectively to achieve high quality 
> outputs.
> 
> 2. Please describe an example of when you delivered a high quality piece 
> of work that you were proud of
> - What was the piece of work?
> - How did you plan and organise the work so that it was delivered to 
> high quality?
> - How did you review the detail of the work to ensure you had completed 
> it accurately?
> - Why were you proud of the outcome?

Arguably the only "piece of work" I have to show for my time in this 
dead-end job is the various documentation I've written - particularly 
the Disaster Recovery plan. But point #2 is going to be a problem. I 
didn't "plan" anything. I just started writing, rewriting, editing, and 
generally working on the document. It got finished when it got finished.

They're not asking for a quality piece of work, they're asking for 
*planning*. I don't do planning.

> Adapts to Change:
> Demonstrating openness to change and tackling the unfamiliar is an 
> important requirement when working at HMGCC
> 
> 3. Please give an example of when you tackled an unfamiliar problem or 
> task, and learnt something new
> - What was the problem or task and why was it unfamiliar?
> - How did you tackle the problem or task?
> - What was the outcome?
> - What did you learn?

OK, so I don't think learning stuff counts as a task. :-P They're 
looking for a real problem where I had to learn something new in order 
to solve it. Now, unless you count learning the innars of TCP/IP in a 
failed attempt to interpret the output of a packet sniffer so I could 
diagnose that server issue that never got fixed... I'm not sure what the 
hell else to put in here.

> Develops Organisational Capability:
> An active interest in the type of work that you will do, and showing 
> commitment to develop your technical capability, are also critical for 
> success in this role.
> 
> 4. Please describe a time when you took on a task that illustrates your 
> active interest in this area of work and allowed you to develop new skills
> - What specifically did you do?
> - Why did you do this?
> - How did this develop your skills?
> - How would you like to develop your skills moving forward?

Well, I'm going to have to recheck which position I actually applied for 
before I can answer this one. ;-) But "a time when you took on a task 
that illustrates your interest in this area"? Hell, if I could take on 
tasks like that, I wouldn't need to change jobs! :-P

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You just need to be a little more upbeat.

When you boss requires changes, or someone
in the US changes stuff and it needs documentation
to be legal in the UK, that means you were part 
of a team.

The fact that your team is disfunctional shouldn't
be mentioned. If you say something bad about
somebody, the people hearing you might think
that you say bad things (or will in the future)
about them too when they're not around.

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Tim Attwood wrote:
> You just need to be a little more upbeat.

I'm going to start charging people 20p every time they say that to me. 
Damnit, I could make a FORTUNE! Hell, I wouldn't even *need* a new job!!

> When you boss requires changes, or someone
> in the US changes stuff and it needs documentation
> to be legal in the UK, that means you were part of a team.
> 
> The fact that your team is disfunctional shouldn't
> be mentioned. If you say something bad about
> somebody, the people hearing you might think
> that you say bad things (or will in the future)
> about them too when they're not around.

Hmm, it has a flavour.

But how exactly do you explain what their "role" in the team was, and 
what my role was?

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:54:50 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Tim Attwood wrote:
>> You just need to be a little more upbeat.
> 
> I'm going to start charging people 20p every time they say that to me.
> Damnit, I could make a FORTUNE! Hell, I wouldn't even *need* a new job!!

Hehehehehehehe

>> When you boss requires changes, or someone in the US changes stuff and
>> it needs documentation to be legal in the UK, that means you were part
>> of a team.
>> 
>> The fact that your team is disfunctional shouldn't be mentioned. If you
>> say something bad about somebody, the people hearing you might think
>> that you say bad things (or will in the future) about them too when
>> they're not around.
> 
> Hmm, it has a flavour.
> 
> But how exactly do you explain what their "role" in the team was, and
> what my role was?

Don't - describe the team's role instead, and how you contributed to the 
goal of the team.  They're not interviewing the other members of the 
team, so don't include information that wasn't requested.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>>> You just need to be a little more upbeat.
>> I'm going to start charging people 20p every time they say that to me.
>> Damnit, I could make a FORTUNE! Hell, I wouldn't even *need* a new job!!
> 
> Hehehehehehehe

New plan: I'm going to charge 0.1p every time somebody laughs at me. :-P 
That should make me rich beyond my wildest dreams...

>> Hmm, it has a flavour.
>>
>> But how exactly do you explain what their "role" in the team was, and
>> what my role was?
> 
> Don't - describe the team's role instead, and how you contributed to the 
> goal of the team.  They're not interviewing the other members of the 
> team, so don't include information that wasn't requested.

Quoting the application form:

"1. Please describe a time when you have worked with others in order to 
solve a complex problem or fault
- What was the problem or fault?
- How did you work collaboratively with others to solve the problem or 
fault?
- What was your role in the team? What contribution did others bring to 
the team?
- What was the outcome?"

It specifically asks what I did, and what everybody else did.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:38:47 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>> You just need to be a little more upbeat.
>>> I'm going to start charging people 20p every time they say that to me.
>>> Damnit, I could make a FORTUNE! Hell, I wouldn't even *need* a new
>>> job!!
>> 
>> Hehehehehehehe
> 
> New plan: I'm going to charge 0.1p every time somebody laughs at me. :-P
> That should make me rich beyond my wildest dreams...

No charge for those laughing with you, then? ;-)

>>> Hmm, it has a flavour.
>>>
>>> But how exactly do you explain what their "role" in the team was, and
>>> what my role was?
>> 
>> Don't - describe the team's role instead, and how you contributed to
>> the goal of the team.  They're not interviewing the other members of
>> the team, so don't include information that wasn't requested.
> 
> Quoting the application form:
> 
> "1. Please describe a time when you have worked with others in order to
> solve a complex problem or fault
> - What was the problem or fault?
> - How did you work collaboratively with others to solve the problem or
> fault?
> - What was your role in the team? What contribution did others bring to
> the team?
> - What was the outcome?"
> 
> It specifically asks what I did, and what everybody else did.

That seems odd.  

Describe the team's role, how you contributed to the goal of the team, 
and what work others did.  Don't put the negative stuff in, just the 
positive stuff.  "John was a dork and did nothing to help us get to our 
goals, and in fact put things in the way to make the job harder" won't 
win any points.  "John meticulously ensured that every detail was looked 
after, no matter how minute" is the sort of thing that would win points.

Jim

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