Here's How To Go About Answering Key Selection Criteria In 7 Steps To Ensure You Win That Interview And Job - A Guide That Will Assist You Throughout Your Career
Answering key selection criteria is an arduous task, even for professional resume writers, like me. They are time bandits, challenging and need a lot of concentration to make sure the answer given does, in fact, make a strong and compelling response that fits the question.
However with a little practice and preparation it does get easier and the rest of this article gives you a system that you can use that will help to provide the best possible responses you can, in answering key selection criteria.
Step 1. Ascertain that there are, in fact, Key Selection Criteria that need to be answered for your application to be viable. Download any job descriptions and skim read everything, highlighting key words and phrases that seem to be the key to success for this position. Are there any KRAs - Key Results Areas? Is there an importance weighting on any aspects of the role? Is there a word or character count limit?
Step 2.Once you have finished step 1 pull together all the terms you have highlighted and use them to create a paragraph about the key requirements for success in the role. This will serve as a cheat sheet for your responses to the Key Selection Criteria. Are you required to answer each criterion briefly or in-depth?
Step 3. Now you can start to prepare the Key Selection Criteria. Highlight key words such as: Demonstrate; Experience, Knowledge of, capacity to acquire, qualifications, problem solving, team, leadership.
Step 4. To boost your confidence select the criterion you consider the easiest, this could be one about qualifications and experience, perhaps. Create a succinct statement that outlines your qualifications and years experience and state your qualifications in full. If your experience includes titles that you deem relevant include them too. This is your outline response. If a more in-depth response is required include with an example of your experience.
Step 5. For all criterion you repeat as the above. An easy way to help you create strong examples is to use C, A, R - circumstance, action, result or S, A, O - situation, action, outcome. For each criterion create a story following one of these formulas. As an example, if you are writing about customer service - the circumstance might be: There was a backlog in getting Christmas gift mailings out on time. The action would be: I researched using express post parcels - this was still within the budget and the parcels arrived on time, with happy customers. The outcome: Without this many of the gifts would have been returned and had to be refunded due to late delivery. I have paraphrased the above and if I was responding to such a criterion I would add a little more detail, but not too much.
Step 6. Once you have written a story for each criterion, re-read and edit each one, making them only as long as they need to be. You want to make every word count. Remember also to keep your answers in the first person, action oriented - by making use of verbs and positive.
Step 7. Have someone else check the work. You can even get someone to read them to you out loud, or just do it yourself. This is an excellent way to check for clumsy grammar and any errors.
So there you have it, 7 steps to answering key selection criteria that will keep you on track and should facilitate your success, as long as you do them.
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