CVs and application forms Task

There’s no one right or best approach to preparing covering letters, CVs, or application forms.

However a couple of general approaches are quite widely used, especially on competency-based applications. One of these is the STAR technique:

• Situation: Describe the situation.
• Task: Describe what task was required of you.
• Action: Tell the interviewer what action you took.
• Result: Conclude by describing the result of that action.

This is also sometimes known as SOAR, where ‘Task’ is replaced by ‘Objective’. Another is the CAR approach:

• Context: Describe the situation and the task you were faced with, when, where, with whom?
• Action: How? What action did you take? Sometimes people focus on what the group did without mentioning their individual contribution.
• Result: What results did you achieve? What conclusions did you reach? What did you learn from the experience?

These may be helpful not just for application forms but also as approaches for responding to interview questions.