Sifting

I spent most of yesterday marking yet more application forms – for jobs that haven’t even got anything to do with me. It’s always slightly nerve-racking sifting forms because you mark them first and then compare your marking to that of someone else who is doing exactly the same thing. There’s always that fear in the back of your mind that you’ll think an answer is absolutely brilliant and the other person will look at you as those you are totally insane and sit there and laugh at you. However, as it turned out the other person marking the forms came up with almost identical marks to me and we didn’t have to have a punch up in order to reach consensus.

Some of the forms were quite good, most of them were appalling and there was one that I just did not know what to make of it. Applicants were asked to give an example of managing resources. It is perfectly acceptable to give an example from your personal life, but I think we’d expect some discernment to be used in what that would be. So when the example one person used was about how she chose her outfit for a fancy dress party, I was almost crying with laughter. There was a part of me that thought “Aww… there’s something really lovely about that example”. She went into so much detail and was obviously very pleased with what she had achieved – and yet, it wasn’t quite what was required… I’d include the example here but somehow I think that would be entirely inappropriate.

The person who was assessing the forms with me said that she once got an application from someone and candidates were asked to give an example of when they have shown determination. One chap said that he had been using a rowing machine in a pub and had been rowing really hard. At one point he had to sop so that he could get off the machine and be sick. However he then got back on the machine so that he could complete the task. Well, I guess that did indeed show determination but maybe not the kind of determination that was being sought…