Application form hints and tips

When you apply, we may ask you to complete an online application form.

A young woman is writing with a pen on a sheet of paper at a wooden desk on the Parliamentary estate.

This is your chance to show us how you meet the essential criteria for the role you’re applying for. You’ll find these criteria in the Person Specification, which is part of the Job Description. Typically, they might include relevant skills, knowledge, experience, and role-specific qualifications, but many of our roles don’t require any formal qualifications.

Hints and tips

Review the Job Description

First things first. Take time to fully understand the Job Description, especially the Person Specification section. This is where we list the experience, skills and knowledge required to do the role successfully. That’s what we’re looking for in you. We want you to provide us with real-life examples for each of the criteria.

Think of specific examples

Next, prepare some real-life examples to share with us. The best way to do this is to reflect on your work experience, education or any volunteering you may have done. It’s important to focus on your personal contribution, whatever the context.

If you’re a school leaver or graduate, and you’re applying for your first job, you can use examples that will demonstrate skills you’ve learnt along the way. For example, if you participated in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, you could highlight areas where you learnt about teamwork or leadership. Alternatively, you may have worked on a group project in class, and you could tell us about your role within that group.

Understand the question

This advice applies whether you’re completing an application form or responding to an interview question. It’s important to really understand what’s being asked, and ensure your answers relate to the specific competencies in question. This is when you can share your real-life examples to demonstrate the competencies we’re asking about.

Structure your answers

To help structure your answer, try using the STAR method. STAR stands for:

Situation: describe the situation you were faced with
Task: describe the task you had to complete
Action: describe the actions you took to complete the task, and why you approached it in the way you did
Result: describe the outcome, and try to include some of your learnings or observations

We recommend that you focus your answer on the action and results sections. For example, if you say you 'communicated effectively', we want to know how you did it, why you approached it that way, and what the outcome was because of the action you took. It’s important to note that there is normally a word count limit when providing answers. This will be clearly shown on the application form.