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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Carrabino" data-source="post: 95922" data-attributes="member: 16764">Please view the most recent update to this thread below (I have also edited my original post up top).My advice this week on things to watch out for is slightly lengthier than previous weeks and I invite you to take some time to cogitate on my suggestions in advance of the numerous January application deadlines. Please feel free to respond to the thread with any queries you may have.TCLA's application review service is closed next week for Christmas. As a result, I will not be reviewing applications next week and so this post is meant to cover two weeks' worth of application pitfalls (I have been doing extra reviews this past week and so I have noticed more mistakes cropping up regularly). I hope that this serves as some useful food for thought over the coming weeks!I will be back to update this thread in the first week of January - in the meantime have a wonderful Christmas!DECEMBER WEEKS 3-4Using a STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) approach anywhere and everywhereThis is a very common problem. Candidates want to show that they have adequately explained their claim or thoroughly displayed their competency, which is great. Often a STAR approach will be exceptionally useful in doing this. It gets a little excessive, however, when applicants write this kind of formulaic analysis into questions where it does not quite fit. Below I will give an example of the kind of situation where this issue may arise:I would personally answer a question about my spare time interests by discussing the fact that I enjoy playing chess and pool when I have free time and that I love hiking and getting outdoors in general. I have a master’s degree in music, so I may be pushing the concept of ‘spare time interests’ by mentioning the amount of time I spend playing piano, but I would probably include that as well. What I would not do, however, is write out a full competency answer using STAR analysis about the time I demonstrated my leadership skills as part of my role in a musical education charity. That role alone was really more of a volunteering/work experience example and if I were to write about it simply because I think it sounds more ‘impressive’ than mentioning what I genuinely enjoy doing in my spare time, then this would undermine my answer. When applicants impose a very formulaic analysis onto a question that really just wants to get to know them better as a person, it can come across as insincere.Not using a parallel structure within each sentenceA sentence should maintain a parallel structure syntactically in order to make it clear to the reader which verbs, nouns and adjectives govern which parts of the sentence. In longer sentences, a candidate’s failure to use parallel grammatical structures can really cause the reader to have to do a double-take and re-read the sentence if they want to understand it. Many recruiters will be reading at pace and so will just move on without taking the time to try understanding your point.Let me give two examples of what I am talking about when I say a ‘parallel structure’:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Example 1: ‘I managed the society's financial affairs, including finding sponsors and fund allocation.’</li> </ul>Are you finding both sponsors and fund allocation? What does it even mean to find fund allocation?Oh… ‘fund allocation’ is governed by ‘including’, not ‘finding’. In order to avoid this kind of ambiguous sentence, make sure that you use a parallel grammatical structure as follows: ‘I managed the society's financial affairs, including finding sponsors and allocating funds’. Having two parallel verb+noun phrases (‘finding sponsors’ and ‘allocating funds’) clearly delineates that these are two separate activities, whilst having a verb followed by two noun phrases – as it was written previously – makes the reader incorrectly think that the noun phrases (‘sponsors’ and ‘fund allocation’) are grouped together.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Example 2: ‘I appreciate that regulations continue to evolve, there is a need to understand those changes, and that lawyers play a vital role in advising their clients on these changes’.</li> </ul>I had to read this sentence twice to understand it (which graduate recruiters will probably not have time to do).My confusion was that at first I thought the phrase, ‘there is a need to understand those changes’, was a conclusion and not an item in the list of things that the candidate appreciated. I was then confused when the sentence continued, ‘and that lawyers…’ because this last clause seemed strangely tacked on to the end of the sentence, instead of forming part of a coherent list. For absolute clarity, I would write an extra ‘that’ so that each of the three items in the list is clearly signposted with the word ‘that’ as follows: ‘I appreciate that regulations continue to evolve, that there is a need to understand those changes, and that lawyers play a vital role in advising their clients on these changes’.Failing to answer every limb of the questionThere will often be a question with two or more ‘limbs’. A common example of this question is, ‘Tell us about your extra-curricular activities, positions of responsibility and achievements’. Make sure you signpost which part of your answer explains the corresponding component of the question. By ‘signpost’ I mean that you should be as obvious as you can when starting each point by either introducing it as an extra-curricular activity, position of responsibility or achievement. I would personally separate each limb into a separate paragraph but this is not absolutely necessary as long as you make it clear which one you are talking about at every stage throughout your answer.An example of a statement that is not well signposted and does not adequately address any of the limbs of the question (despite touching upon all of them) would be:‘As captain of my university’s hockey team, I implemented a training method that ultimately led our team to win a national tournament’.This victory is certainly an achievement and the candidate’s captaincy is a position of responsibility, whilst the entire pursuit of hockey at university is an extra-curricular activity. Nevertheless, the applicant did not explicitly relate this statement back to any of the limbs of the question. Ultimately the question is seeking insight into how you achieved your achievements, how you approached your positions of responsibility and how you immersed yourself in a variety of extra-curriculars. If you wanted to convey this statement as a position of responsibility, for example, you would have to elaborate upon your role as the captain and how you specifically took responsibility for the team in order to implement the successful method of training. If you wanted to explain it as all three things (an extra-curricular activity, position of responsibility and achievement) then you would have to explain each one in turn.A well-signposted version of the above example would be as follows (I have underlined the places where I explicitly refer to each limb of the question):‘One of the major extra-curricular activities that I have been involved with throughout university is hockey, a sport that I have loved since a young age as a result of the strategy and collaboration that a team needs to win matches. My passion for hockey led me to take on a role of significant responsibility when I became the captain of my university’s hockey team. In this position, I was relied on to arrange training sessions and implement a new method of training. I consider one of my greatest achievements to be leading the team to our first national tournament victory in over a decade. By convincing the team to take up my novel training method, I ensured that the skills and fitness levels of the team members left us better prepared than our opponents on match days.’This is certainly much longer than the first example, but it is necessary to properly explain how the activity relates to each limb of the question.(You can probably tell that I know absolutely nothing about hockey – I will use a different example next time <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big Grin    :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" />)Ignoring the nuance of the questionThis also relates to questions with multiple ‘limbs’, as I discussed above. In addition to the question, ‘Tell us about your extra-curricular activities, positions of responsibility and achievements’, I have also seen the question, ‘Tell us about your awards, prizes, scholarships and an achievement of great importance’, or the question, ‘Tell us about your extra-curricular activities and leisure interests’, as well as further variations on this.Needless to say, all three of these are a bit different. It is very tempting to think that you have come to the ‘achievements question’ or ‘extra-curriculars question' and you can simply copy and paste from another application. Often the ‘limbs’ of the question will be subtly different in each application, meaning that you need to tailor your answer accordingly. If the answer asks for prizes or scholarships, try to think of at least one prize and one scholarship that you received, even if these are not your main achievements. If the answer asks for a single achievement of importance, do not list multiple general achievements. In order to make it as clear as possible for the reader and to ensure that you are following the exact nuanced wording within the question, I would again recommend addressing each limb of the question in order, preferably in a short paragraph of its own.Inadequately explaining achievementsThis is relevant to questions about achievements more generally. I will start by saying that anything can be an achievement. Something that is an achievement to me may not be an achievement to you and vice versa.You need to explain what you think of as the achievement. Let’s go back to my example from before:‘As captain of my university’s hockey team, I implemented a training method that ultimately led our team to win a national tournament’.I saw an applicant use a sentence like this, with the intention of conveying it as an achievement. But what is the achievement? Was the achievement the victory in the national tournament, or was it the success of the training method that the applicant implemented? The achievement could have been the fact that the applicant became captain in the first place. I will repeat that anything can be an achievement if you explain why it is an achievement for you. Implementing the training method could have been the real success here if the team had been struggling to find an adequate training process for a long time. The victory in the tournament may not have been a huge achievement if the team won this tournament every year.In order to demonstrate why something was such an achievement, you need to explain two things:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Why it was a goal worth pursuing for you</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">What challenges you had to overcome</li> </ol>I have seen applicants write that their proudest achievement was coming to live in London, or that their proudest achievement was moving to Paris for a gap year and making new friends. Both of those things were actually excellent achievements when read in context, considering the challenges that the applicants faced in pursuing these goals, as well as their important reasons for pursuing these goals. Without gleaning this from other components of their applications, however, I would have not necessarily understood why these were such great achievements.Say what the achievement is and explain why it is an achievement to you.Not providing background to titles and companies‘I enhanced my commercial awareness in my role as Performance Lead at XYZ Solutions.’Candidates write things like this a lot. If your job title does not make it abundantly clear what your responsibilities are (or in this example how they relate to commercial awareness), then you have to explain your role beyond simply mentioning the job title. Also, if the company you worked for is not particularly well known, then the recruiter is probably not going to spend time looking it up, so I would add a brief description of what it does, e.g. ‘XYZ Solutions, a management consultancy for technology start-ups’.Notes from this week’s spelling/grammar errors‘VC’ is an abbreviation for Venture Capital, not for…Vacation sCheme???? I have seen many candidates writing that they are applying to the ‘Spring VC’ at a firm and for the life of me I have no idea where this common error comes from!On the above note, I would generally advise against using abbreviations at all unless they are exceptionally common, e.g. UK for United Kingdom.Bear in mind also that British English does not use full stops in abbreviations where American English does (as in U.K. for United Kingdom). The same goes for titles like Mr/Dr/Ms, which in American English would be written as Mr./Dr./Ms.There should be a single space after a full stop, not two spaces. Many candidates are inconsistent about using one or two spaces which is even worse.This should go without saying, but make sure firm names and names of specific firm practice areas are spelt correctly. Use the ‘&’ symbol instead of ‘and’ where appropriate; use an apostrophe before the final ‘S’ only where appropriate (the supermarket ‘Morrisons’ does not have an apostrophe, whilst ‘Sainsbury’s’ does) and use a comma only where appropriate (Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP does not have a comma whilst Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP does).</blockquote>

Verification: Our company is called, "The Corporate ___ Academy". What is the missing word here?

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