You are applying today. A blank competency-based form is the kind of task many school-leavers face when they chase a first role, and you finish it well by reusing evidence you already hold: values, skills, achievements, and the personal statement you built as ALT 1.

Open two files before you go further: your ALT 1 Personal Statement and your Competency Evidence Bank (or STAR notes) from earlier Strand 2.2 lessons. If either is missing, jot three bullet STAR seeds from memory or work experience now and flag the gap so you can fill it later this week.

In this period you will walk a practice form section by section, see where strong answers come from, and leave with your own completed Competency Application Form for a role in your field.

Before you touch a blank form, stake a position on five claims about competency applications. Mark each true or false on what you honestly believe right now. You will meet the same ideas again when you annotate a sample form and when you write your own answers.

Key terms for this lesson

Study this practice school-leaver form, modelled on the kind of facilities or public-service application many Irish employers use. Harbourview is invented for classroom practice only. Label each highlighted stretch: what the section is really asking for, what a weak answer would look like, or where personal-statement evidence would earn its place. When the class is ready, reveal the model and note where you differed.

Read Leah's case below. She is applying for the same kind of school-leaver facilities role and has already banked a personal statement and three STAR notes. Use her example to see how banked evidence maps to form boxes, then complete your Competency Application Form in the Strand 2.2 folder for a real or realistic role in your chosen career field.

Leah, sixth year, applying this Friday. Her personal statement opens with two years of weekend shifts at a leisure centre reception, a TY week with the caretaker team in her school, and a line about being the person who restocks and resets rooms without being asked. She has three STAR notes ready:

1. Working with people: A parent arrived angry that a birthday room was double-booked. Leah listened, checked the diary, moved the second booking with her supervisor's OK, and followed up with a free activity pass. The parent emailed thanks the next day.
2. Managing yourself: In the week of mock orals she cut her Saturday shift to a morning only, finished a history deadline Friday night, and told her manager on the Monday before, not on the day.
3. Solving problems: On TY she noticed the salt bin empty before a freeze warning. She told the caretaker, helped refill it, and wrote the stock gap on the whiteboard so the next person would see it.

Her intended referees are her leisure-centre supervisor and her TY caretaker mentor. She has not asked them yet.

Before you write, think about:

• Which of Leah's STAR notes maps to Section D, E, or F on the sample form, and what would she cut if a box had a tight word limit?
• What must Leah do about referees before she hits submit, and why does waiting until after shortlisting fail?
• Which kind of personal-statement sentence is useless inside a competency box, and which kind earns its place?

Then open your Competency Application Form document. Copy the section headings from the sample and complete: personal information, education, experience, three competency responses (working with people, managing yourself, solving problems), and two referees you will actually ask. Use ALT 1 lines where they earn their place; cut anything that does not answer the box.

Save the finished piece as Competency Application Form. If one box is still thin at the bell, write one line naming what evidence you still need and where you will get it this week, and finish that box before the next lesson.

Today you applied what you already knew about competencies and your personal statement to a full application form.

• Competency forms ask for evidenced answers, not slogans about passion
• Each section has a job: facts, experience, competency proof, or referees
• Your personal statement is raw material to reshape, not a block to paste
• Referees need to have seen you work or learn, and they need to agree before you name them
• Your Strand 2.2 portfolio now holds a Competency Application Form for a role in your field (complete, or substantially drafted with any thin box flagged to finish before next lesson)

Next time you will look at how shortlisting actually reads a form like yours.