Anyone can write "I am a hard worker" on a CV. An employer cannot check that claim. That is why many Irish employers use a competency-based form: each section asks for a real example that proves a skill from the person specification. You will see this pattern in public-service recruitment that follows Public Appointments Service (PAS) style competency questions, and in large retail and customer-service school-leaver routes.

In this lesson you are participating in reading a specimen form the way a shortlister would. You will mark what each section is actually asking for, then write your own notes and first-line evidence answers so you leave holding material, not a blank template.

Three terms you will use for the rest of this unit. Read the middle column carefully: it tells you what each one means for the annotation you are about to do.

You are going to mark up a realistic Irish competency-based application form section by section. First place the labels on the interactive: for each highlighted part, decide whether it is what the section is really asking for or what a weak answer looks like. When the class is ready, reveal the model and see where you agreed and where you differed.

Then open your Competency Form Annotation document in the Strand 2.2 folder. Work through the form like this:

• Sections A, B and E: one line on what the section is really screening for, plus a concrete fill-in note (your own contact-detail pattern, the education lines you would list, or two suitable referee types who know you outside your family).
• Section C: what it is really asking for, plus two or three day-to-day tasks from a real role you could name.
• Sections D1–D3 only: what each question is really asking for in your own words, then your own first-line evidence answer: one real occasion you would open with if you were applying today.

Finish with one extra line naming the D-section (or Section C, if that is thinner) you have the least evidence for. That gap is useful: it tells you what to gather later in this unit, when you complete a full form.

This document sits in your Strand 2.2 Digital Portfolio folder. It is the raw material for the competency evidence work coming next and for the completed form later in the unit, and you can draw on it when you build Portfolio in Action entries.

Talk these through with the person beside you, or sit with them quietly on your own.

• Which D-section (or Section C) do you have the least evidence for right now? Is the gap missing experience, or missing a clear memory of experience you already have?
• If a shortlister read only your weakest first-line answer, what would they decide about you, and what one detail would change that decision?

If you want a portfolio note later, add two sentences under your weakest section in Competency Form Annotation naming where better evidence would have to come from (a shift, a match, a class task, a volunteer role).

Today you participated in reading a competency-based form the way an employer does.

• Why employers use competency-based forms: claims on a CV cannot be checked; specific examples can
• How to read each section for what it is really asking, and spot the weak-answer pattern
• Your Competency Form Annotation with section screening notes, first-line evidence for D1–D3, and a named weakest evidence area

Next you will extract competencies from a real job advert and start building fuller STAR evidence for the sections that still feel thin.