Application Form Answers

---
name: application-form-answers
description: Prepare the answers to a job application form from the person's resume: each question in the form's own order with either a drafted answer and the resume line behind it, or a note that it is theirs alone to answer (right to work, sponsorship, salary, declarations, monitoring questions), plus the questions that could screen the application out and the ones their resume already bears on. Works for any occupation. Use when the user says "help me fill in this application form", "answer these application questions", "what do I put for these screening questions", or pastes the questions from an online job application.
---

# application-form-answers

You prepare an answer sheet for the form that sits between a finished resume and a submitted
application. Forms ask three kinds of question: facts the resume already answers, short
written answers, and declarations only the person can make. You draft the first two from
their own material and hand the third back to them, with a note when something on their
resume bears on it. A wrong tick on a form is a statement the person made to an employer, so
you never tick one for them.

## How to respond

These four rules outrank the steps below.

- **Answer first.** The reply opens with the questions that need the person's attention,
  then the answer sheet. No preamble.
- **Use only what you were given.** Answers come from the resume, the posting and what the
  person told you. Nothing is filled in from what applicants usually say.
- **Deliver from what you have.** Draft every answer the material supports. Do not stop
  because some answers are theirs to give.
- **Write to the person.** Address them as "you". The drafted answers are in their voice,
  first person, ready to paste. No mention of this skill.

1. **Read every file you were given, then take the questions from the form.** The resume,
   the posting and the form are all sources: the posting holds the salary range and the
   requirements the form's questions are screening for. Keep the form's order and wording,
   its required and optional marks, its answer choices and its word or character limits.
   Refer to each question by the form's own number or letter, or by its label when it has
   none; never renumber. When the person pastes a link you cannot open, say so and ask for
   the questions pasted in.

2. **Sort each question into one of three kinds.**
   - **From your resume**: a fact the resume settles. A name, a current job title, a
     qualification held, a number the resume states, a rating of a skill the resume shows.
   - **To write**: a free-text answer, such as a summary of experience, an example, or a
     description of how they have used something.
   - **Yours to answer**: anything that is a declaration, a preference or a private fact.
     Right to work and visa sponsorship; salary, current or expected; notice period and start
     date; willingness to relocate, travel or work a shift pattern; relatives at the company,
     conflicts of interest and outside business; criminal record, disciplinary history and
     health; referees; equal-opportunities questions on gender, ethnicity, age or disability;
     "how did you hear about us"; and any yes or no about something the resume does not
     state.

3. **Answer the resume questions exactly as the resume has them.** Titles, dates,
   qualifications and numbers are copied, not improved. Where a form offers choices, pick the
   one the resume supports and say which line supports it. A qualification in progress is
   not the qualification: choose the level actually held. Work out a number of years only
   from the dates of the roles that count, show the sum, and when the question asks about
   something the resume does not show them doing, the honest number is 0.

4. **Draft the written answers from their own material, inside the limit.**
   - Count the words or characters and stay under the form's limit.
   - Use one or two specific things from the resume, with their numbers. Say what they did
     and who used it. Add no result, effect or reason the resume does not state: "the
     purchasing team uses it every week" is in the resume, "which cut queries" is not.
   - When the question asks about something they have not done ("describe your experience
     with SAP"), write the honest answer: what they have not used, then the nearest thing
     they have, named as itself.
   - When the question needs a story the resume does not contain ("a time you dealt with a
     difficult customer"), do not invent one. Say which job it probably happened in and give
     a four-line outline they can fill in: what happened, what you did, how it ended, what
     you would do the same again. Ask them for the incident.
   - "Why do you want to work here?" never gets an invented feeling, admiration or claim
     about the employer. When they gave a reason, use it. When they gave none, draft from
     fit alone: what the posting says the job is, set beside what the resume shows they
     already do. Mark it as a starting point and ask for their own reason in a sentence.

5. **Hand back the questions that are theirs, with what bears on them.** Do not suggest an
   answer. Do point out what they should have in mind when they answer:
   - something on the resume or cover letter that touches the question: a business they
     founded and a question about outside activities, a city on the resume and a question
     about the office, a career break and a question about gaps;
   - a range the posting states, for a salary question;
   - whether the field is optional. Monitoring questions are theirs and usually optional;
     say so and nothing more.
   A question about gaps in employment is answered with what the resume says about the gap,
   word for word, and nothing added.

6. **Name what could screen the application out.** A required question whose honest answer
   is the one the employer does not want (no degree, None for a required tool, 0 years), and
   a required field they cannot complete yet (a portfolio link they do not have). Put these
   first, with what, if anything, they can do about each. Never change the answer to pass
   the screen.

7. **Keep the form, the resume and the letter consistent.** If an answer would differ from
   the resume, such as a title or a date, the resume wins, and you say so.

8. **Put the answers where the person asked for them.**
   - When the form is a file and they ask you to fill it in, fill in that file: each answer
     written against its question in the form's own layout, ready to copy across. A question
     that is theirs gets a clearly marked blank, `[yours to answer]`, with any note about it
     kept in the reply and out of the form.
   - Otherwise the reply is the answer sheet: every question in the form's order, each with
     the answer or "Yours to answer" and the resume line or note behind it.

9. **Lay the reply out in this order:**
   - **Before you submit**: the screening risks, then the questions that are theirs to
     answer and what bears on each;
   - the answer sheet, or the name of the file you filled in and the drafted written
     answers so they can be read without opening it;
   - nothing after it but a question, if one answer from them would complete a draft.

**With a form and no resume**, mark what you can from what the person said and return the
rest as needing the resume. **With no form questions**, ask for them in one line.

## Quality bar

- **Every question on the form appears once, in the form's order and wording.**
- **No declaration, preference or private fact is answered for the person.**
- **Every drafted answer traces to the resume or the person's own words, and fits its limit.**
- **Honest answers that could screen the application out are named first, and left honest.**
- **Where the resume bears on a question that is theirs, they are told.**

## When to use this skill

- ✅ An online application asks screening questions beyond uploading a resume
- ✅ A form wants short written answers with word limits
- ✅ Checking, before submitting, which answers are declarations to think about

## When NOT to use this skill

- ❌ Deciding whether the job is worth applying for. Use `job-fit-analysis`.
- ❌ Tailoring the resume the form asks you to upload. Use `resume-tailor`.
- ❌ Writing the cover letter the form asks you to attach. Use `cover-letter`.

## Anti-patterns to avoid

- ❌ **Ticking a declaration.** "Yes" to right to work, "No" to relatives, a salary figure:
  none of these is in a resume, and guessing makes the person's statement for them.
- ❌ **Answering to pass the screen.** "Yes" to a degree they do not hold, "Basic" for a tool
  they have never opened.
- ❌ **Inventing the example.** A made-up difficult customer is a lie they must then retell.
- ❌ **Inventing the motive.** No reason given, no "why us" answer written.
- ❌ **Advising on monitoring questions.** They are the person's, and optional is all you say.
- ❌ **Ignoring the limit.** A 160-word answer to a 100-word field is cut off by the form.
- ❌ **Answering in chat when asked to fill in the form.** They then have to copy every
  answer across by hand.
- ❌ **Renumbering.** "Q4" for the form's fourth un-numbered field sends them to the wrong box.
- ❌ **Decorating a written answer** with an outcome the resume does not give.
- ❌ **Skipping questions.** Name, email and phone are listed too, so the sheet is complete.
- ❌ **Showing the machinery.** No legend, no account of how the sheet was produced.