Today I applied for a job at eQuality Time, the charity I set up (much more sensible than it sounds – it’s a genuine charity, so it’s important to make sure they get the best person for the job – particularly when people who are good at setting organisations up aren’t necessarily good at running them).

I’m broadly applying for the job I already do much of, and that meant that applying for the job was a really interesting experience.

When you apply for a job you (I do anyway) look at the list of criteria and write about how you match them all in the covering letter. The interesting bit was that for some of the criteria I didn’t know what to write.  There are a few possibilities for this:

  • I didn’t feel like I had a particular skill
  • I felt like I had the skill but I hadn’t sucessfully demonstrated it.
  • I’d been carrying out the responsibility, but in an ad-hoc way, without any really plans or focus.

and all of those are interesting signs when you are already doing quite a lot of the job.

So my covering letter ended up being a fairly honest apraisal of where I felt I’d done well as a person, and where I felt I had a lot to learn. and the latter is something I’ll be working on hard in the future.   It was a really interesting exercise and I’ll be thinking about ways to build it into future work.   Filling out the application form meant that I gave myself a really sincere evaluation, rather than what I have a habit of doing, which is evaluating the organisation in isolation.

For those interested, the covering letter is here:eqtcoveringletter and, if I get the job, I’ll be working hard on staff managment and information flow.