Please give an example of a situation where you have worked as part of a team to achieve a specific objective. Consider your contribution, problems encountered, solutions given, outcomes and learning points.

A group of friends and I had decided to hike 80km across the Brecon Beacons and after several hours of walking we had taken the wrong path down a beacon. The navigators were convinced that the route was correct even though it seemed too dangerous. Trusting my instinct, I suggested taking a water break to discuss the route.

As it transpired the navigators had understandably thought it was correct to climb down the beacon at this point, because it was the highlighted route on the map. However, they had not noticed that we were thirty kilometres away from that map position. When I brought this to everyone’s attention, I was told that I was wrong. Therefore, I thought it would be helpful if everyone could distinguish something from our surroundings and identify it on the map.

My teammates struggled to place obvious things around us onto the map. Consequently, I calmly showed the group where I thought we were, pointing to a lake in the distance and placing it on the map. Everyone agreed that we must have, in fact, taken the wrong route and were a long way from the campsite. Whilst this was disheartening news, we made it back to the campsite safely as a team and had avoided getting lost. This experience proves my ability to respond calmly, think logically, listen to others, be open to all contributions and voice my opinions respectfully; crucial values and traits for a team member at Forsters.

Our thoughts

Positives

• The answer is well written.
• It draws on a relevant, fairly unique example centring on teamwork, and the nature of the example is made clear at the very beginning.
• The structure is easy to follow. 

Potential points for improvement

• This was a complicated question with lots of components. If I was working on this, I would probably have started by writing distinct headings covering each aspect of the question (I would have subsequently deleted the headings before submitting). These headings might have been: “Teamwork scenario; specific objective; my contribution; problems; solutions; outcomes; learning points”. I don’t think the applicant took a similar approach, as they didn’t specifically cover any learning points.
• In addition, the answer doesn’t really give much detail about the applicant’s specific contributions, other than them pointing out that the others were wrong and identifying the lake. Instead, quite a few words go to implicitly criticising the others in the group.
• With this in mind, I’m not sure that the answer reflects particularly well on the applicant’s teamworking skills (the answer might have been more relevant if the question centred on leadership or handling conflict).