Many people find it daunting to write a supporting statement to support their job application. This blog post outlines how to write a well-written supporting statement which showcases your qualifications, experience, skills, and passion for the role, provides insight into your character, ambition, and dedication and helps you to stand out from other candidates.
What is a supporting statement?
Many companies require you to write a supporting statement (also known as a personal statement), which is submitted alongside your CV as part of the job application process. A supporting statement focuses on how your skills, knowledge and experience match the essential and desirable criteria from the job description or person specification, and provides specific examples which evidence this. A supporting statement also outlines why you are interested in the role. This helps the interviewer to assess which candidates most closely match the role profile in order to shortlist the best candidates to interview.
Each supporting statement should emphasise how your skills meet the specific role description and why you are interested in each specific role. This means they need to be tailored to each role, rather than simply using the same generic personal statement for each role.
Read the job description thoroughly
Before you start writing your supporting statement, read the job description thoroughly several times, particularly the person specification and role requirements, which provides the criteria which the recruiter will assess your experience against. Your supporting statement needs to focus on how you meet the essential and desirable skills, experience, qualifications from the job description/person specification.
Decide on how to structure your supporting statement
Most people divide their supporting statement into sections, which makes it easier to write, as well as keeping this clear and concise, and making it easier for the recruiter to review. You may wish to use the section headings listed in the person specification/job description, or you may wish to group some of the sections together to reduce duplication. For instance, a manager may wish to group team leadership and operational management together, and may wish to group communication, negotiation, influencing and stakeholder management together to avoid repetition. If your supporting statement is likely to be less than one side of A4, you may not need to use section headings.
Whilst it can be tempting to launch straight into writing your supporting statement, this usually takes longer as it is likely to introduce duplication which you will need to remove at a later stage.
Introduction
Start your supporting statement with a short introduction which immediately grabs the recruiter’s attention by providing a brief overview of your experience and your reasons for applying for the role. Share a genuine interest in the opportunity, your passion for the industry and company which you are applying to. You may wish to reference their mission statement, core values, or recent initiatives, and discuss how they resonate with you.
“I am a Senior Manager with over 15 years experience transforming service delivery within a range of complex public and private sector organisations…”
Highlight your relevant key skills and experience in each role specific section
Before you start writing, identify 2-3 key messages and a short STAR based example to include under each section heading which outlines how you will deliver value in the role.
Write concise examples using the STAR technique to structure your answers and to demonstrate the impact you’ve made. You will expand on these to provide detailed examples during an interview.
Situation – the background
Task – what you needed to do
Action – what you did
Result – what happened because of it
For instance,
“In my previous role as a Communications Coordinator, I led a team that successfully launched a social media campaign, increasing engagement by 30% within the first quarter.”
End with a strong conclusion
Your final paragraph should summarise your suitability and interest in the role. For instance:
“I am confident that my skills, experience, and passion will enable me to contribute meaningfully to your team. I look forward to the opportunity to further discuss how I can support you in this role.”
Be clear and concise
Your supporting statement needs to be as clear and concise as possible, so recruiters can quickly understand who you are, and what you offer aligned to their specific role description. Avoid lengthy sentences and irrelevant details, use as few words as possible and try to avoid duplication wherever possible, look for opportunities to combine sections to reduce repetition.
Proofread it carefully
Once you have finished your supporting statement, ensure that you have included the main keywords from the job description/person specification. It can be helpful to use the find / CTRL+F to search for these keywords in your statement.
Use a spellchecker, and proofread this carefully, looking for spelling or grammatical mistakes, or awkward phrasing. It can also be helpful to ask a friend to review it in case they can spot anything which you’ve missed.
Ensuring your supporting statement stands out
Hopefully these tips will help you to write a supporting statement which stands out to recruiters.
I offer a supporting statement writing service, however supporting statements are usually very time-consuming to write, as we will need to arrange a comprehensive telephone consultation to discuss how your skills and experience relate to a job description of your choice, before I can write this for you. For more information, please visit my CV Writing Service page, call me for a friendly chat on 07917 137210 or email me via becky@interviewsuccess.co.uk.
