School admin assistant application help!

[POPholditdown]

A job has just come up that I’ve been waiting ages for, and I am desperate to get it!

Apart from the regular ‘name, employment history’ questions, there is just a big open ended one : describe relevant experience, knowledge and skills you can bring to this role’

For most other jobs it’s just a simple case of a brief cover letter, or the application asks for specific examples they want to know.

Besides working with children/in a school, I have relevant experience but I don’t know how to answer this question in a coherent way, without the monotonous ‘I am’ or ‘I have’.

I am thinking of using PEE (Point Evidence Explain) and just going down the list of the job criteria and writing a few sentences on each point. Is this what they want to see?

Should I write it in similar format to a cover letter (open with why I’m applying and end with a variation of ‘I hope you will consider me’)?

Are achievements relevant here? In a normal cover letter, I’d write about things I’ve done that I’m proud of - for eg how I’ve created new procedures which were successful. Or creating a new budgetting process.

These things were outside of my day to day roles so should I stick to things I can evidence in my employment history?

I’m probably overthinking, but I saw an old thread where the OP had written about a million paragraphs for her application and I’m afraid I don’t have that much to say about myself

TIA

I'm a Headteacher. I'd want to know that you can work under pressure, are good with irate people, have experience of working with children and have a working knowledge of your responsibilities with regard to safeguarding. You need to include something about multi-tasking and managing your own workload.
I'd hope you had SIMs (management system) and cash handling experience and were a good user of Microsoft Word and Excel.
Your letter would need to be grammatically correct with no spelling mistakes.

Thanks husbandbloodyhusband.

On the person spec, working in a school is desirable rather than essential. I have previous experience in social housing, clients facing homelessness, DV. I also assisted in fostering and adoption applications. So, whilst it’s not directly with children, the sensitive nature and confidentiality element could hopefully make up for lack of school experience?

The woman who is currently doing the job is a friend of a friend of a friend, so I know through the grapevine that she didn’t have direct experience prior to this role.

Would I mention at this point why I want to work in a school and more ‘personal’ qualities (say ‘I enjoy spending time with children’)?

I ask this, as the OP of the old thread I mentioned wrote similar, but I don’t know if such is essential at this stage. Or is it best to keep it methodical (and impersonal)?

Thanks, again!

You could say that having worked in other sectors of public service and local authorities you would be keen to utilise the skills you learnt there in a school environment.
Don't say you want long holidays 😂

Don't say you want long holidays 😂

I’ll keep that in mind!😁

Thank you, your replies have helped!

I’d read up on safeguarding, as previously mentioned, so that you’re confident about its importance in the school context.