 Hi everyone and welcome back. So this is my top tips for writing those personal statements of your job application as a qualified nurse. So when you go online, you will have the supporting information section to fill out. This is where you'll write your personal statement for that job and really sell yourself. So firstly, I would advise just writing this on Word document first just because Word document can spell check it for you. You can sort of adjust and edit it as you go along. So I personally do mine on Word first and then I copy and paste from Word onto the personal statement bit. Along with this, get somebody to proofread. Proofread, proofread, proofread. You don't want to make the mistake of making spelling mistakes or saying the completely wrong thing that someone else reading it might not understand. That's going to be a little bit embarrassing and I'm not going to lie, I've done that myself. I put in a personal statement and I can't remember exactly what I said but I was trying to say that I had basically cared for a lot of people with challenging sort of behaviours and aggressive behaviour to show that I was a calm, naturally calm person and can handle myself in those sort of situations and that I'm quite good at it and I work really well under pressure. However, the sentence that I wrote which I didn't realise until after I'd submitted was something like I have challenging behaviours but I can manage these well or something so it sounded like I had the challenging, aggressive behaviours but it wasn't me, it was the patience and the way it sounded I just thought oh my god why didn't I proofread this? Why didn't somebody proofread this for me? And oh I was so embarrassed. Make sure in your personal statement you want to include brand new information. You don't want to repeat yourself from what's already on the application form. Put in brand new, sparkly information that they're going to go oh this is good. Make sure you read the job description and the person specification because you're going to need that to include that into this personal statement and you're going to sort of show how you particularly meet these requirements that they're asking of you in your personal statement and show examples. That just shows as well that you've actually read what they want from you and that you can meet those things. Following on from that so you want to make every single personal statement completely separate from each other so if you're applying to quite a few jobs in different areas you want to make sure that this isn't a generic personal statement you have to make it specific to that place that you're applying which might seem like a little bit more work but you don't want a generic email just going out to everybody you want to make it specific and relevant to that particular place and that's going to just help you massively I think. Just shows that you're taking the time out to be interested in that particular company as well it's going to go in your favour. Sell yourself, sell yourself, sell yourself. So this is something I get really awkward about, get really embarrassed with but you know what you have to go for it. You have to put all of those feelings aside and just sell yourself because sometimes it is just down to your little bit of confidence that you might have and selling yourself that little bit more that bags you the position over the other person that's got the exact same qualifications as you so make sure you sell yourself and write anything that makes you stand out from everybody else because as a nurse you're going to have all the same qualifications all the same sort of if you're a student nurse all the same qualifications and experience as your fellow student nurses so you want to put in there something extra about you that you've done through university volunteering anything like that that's going to make you stand out and make this person think oh okay she's got something a bit extra than that person so just do that put all the fears aside and just go for it. Also with this you want to look into the person spec and have a look what's been ticked on the essential or desirable parts so you want to cover all of the essential parts in there so that they know that you're meeting those targets. You can also use subheadings and underlining bold parts just to make things stand out and make it easier for the person to read because if you've got a really long winded piece of personal statement it might just get a little bit jumbled I think when someone's looking at it. I personally I use head little subheadings just so they know where they're at. Using the star technique so the star technique is something that I learned at university to just to help structure things a whole lot better and answer anything that I'm trying to demonstrate out there it just helps to mould and keep me on target of what I'm trying to say if that makes sense and the star technique literally just means situation, task, action and then the result of the whole situation. However I would not put the subheading star technique with s and then don't do that please leave all that out and just in your mind use the star technique and then write it out nicely. You could even put the as a draft put the star technique but then delete it all and just make it flow nicely into a paragraph but don't put that as a subheading. So situation part is just explaining the situation briefly then the task is just briefly explaining what you have to do in that situation. So action is the most substantial part of it around 50 to 70% of it is going to be through action this is where you can use examples of when where how why what all of that of how you solve this problem or whatever they're asking you just to provide an example of how you met that target and then the result of your actions you're just going to explain what the outcome was what happened as a as a result of this basically and that's pretty much it the star technique is quite simple I think if you sort of break it down it just really helps you manage that. Put in your personal statement why you particularly want to work for the company that you are applying to or the area or the field that you're applying to why is them specifically and how you can be a benefit or use to them and so it's about what you've got to bring to them but also what they can bring to you and what sort of things stand out for you to actually want to work there if that makes sense I think that's going to look really good on a personal statement as well we're going to put in things like why you're applying for that job why they should hire you over everybody else and again just using the dot drop description to your advantage to help you do that just a few skills and qualities that you can include in your personal statement could be things like including things such as team working and what you brought to that team so working within the multidisciplinary team in the NHS or on your placements wherever you've been or whether you're currently a qualified nurse in a job what have you done to that team and what can you bring to this future team that you're applying to also all about assessing complex needs of patients because it's all about the patient so you want to make sure that the patient's in there care planning in implementing evaluating and using appropriate nursing interventions you might want to put communication skills so what sort of communication skills you have and you're exceptionally good at understanding confidentiality because we are high on confidentiality in the NHS and healthcare setting you might want to put something about if you've done any sort of teaching or mentoring as you've gone along you could put in something about the NMC code of conduct and what you understand about it you might want to put in about clinical governance safe medications management things like that and probably a little bit about your continuous professional development so what you've done extra training extra awareness days that you've gone to events congress conferences any extra things that you've done to sort of update your own knowledge put that in there and lastly show your passion and enthusiasm around through writing if you can if it's possible just make sure you put it all in there make sure you sound amazing and make sure they want to interview you so that's it from me I hope some of these tips have been useful to you let me know if you bag that into you let me know if you've got any other advice or tips for personal statements drop a comment below and let somebody else know let's help each other out and good luck