Reflecting on your experience to strengthen your applications

Writing consistently strong applications can be a big ask. Producing compelling content can be even trickier if you haven’t allowed yourself the space and time to engage in self-reflection.

Therefore, providing yourself with the opportunity to pause and take stock of your experiences can be highly effective. It also allows you to reflect on your personal and professional development. It can help you generate new ideas and relevant content to incorporate as part of your applications.

In this article, we explain what we mean by self-reflection before outlining potential models to engage in the process. We also look at how to use your learning to strengthen your applications in the future.

What do we mean by self-reflection?  

In the context of your professional experience and development, engaging in self-reflection offers a valuable opportunity to consider your thoughts, motivations, and actions. This helps you build a deeper understanding of yourself in your current work context and environment.

Examples of how you might engage in self-reflection could include:

• Questioning: asking yourself questions such as “what went well?”, “what could be improved upon in the future?” and “why did I take that course of action?” By engaging in the process of introspective questioning you can understand more about the foundations of your thoughts and actions.

• Actively recording and reviewing experiences: this might involve recording your experience as part of a log, or others might engage with regular professional journaling to look back on specific projects, events, tasks, or even relationships to consider their key learning and what they might change now or in the future.

• Becoming more conscious of your motivations: asking yourself “what keeps you interested in your work?”, “what drives you to succeed?”, “what gives you a real sense of satisfaction?” By becoming more aware of why you think, feel and behave the way you do, you can more confidently identify and articulate what helps you to stay engaged in your work.

• Asking for feedback: by bringing others on board to support you in reflecting on your performance, this offers a great opportunity to identify any areas for development, as perceived by others. You can also discuss your strengths and achievements. Being aware of your impact on others can increase your job satisfaction, drive your personal development and help you to consider the value you might add to a future employer.

Overall, intentionally engaging in activities or processes to support self-reflection can be highly valuable. This might take place formally, through a performance review process, or informally, through discussion with colleagues or by noting down your own thoughts and ideas. Doing so can lead to a better understanding of your development, strengths, and individual merits as a prospective candidate.

Models of reflection

There are numerous models that can be drawn upon to encourage self-reflection. We have incorporated three of the most popular ones here.

Consider your experiential learning

Dating from the 1980s, Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (1984) focuses on how people learn. It draws on how individuals develop their understanding through actual experiences. In this sense, Kolb’s model is highly relevant in professional settings to support performance improvement through continuous learning and self-reflection. It can be used to help you consider your own development by clearly reflecting on your successes and failures. This reflection can then guide you in actively seeking to improve your performance.

Kolb’s cycle incorporates four key stages:

1. Concrete experience – this can either be a repeat of a task or situation that has happened or something completely new.
2. Reflective observation – you engage in reflecting on the experience and highlighting anything about it which you haven’t come across before. You can also consider what happened, why it happened, your own reactions and the perspectives of others. This could involve journaling, small group discussions, or a self-assessment shared with your line manager, for instance.
3. Abstract conceptualisation – you aim to make sense of your reflections based on your existing knowledge and develop new ideas based on any key differences in the experience.
4. Active experimentation – you apply your ideas and insights to new and varied situations, which then feeds into a new concrete experience. This becomes a continuous loop of learning and improvement.

Engage in a reflective cycle

The model proposed by Gibbs, contributing to his Reflective Cycle (1998), adds further stages to Kolb’s. It focuses on description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action planning.

The initial stage here, again, focuses on outlining the experience being reflected on. It then encourages you to focus on your feelings about the experience, both during and after it took place.

Further to this, Gibbs suggests evaluating the experience. Take into account what was good or bad about it from your own perspective. These thoughts then feed into your analysis of the situation, helping you make sense of it. From there, you can draw your own conclusion about what other actions you could have taken to reach a different outcome.

The final stage focuses on building an action plan of steps that can be taken next time. This helps you and/or your colleagues prepare if you find yourselves in a similar situation.

Take part in the ERA cycle

A more concise model developed by Jasper (2013), consists of just three stages:

1. Experience – something you have been through or something completely new, whether it was positive or negative and in a personal and/or professional context.
2. Reflection – allow yourself time to think through the experience, consider your feelings about what happened and determine the next steps.
3. Action – the decision taken about the resulting action will vary from person to person, but will feed into another experience, allowing the cycle to continue.

Strengthening your applications by drawing on your reflections

Whilst all of the models above offer a similar approach to self-reflection, each will have its own merits and application. These might depend on the nature of both the discipline and role you are working in.

Regardless of the model used, engaging with self-reflection will be valuable.

For example, it will help you to do the following:

• Consider your strengths and weaknesses

  – by identifying what you are good at and areas you might need to improve upon, this will indicate to an employer that you are self-aware and committed to your professional growth. These can be shared both as part of supporting statements/cover letters and when invited to interview.

• Understanding your values and motivations

  – by considering your feelings and behaviours in certain situations, you are strengthening your understanding of both your values and what keeps you engaged in your work.

  This will assist you in finding future roles that align with your core values and in working towards your longer-term goals. Personal and career values are important to discuss as part of your applications. They can be drawn upon to discuss your reasons for wanting to work for an organisation. They can also be used to convince the employer of your suitability and “fit”.

• Strengthen your storytelling

  – by using the models outlined above – considering both successes and failures – you will be able to document and therefore draw upon specific examples in response to direct application and/or interview questions.

  You might also choose to incorporate examples within a supporting statement or covering letter. This can be particularly helpful when looking to highlight your skills. It allows you to show where you have applied the abilities an employer is looking for as part of the person specification.

• Feel more confident

  – by taking the time to reflect on your achievements, where you have progressed and developed, and by having concrete examples to incorporate as part of future applications, you will be able to confidently articulate your potential value to a prospective employer. This will also increase your resilience in case of rejection, which is a difficult, but inevitable part of job hunting.

Overall, reflecting on your experience is essential to both your professional growth and strengthening your applications in the future. Engaging in self-reflection to examine your experiences and inform your decision-making when pursuing future opportunities is highly valuable. It highlights the importance of building greater self-awareness to strengthen your applications.

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