The Friday Deadline

Pairing

• Rollout → Delivering at Pace. The evidence is specific and quantified: a fixed go-live date, 14 people dependent on the plan, delivery three weeks early. Pace behaviours are scored on how you planned milestones, managed dependencies and recovered slippage. That is exactly what this example contains.
• Forum → Leadership. The evidence is influence without formal authority: you diagnosed falling attendance, changed the format and sustained engagement over six meetings. That is the leadership signal assessors look for from someone who is not yet a manager.

Why not the reverse

The forum has almost no pace evidence - no deadline, no external pressure. The rollout does contain leadership evidence, but that evidence is common, whereas its pace evidence (early delivery against a hard date) is rare. Match each example to the behaviour where its evidence is strongest, not to where you personally find it most flattering.

Do not reuse one situation for both behaviours

Repeating the rollout would halve the breadth of evidence the panel can score. Keep the two separate.

Strengthening the weaker example

Before writing, recover real data rather than inventing it: attendance figures from the minutes, how many members attended at the start and end, what specifically you changed and what happened next. A weak example with two hard numbers beats a vague one with none. Write both in the first person - 'I decided', not 'we decided' - and keep each to roughly 250 words.

Tonight

1. Read the application guidance to establish when references are actually required. Many schemes request them after offer, not at submission. Check rather than assume.
2. Identify a fallback referee who can speak to the same period and the same work - for example the site manager who oversaw the rollout. Ask them tonight, send them the job description and your two examples.
3. Email your line manager now. They may check messages while away, and it is courteous; they have already agreed in principle.

Tomorrow

1. If the form will not submit without referee details, contact the recruitment inbox in the morning, not at 18:00 on Friday, and ask what to enter. Keep the reply.
2. Submit the application by Thursday evening if possible. Friday evening submission with no buffer is an unnecessary risk given the technical failure rate of large forms.

What you must not do

Enter a placeholder, a friend's details, or an invented email address. A late application is recoverable next cycle; a false declaration on a civil service application is not. Never let referee availability be the reason you miss the deadline - it is the least important element at this stage.

You do not need to justify eligibility. A 2:2 meets the stated minimum. Nothing in the form requires an explanation of your classification, and volunteering one in a behaviour example would dilute evidence that is scored on behaviour alone.

Where it belongs, if you disclose

In the mitigating-circumstances or reasonable-adjustments section, in two or three sentences, factual and dated:

Diagnosed with [condition] in the March of my final year. Extenuating circumstances were granted for two modules. Final classification 2:2.

No adjectives, no appeal to sympathy, no explanation of the diagnosis itself.

The judgement

Disclosure is your choice. Ask what it buys you:

• If you want adjustments for the online tests or the assessment centre - extra time, a quiet room, a different format - disclose early, with evidence, and ask what the process is. Late requests are harder to accommodate.
• If the condition still affects you at work, disclosure is practically useful, not just a fairness argument.
• If neither applies, a bare 2:2 needs no defence and you should spend your 90 minutes on the examples.

Do not bury it in a behaviour answer as a framing device; assessors score the evidence, and it reads as deflection.