Graduate application form questions: how to answer "why this firm" and the competency boxes

By Priya Sharma · Updated 2 October 2026

In June 2025 EvaS75 posted on The Student Room after applying for Civil Service jobs. "Has anyone received a rejection email with a score of 4, and only after following up via email, been told that the pass mark was raised from 4 to 6 to move to the interview stage? This has happened to me for four different roles." A 4 met the standard and still lost, four times over, and they only found out why because they emailed and asked.

That's the bit of the application form the advice pages tend to skip. The boxes that want evidence ("tell us about a time you...") get scored, and on a popular Civil Service role that score then goes up against everyone else's. The other kind of question, why you picked this employer, depends much more on the sector you're applying to. Law firms still put it on most of their forms, while the Civil Service Fast Stream leaves it out of the application stage altogether.

Find out which form you're filling in first

Some big schemes don't ask "why us" at the start. The Civil Service Fast Stream opens for 2027 entry at midday on 8 October 2026 and closes at midday on 5 November 2026. Its first stage asks you to register, choose up to three schemes and answer some background questions, and then the online tests start. There's no motivation essay anywhere in it.

I wanted to check the big private-sector schemes the same way and couldn't. PwC's graduate application-process page was a dead link (page not found) when I tried it at the start of October, so for those I'm going on what applicants report, and on what the online tests and recorded video interview that follow the form tend to ask. Writing about PwC's tax scheme in October 2025, yumna65 said the video interview "was just situational judgement questions (like rememeber a time when...) they didnt even ask me why i want the role". The same month glombar21 said of Tesco's 2026 scheme that "in my interview there were no questions about Tesco or the role and it was all competency questions." Those were interviews, not written forms. They still show where the hours should go. Every one of these processes wants competency stories, and only some want 300 words on the firm as well.

Read the whole form before you reuse an old answer, though, because law firms are the big exception to all this. So is the ordinary Civil Service job advert, where the Civil Service Careers guidance tells you to "Explain why you are interested in the job and how you think you would be a good fit."

The competency boxes are marked, then ranked

The gov.uk Success Profiles candidate overview (updated 29 January 2025) says you may be asked "to give examples of times when you have shown certain behaviours", and that "you will not be asked to demonstrate all the behaviours for one role." The advert names the ones it wants. They're the marking scheme, more or less. They're printed in front of you, and plenty of answers never use the words once.

Then there's what happened to EvaS75. A role with one or two vacancies and a long list of applicants can only interview so many people. So the line moves. Kamdam, replying in the same thread, put it down to numbers: "when they have 1 or 2 Vacancies and loads of people apply they can only shortlist a certain amount, hence why the standard is raised." No official guidance I've read mentions this. I checked the gov.uk overview and the Civil Service Careers page on behaviours. The only way to find out is the way EvaS75 did, by emailing after the rejection. It's a lottery with a skill element, and the published material only describes the skill. Meeting the behaviour gets you into the pile, and on a busy role the people who get interviewed come from somewhere near the top of it.

Gov.uk suggests STAR, which "allows you to set the scene, show what and how you did and the overall outcome." Almost everyone does. In a 2020 thread Dammie9311 wrote "I use STAR method very clearly. I am wondering if maybe they are too detailed", and later, "I get 3s all through sometimes even a 2." Heldol's reply was the useful one. "You need to concentrate on what you do and not describing the process". The thread's six years old. The behaviours it was about are still the framework, though, and I'd bet this is still the commonest way a STAR answer goes wrong. The situation eats half the word count because it feels like context the marker needs. One sentence covers it.

If the limit is 250 words (adverts set their own, so check), I'd give about 40 to the situation and task together and 170 to what you did, in the first person, in the order you did it. The last 40 go on the result. Then put the behaviour descriptor from the advert next to your draft and read it line by line. It's tedious. wonderwheels, replying to Dammie9311, said "It doesn't matter how strong your example is if it doesn't tick the boxes." Each line of the action part should answer something in the descriptor. A line about the team, the project or the client gets cut to half a line, or cut. You'll reuse these stories at the interview stage, where the questions tend to run along the same behaviours the form named.

"Why this firm", when it's asked

In March 2026 a staff member on The Corporate Law Academy's forum started a thread asking applicants to post the written questions they'd had in the 2025/26 cycle. By mid-April there were forms from 36 firms. I read every one. 23 ask, more or less directly, why that firm. Several of the rest come at it sideways. Trowers & Hamlins wants a recent commercial news story "and explain how it relates to us", DLA Piper wants you to pick an article from its own Insights page, and Macfarlanes asks what would make a reader think "This person belongs at Macfarlanes".

The word limits are all over the place. Withers gave 60 words for "Why are you applying to Withers?" (it also asked, in another 60, "If your life had a mascot, what would it look like and what would it cheer for?", which I'd have enjoyed a lot more). Charles Russell Speechlys gave 400. It listed what to cover, down to your preferred office. Those are different jobs. Sixty words is room for one reason and one bit of proof. At 300 or more you need research you couldn't lift off the firm's homepage, like someone you spoke to at an open day, a deal you followed or the seat you want and why.

My view, which not every careers adviser shares, is to write the why-us answer last, after every other box, and from scratch for each firm. Competency stories travel between applications with some editing. A why-us answer doesn't. My guess is that most pasted-looking ones were written first, in general terms, probably late at night with the form still blank, and the firm's name went in at the end along with a line about its collaborative culture that would fit any of the 36. The person marking them has read hundreds of these and will probably spot one quickly. (Penningtons Manches Cooper wanted a cover letter on top of its questions, so that's the same problem twice.)

"Which other firms are you applying to?"

Goodwin's 2025/26 vac scheme form gave 100 words to "Why are you applying to Goodwin?" and twice that to "Which other firms are you applying to and why?" I quite like the question, because it admits you're applying elsewhere. Everyone knows you are. If your list has nothing in common, better to spot that now than have a recruiter spot it. A good answer names a few firms with something in common, maybe similar size or a shared practice area, and says what that thread is and why it suits what you want to do.

The AI question

Some forms now ask outright whether you used ChatGPT. Jones Day's 2025/26 vac scheme form, as TCchaser posted it on 9 March 2026, put "Have you used any AI or ChatGPT in your answer? (max 99 words)" straight under a 300-word question on why you'd make a good trainee there. Boodle Hatfield asked two AI questions. choicefox212 posted its set in April 2026, and one of them asks how you'd used AI on the form itself. Shoosmiths asks how you expect to use generative AI as a solicitor. That's a different question, and a fair one for a law firm to ask in 2026.

So if a form asks, answer it. A sentence or two on what you used it for is enough, and "I used it to get my answer under the word limit" is fine. A chatbot's answer passed off as your own is a different matter.

The Civil Service has written its rules down. Its candidate guide to AI in recruitment says you can use it to "check the spelling, grammar and clarity of what you have written" and to help structure your examples. You can't use it to "inflate or invent your skills and experiences" or to "create generic responses and copy these into your application", and it warns that "we may reject applications where AI is used inappropriately at any stage of the process." The Fast Stream is stricter about tests. If it suspects you used generative AI during them, "your application may be withdrawn."

When you send it

Lots of schemes recruit on a rolling basis, so the date on the advert isn't really the deadline (the graduate scheme deadline tracker has the closing dates for the main ones anyway). In an April 2024 thread about repeated rejections at the online application stage, Pedr0 replied that their own run had gone the other way. They said that applying "around wintertime" had got them to the psychometric test stage "on nearly all of them", and guessed the rolling schemes had "nearly filled their quota by now". That's one person's guess and I can't prove it, but I still wouldn't hold a finished form back for another week of polishing.

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Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma covers graduate jobs. Schemes, deadlines, online tests, interviews. She started writing for the site in October 2025 and has over 30 articles up.