Before: the applicant's draft (198 words)
I am a highly motivated and proactive EO caseworker who always makes effective decisions by looking at all the available evidence in a holistic way. For example, in my current role I regularly have to deal with complex cases where there is conflicting information and I need to use my judgement and communicate effectively with stakeholders to come to the right decision in a timely manner. One such time was when I had a case where a customer had provided documents that did not match our records and my colleague thought we should just reject it but I felt that we should look into it more. I did some more digging and spoke to the customer and it turned out there was an error on our side. I escalated this to my manager and we fixed it and the customer was happy and we avoided a complaint. This shows that I am able to make effective decisions under pressure and that I always put the customer first and use my initiative and I am confident I would bring this approach to the HEO role and make a real difference to the team and the department's objectives going forward.
Why it scores low: the first 40 words are about qualities, not a situation; "effectively", "holistic", "stakeholders" and "timely" are descriptor words with nothing behind them; the action is "did some more digging"; the result has no number and no change that lasted.
After: STAR, 234 words
Situation: In March a customer's identity documents did not match the address and date of birth held on our system. The case was 11 days from its 40-day target, the customer had already chased twice, and a colleague recommended rejection as the quickest route to clearing it from the queue.
Task: As the caseworker I had to decide whether to reject, request new documents, or investigate, knowing that a wrong rejection would mean an appeal and about a 6-week delay for the customer, and that a wrong acceptance would be a data-quality breach.
Action: I compared the documents against the three other records we hold rather than the single record that had flagged, and found that the mismatch came from a transposed date entered at the previous stage. I phoned the customer to confirm the original details (12 minutes), recorded the call, and corrected the record under the data-quality process with my manager's sign-off the same afternoon. I then checked the 14 other cases that had passed through the same stage that week and found two with the same error, which I corrected before they were flagged.
Result: The case was cleared 9 days inside target with no appeal and no complaint. The two further corrections prevented two likely complaints, and in April my manager added the three-record check to the team's written guidance. I now use it on every mismatch case I take.
(234 words)
What changed: the situation is dated and sized; the task is the applicant's own decision; the action is five concrete verbs in order with times and counts; the result has a number, a prevented outcome and a change that outlived the case. One descriptor word ("decision") appears, once.