For this lesson you take the employer's chair: you are the person deciding who gets turned down, not the person hoping to get through.

Shortlisting is not a vibe and it is not a personality contest. It is a judgement against a written person specification. In the next half hour you will shortlist six sample applicants, then turn the same careful eye on your own competency form. Reading your application as the person deciding who not to interview is uncomfortable. It is also the whole skill.

Three terms you will use for the rest of this unit. Read them once, then use them in the sort.

Two more screening tools you will meet in larger employers, named only so you recognise them: AI screening (software that scores or ranks written answers against the person specification) and video pre-screening (a recorded one-way video of set questions, watched later or scored by software). These tools are more common in larger or online employers; many local managers, cafés and smaller Irish retail roles still shortlist by hand against the person specification on paper or email. Neither tool replaces the person specification. Both make a vague or keyword-empty answer easier to screen out.

Part 1 (about 10 minutes): shortlist six applicants.

You are shortlisting for this classroom-scenario role. Read the person specification first. Then drag each applicant card into Shortlist, Maybe or Reject. Nothing is marked right or wrong, so you can move a card as often as you like. The arguments about the maybes are the teaching.

Person specification — Junior Customer Support Assistant, Harbourline Retail (classroom scenario: school-leaver intake for a fictional Irish retail chain)

Essential

• Leaving Certificate (or equivalent) complete, or final results pending this year
• Clear written communication (the application itself is evidence)
• Available for Saturday and Sunday shifts on a rota
• At least one real example of customer-facing work or voluntary public-facing work

Desirable

• Previous retail or hospitality experience
• Basic spreadsheet skills
• Spoken Irish an advantage for one store

When the class has sorted, be ready to defend one placement: which essential did that applicant miss, or meet?

Part 2 (about 25 minutes): mark and revise your own form.

Open your Competency Application Form from your Strand 2.2 folder, along with the job advert or competency list you wrote it against. You are no longer the applicant. You are the shortlister deciding who not to interview.

Plenty of people will not have that form to hand, and that is fine. If you do not, use the Harbourline person specification printed above as your yardstick, and mark and rewrite one section of whatever real material you do have: a draft application, a CV extract, a work-experience note, or a fresh competency answer written now for the Harbourline role. Everyone works from something real, and everyone builds Shortlisting Strategy the same way.

• First, go through the form or draft line by line against that person specification or job advert. Mark every place you would screen yourself out: missing essential, vague claim with no evidence, keyword the ATS would not find, section that does not answer what was asked.
• Then choose one weak section: a competency answer, an education block, or a work-experience block.
• Next, rewrite that section so a shortlister who wants to reject you has less to work with. Cut fluff. Add one concrete evidence line. Put the essential requirement in language the form or ATS can actually find.
• Finally, in your Strand 2.2 Digital Portfolio folder, create Shortlisting Strategy (or a portfolio note titled Shortlisting Strategy). This is today's Digital Portfolio build for Strand 2.2 and can support later Portfolio in Action evidence of how you prepare and improve applications. Paste or write: (a) the marks you made as shortlister, (b) the revised section, (c) two short notes naming what you cut and what you added, (d) one line naming the single thing that would most likely have got you rejected.

You leave holding a revised section and a clear list of your own rejection risks. That is the portfolio build for today.

Talk these through with the person beside you, or sit with them quietly on your own.

• What was the one thing on your form that would most likely have got you rejected, and would a human or an applicant-tracking filter have caught it first?
• If you only fix one line before you send the next real application, which line is it, and why that one rather than a polish of the whole page?

When you have a clear answer to the first question, add it as the closing line of your Shortlisting Strategy (or portfolio note titled Shortlisting Strategy) if it is not already there. That file lives in your Strand 2.2 Digital Portfolio folder and can support later Portfolio in Action evidence of application preparation.

Today you practised shortlisting from the recruiter's side, then used that eye on your own application.

• Shortlisting is a judgement against a person specification, not a gut feeling about who seems nice
• Essential requirements fail an application; desirables help it stand out once essentials are met
• Applicant tracking systems, AI screening and video pre-screening often see a form before a person does in larger employers; local managers may still shortlist by hand
• You marked your own competency form as a shortlister, rewrote one weak section, and saved Shortlisting Strategy in your Strand 2.2 Digital Portfolio folder with what you cut, what you added, and the one thing that would have got you rejected