Bearcat, the box tick refers to doing something between Uni and applying. It would show lack of capacity as you would only be doing one thing at a time rather than keeping several balls in the air at the same time.
Your phrase 'hiring committee' puzzles me. It is not a committee but a board. Always was, always is. It now consists on two members, a chairman and an assistant. They used to be a wg cdr and a sqn ldr. Now they can be a flt lt chairman and a sqn ldr or wg cdr assistant depending on their experience in the role. There will be several boards sitting at the same time testing the different syndicates. There will then be a board president over the individual boards. Again the rank depends on experience and could even be a flt lt.
Trust me, the candidate who has a broad spectrum of experiences and activities and achieves a 2.2 can be more suitable than one who achieves a 1st at Cambridge. I have trained both and the former both qualified as aircrew and got his own sqn 10 years later and gp capt shortly after that. Actually I don't think he even got a 2.2.