Voltozonic;
the (exact) part that I disagree with is "...time is irrelevant." Clearly, this isn't a "fact".
Time is absolutely relevant, and most people produce better results by investing more time on something. If I were a betting man I'd be willing to bet a large amount of money on there being a strong correlation between the time spent writing a response and the quality of that response.
And if you go back in time to page 72 of this topic you'll see a post by Lindsay Craig (Head of Pilot Recruitment at BA), which is highly indicative that he agrees with me. I quote:
...do take care not to rush your application unnecessarily - this process requires thought and care and success won't come from sending in the first words you can think of in the shortest possible amount of time.
LadyL;
you said:
I think how long you spent on the application is a bit redundant really. You could spend half an hour and produce the same result as spending 4 days. Of course something so important you want to take the time to get right, don't get me wrong.
But time spent on application doesn't neccessarily equal how good your answers will be. I'm willing to bet people who spent both hours and minutes on their applications got both rejections and acceptances.
While it's possible to spend half an hour on an answer and get the same quality that you would have achieved had you spent 4 days on it, it's quite unlikely. But even if you did prepare what you initially thought was the best you could do in the first half hour, why wouldn't you sleep on it and look at it with a fresh pair of eyes the next day? And why wouldn't you get the opinions of people you value the opinions of to see if your answer could be improved? You might end up with exactly the same response that you produced in that first half hour, but at least you'd have used all the resources at your disposal to ensure that it
really was the best you could do.
You are right that the length of time spent on the application doesn't
necessarily determine its quality. It just
probably does in most cases. Therefore referring to it as "...a bit redundant" is - in my opinion - simply wrong in the vast majority of cases.
But anyway; I genuinely wish you both the best of luck with this process. I'm not here to argue; but a little heartfelt debate from time to time can never be a bad thing.
