Task
Employers sometimes ask people applying for jobs for personal information, such as their hobbies and interests, and whether they are married or single. Some people say that this information may be relevant and useful. Others disagree.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
Candidate’s Answer
This is an answer written by a candidate who achieved a Band 6 score.
Sometimes, in interviews, some employers ask job’s candidates for personnal information such as hobbies and interests, or family situation.
Some people think that this information should be confidential and candidats for jobs don’t have to give private information to employers.
For instance, in a suburb of Paris, people applying for jobs said, in their Curriculum Vitae, they lived in a very impopular suburb and they practiced Rap Music. This people hadn’t been choose for the position while they had all the skills and degrees for it.
In this case, personal information can be the cause of a kind of “discriminations”.
In the other hand, some employers prefer to have a very united work’s team because they think it’s a factor to improve rentability in companies. In this case, personal information such as hobbies and interests could be very precious.
Finally, a work’s team who share the same interests and hobbies is more performant because of the good relationships between each member.
Secondly, a man applying for jobs, who have hobbies and interests, shows that he have a balanced life. It’s the same for a woman.
In my opinion, giving some personnal information when I have an interview for a job could be a way of talking about me. I think an employer has to know wich person he has in front of him. It’s much more important if the position request responsibility.
At final, even so sometimes it’s not really relevant or useful to give personal information for people applying for a job, most of employers have to know their interests, hobbies, or familial situation.
Examiner’s Comment
The candidate addresses all parts of the prompt appropriately, with examples or extension to illustrate and support his ideas. His own position is clearly stated in the third part of the response. His response to the task is the best aspect of the script, but further support and extension would be required to achieve a higher band here. There is a clear overall progression in the response; discourse markers are used somewhat mechanically, with occasional errors (Sometimes, For instance, In the other hand, Firstly, Secondly, In my opinion, At final) and there are some attempts to use other cohesive devices (In this case), but paragraphing is poorly handled, with some ‘paragraphs’ consisting of a single sentence. The lexical resource is both adequate and appropriate for the task, showing some awareness of style and collocation (family situation, confidential, suburb of Paris, curriculum vitae, position, skills and degrees, discrimination, united, share the same interests and hobbies, good relationships between each member, a balanced life), but there are also errors in word formation and spelling (job’s candidats, impopular, work’s team, wich, request/require, familial), as well as two instances where meaning is unclear (rentability, performant). There is a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but there are errors in grammatical control, e.g. (This people hadn’t been chosen for the position, some employers prefers, a man… who have).
