text response essay contention

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Writing a text response essay: notes, tips and sample paras

In a text response essay, you will be assessed on your ability to develop an argument/discussion relating to a prompt, your ability to analyse themes, issues and characters in an insightful way, your ability to identity an author’s intentions and unpack their narrative devices.

Remember, the reason you are studying your particular text is because it contains complex and thoughtful themes. You must discuss the text’s complexity, but in a systematic way. Start with the simple and obvious points and then show a progression of thoughts.

If you are getting around a mid-range C-B, you may need to work on:

Topic sentences

• Sharper and more analytical topic sentences. Make sure they directly answer the question and set up a paragraph that will develop the main theme in a thoughtful and profound way.
• Make sure that each topic sentence has a different focus so as to avoid repetition. In a B-range essay there is often considerable repetition of ideas.
• Evidence: you must be as analytical as possible and avoid general statements. Show an insightful knowledge of the text by choosing key evidence/insightful/ ambivalent examples in the text to support the topic sentence.
• Build your discussion around the author’s intentions, purpose, narrative devices. These will keep the focus on analysis rather than summary.
• Be sure to show readers/assessors that you are capable of precise and accurate analysis of characters, themes and significant moments/turning points in a text’s narrative. 

The flow of ideas throughout the paragraph

• Take each topic sentence and brainstorm the points/quotes/insights that you must include in the paragraph. Group together similar ideas and then delve deeper.
• Make sure that your paragraph flows. Do not just cobble together a list of statements or quotes. Make sure that each point follows and adds to the previous point.
• Make sure you give priority to the narrative devices.
• Do not just add irrelevant details in order to pad the paragraph; or if there are two perspectives/views on the statement, include them separately.
• Please see sample  paras on Romeo and Juliet.
• Awkward phrases: work on sophistication of expression. Avoid clumsy verb phrases. Use nominals. Work at incorporating quotes  into the grammatical construction of your sentence. Use a combination of short, snappy sentences and longer sentences. Do not lose control of the subject. See Notes on Improving Expression.

Write a 1-2 page summary of the “most important” or key points/issues in the text.  Ask yourself, if you had to write a response on this text, what could you absolutely not leave out, or omit to mention (taking into account that given the prompt, you may make a short or longer reference to this key piece of evidence/quote/views/values.)

• See Writing a Comparative Essay
• See Romeo and Juliet : Study Page
• See Macbeth: Study Page

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Text Response: Identifying and Correcting Common Essay Errors

Many students are taught ‘there is no right or wrong answer in English’; and to our disappointment, there are indeed unspoken rules that, when abided by, can impress teachers and assessors. If you are looking for a comprehensive list of common errors for each section of the essay, logically paired with actionable correction strategies that can be applied to your next practice essay, read this blog carefully and scroll down to the bottom of the page to download a printable version for revision purposes.

This blog will cover errors in introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions, using examples from various texts on the current study design. A printable PDF of this file is attached at the end of this blog!

Table of Contents:

Introductions

1. Lacking contextual details

2. Doesn’t outline how essay addresses prompt

3. Too long!

Body Paragraphs

4. Plot-based topic sentences

5. Not engaging with evidence

6. Missing a linking sentence

Conclusions

7. Too long

8. Too short

Overall Essay – Structure + Interpretations

9. Character-based paragraphs

10. Not considering authorial intent

11. Lacking depth and detail

12. Not closely connected to the topic

13. Too similar

Writing Fluency + Expression

14. Colloquial language

15. Repetitive vocabulary

16. Generic verbs

17. Tense usage

19. Not embedding evidence

20. Spelling/Punctuation/Grammar inaccuracy

21. Word choice

22. Handwriting clarity

23. Metalanguage

24. Referring to the text

25. Line formatting

Finally, a category of its own: time management

An effective introduction sets the stage for your essay, providing context and outlining how you plan to address the prompt. Common errors in introductions include lacking contextual details, not outlining how the essay addresses the prompt, and being too long or too short. By addressing these issues, your introduction will demonstrate your understanding of the text and establish a clear response to the topic.

Lacking contextual details

Error explanation: The introduction of an essay should demonstrate that you (the author) has an understanding of the text’s basic context. Without this, the intro appears lacking in detail and it undermines the reader’s confidence in your knowledge of the text.

Correction strategy: Ensure that you have included (1) the full name of the writer, (2) The time of publication/setting, (3) the genre, (4) the full title. Other details you may choose to include: the time the text is set, the place the text is set, any movements / contemporary events which influenced the text

Example: For the text We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson, the introduction’s contextual details should include:

• “Shirley Jackson” (author’s full name)
• “1962” (year of publication)
• “mystery” or “gothic fiction” (genre)
• “novella” (type of text)
• “We Have Always Lived In The Castle” (full title)

It could also mention that the novella is influenced by the movement of gothic literature / incorporates gothic tropes.

Doesn’t outline how essay addresses prompt

Error explanation: The primary goal of an essay’s introduction is to outline how you (the author) plans to address the prompt. In particular, pre-prepared introductions will appear generic and fail to effectively engage with the essay topic. This will be penalised in both SACs and the final exam.

Correction strategy: Ensure that your introduction addresses the following:

• The topic – what themes are core to the prompt you have been given?
• The text – in what ways does the text explore these themes?
• The contention – what does text propose is in its exploration of these themes

Example: Consider the following topic for the comparative pair Ransom and The Queen. “Compare how the two texts examine leadership and family.”

The introduction should identify that both leadership and family are explored in the texts, and identify a relationship between them. It should also touch on examples and broad trends of how these themes appear in the texts, and propose a contention as to what the texts claim about this relationship, e.g. that the isolating, dehumanising burden of leadership prevent individuals from connecting with their families.

Error explanation: The introduction to an essay serves an important function – to show that you fully understand the text, and outline a clear response to the topic – but it is one which can be achieved quickly. An introduction which is too long is likely including generic details, going overly in depth about examples, and most importantly, is detracting from the time which should be spent developing strong body paragraphs. Those are what ultimately demonstrate your understanding, and get you good marks.

Correction strategy:

• Make sure your introduction doesn’t include any pre-prepared sentences, which are generic and not nearly as useful as sentences which target the essay topic properly.
• For those contextual details which are necessary, include them within sentences that discuss thematic ideas
• Remove anything which isn’t directly relevant

Plot-based topic sentences

Error explanation: Topic sentences based on an event or character narrow the focus of the paragraph, and limit your ability to demonstrate a thematic understanding of the text. It also appears very simplistic, and wastes an opportunity to clearly establish where your analysis and essay is going.

Correction strategy: Make your topic sentences based around the conclusion of your analysis and overall contention. Ensure you are making a statement about their views and values.

Two ways to guarantee you’re creating views and values statements:

• Start the sentence or clause with the author’s name
• Use verbs of analysis to make sure you’re not restating plot e.g. portrays, conveys, suggests, questions, challenges, critiques, endorses, etc.
• “In Women of Troy, Hecuba is displayed as a strong and compassionate figure.”
• “One way Euripedes generates sympathy for Trojan women is through the symbol of Cassandra’s torch.”

Instead, frame around the author’s views + values:

• “Euripedes’ focus on the suffering of Trojan women condemns the atrocities committed in war.”
• “Throughout Women of Troy, Euripedes fosters admiration for humanity’s tenacity in the face of adversity.”

This allows you to then expand on this thematic statement, proving it by invoking examples of plot, characters, and techniques. It is the basis for a much stronger paragraph, and provides direction for where the analysis should lead.

Not engaging with evidence

Error explanation: Including quotes or evidence in your paragraph doesn’t guarantee that you’re engaging with evidence. If quotes are just summarising plot events, they’re limiting the depth of your analysis.

Correction strategy: When you include quotes, note more than just the plot they describe. What is the significance of the word choice? What images are being created? Are there metaphors, or other instances of figurative language?

With this in mind, throughout your study, build up a bank of quotes which allow you to draw comparisons and analyse language use.

Also, avoid using ‘this shows’ and ‘this is apparent’, as it lacks precision. Naming precisely what it is within the quote that evokes a certain feeling or generates a characterisation is much more effective analysis.

Example: (from Station Eleven) “Mandel’s characterisation of the corporate world as “full of ghosts” adds to the repeated metaphor of prep-pandemic society as lacking in life, conveying a disturbing absence of human connection in modern community”

This addresses both the specific language/technique which is used, and connects it to the views and values of the author. Therefore, the evidence is being fully engaged with and analysed.

Missing a linking sentence

Error explanation: It’s vital that the analysis provided in your body paragraphs is clearly linked to your essay’s contention. Therefore, you need a sentence at the end of each paragraph which demonstrates that link.

Correction strategy: Think of each linking sentence as a mini-conclusion for a body paragraph. It can be useful to use conjunctions which signify another layer of analysis (in this case, a link to your contention) – words like ‘therefore’, ‘thus’, and ‘consequently’. The linking sentence should refer back to the views + values of the author. Frame the sentence around the author’s name and se verbs of analysis such as portrays, conveys, etc.

Examples: (from Sunset Boulevard)

• “Therefore, Wilder conveys the devastating consequences of prioritising illusion over reality.”
• “Thus, Wilder condemns the vanity and superficiality of a culture which worships celebrity.”

Error explanation: Sometimes you just don't have the time. Especially because you’ve just finished writing the essay, and you definitely don’t want to sacrifice the end of the last body paragraph (or any other argumentative material) for a conclusion.

Correction strategy: If your conclusion restates material from your introduction, or your topic sentences, you’re doing it wrong. The assessor has already read those points – this should be something new. Simply summarise your key ideas, and focus on the views and values statements, to create a concise and effective conclusion.

Error explanation: One sentence is not enough!

Correction strategy: A conclusion is about more than just listing the arguments you’ve written down already. The conclusion should make a broader statement about the author, which goes beyond the world of the text, and addresses what they believe readers should do/think, how society should be, etc.

The following conclusion expands on the concrete analysis of the world of the text, to make overarching statements about the author’s worldview.

“The crumbling of civilisation in Mandel’s Station Eleven creates a post-apocalyptic setting which displays the tenacity of humanity through conflict. Mandel admires the human resilience required to survive and preserve, yet the novel extends on this, portraying the human capacity to use the remnants of civilisation to construct new communities, relationships and art. In this testament to human adaptability, Mandel places faith into the continued evolution of civilisation, as Station Eleven optimistically implies that, despite all challenges, community and beauty will prosper.”

Character-based paragraphs

Error explanation: An essay paragraph which revolves around a single character is always limiting your analysis, and prevents you from demonstrating a thorough understanding of the text.

Correction strategy: When planning, consider 3 ideas which link to your contention. Then, consider which characters connect to those big ideas. If you find yourself still gravitating towards character-based paragraphs, ask yourself: what is it that this character proves? Search for other characters and evidence which bolster this point, and frame the paragraph around that idea instead of the character.

Use evidence outside of main characters: Minor characters can often echo thematic ideas in the main storyline; Language devices and narrative techniques are also useful evidence.

Not considering authorial intent

Error explanation: To form a solid contention, you need to show consideration of why the author created the text. If an essay lacks consideration of bigger questions – what should society look like, how should people behave – then it will lack depth overall.

Correction strategy: Consider the following questions:

• What is the author’s goal in creating the text?
• What does he/she support?
• What does he/she thinks needs to be changed in society?
• Which characters are designed to be empathised with? What does this reveal about the author’s values?
• Which characters are designed to be condemned? What does this reveal about the author’s values?

This should allow you to formulate statements based on the author’s views and values, and work your essays towards those statements.

Lacking depth and detail

Error explanation: If your paragraphs are too short, or your analysis feels shallow, it can severely limit the quality of your writing. Even if you use plenty of words, that doesn’t guarantee that your analysis is engaging as fully with the text, and values of the author, as it could.

Correction strategy: There can be a few reasons why your essay lacks depth or detail.

• Ensure you are using at least two pieces of evidence, from different parts of the text, per paragraph
• Explain the following for each piece of evidence
• what it reveals within the text (the true feelings of a character, the nature of society, etc.)
• the broader statement of values it connects to
• Combine quotations which connect to each other – layering evidence strengthens a point
• Use choices the author makes about language features and structures as evidence – combining different types of evidence also adds depth
• Check that evidence has sufficient context – when is a quote said? by who? The characters or plot a piece of evidence connects to can provide additional paths for analysis.

Not closely connected to the topic

Error explanation: Every argument needs to clearly address the topic. Sometimes students stray because they bring in a ‘counter point’ in a second or third paragraph, and other times might choose to write out paragraphs they have already written because it’s more comfortable. However, unless the paragraph is entirely relevant and targeted towards the topic, it’s a waste of time.

Correction strategy: Plan clearly, and ensure that each of the three arguments address the topic individually. If you feel an argument is similar to something previously written, ask yourself how you can make this argument specifically to address the topic in front of you.

Too similar

Error explanation: Having two paragraphs which essentially explain the same idea severely weakens an essay. It basically shows that you only have two ideas, and doesn’t allow for enough depth of analysis.

• Use your reading time and a bit of writing time to plan – it may be the case that you’re not giving yourself enough time to think of three distinct points
• If this is a persistent problem, practice planning out essays under time constraints. It only takes ten minutes, and can be a useful exercise to sharpen your skills.

Colloquial language

Error explanation: Language which is too informal renders writing unprofessional, and can affect the accuracy of your writing.

Correction strategies:

• Avoid using cliches/idioms
• Avoid casual language, such as abbreviations or slang
• Write in the formal register – like an English teacher would
• Justice is not “served”, it is achieved
• He’s not a character “with a really hard life”, he has a traumatic upbringing

Repetitive vocabulary

Error explanation: Overusing words can make your writing appear simplistic, and is annoying to read.

• Note the words you overuse, look up synonyms, and use them in your writing
• Note alternative words other students use in their essays
• When you write practice pieces, scan your work to check for repeated words

Be especially careful that you don’t use a word in the essay topic over and over again. In planning time, brainstorm synonyms for key words of the topic.

Generic verbs

Error explanation: Verbs of analysis are, of course, incredibly common throughout text response essays. Words like ‘explore’ or ‘show’, ‘highlights’ or ‘says’ are very common.

Correction strategies: It’s better if you can use more precise verbs which also add flair and variety to your writing. These verbs all have slightly different meanings, so when writing, you need to select carefully.

• Instead of explores: reveals, exposes, warns, criticises, endorses, questions, condemns
• Instead of highlights: underscores, accentuates, emphasises
• Instead of says: states, reflects, claims, declares, suggests

Tense usage

Error explanation: Using the past tense, or worse, switching between tenses throughout the essay, hampers the fluency of writing.

Correction strategy: Use present tense in your essays.

Instead of: In Rainbow’s End, Harrison employed dreamy lighting to demonstrate the wonderful, yet tragic, impossibility of characters’ aspirations.

Write: In Rainbow’s End, Harrison employs dreamy lighting to demonstrate the wonderful, yet tragic, impossibility of characters’ aspirations.

Error explanation: If your writing is too verbose, it can be a struggle to get to the highest level of analysis in the given time limits. Being more concise will save time, and more efficient writing will make your analysis clearer.

Correction strategy: Avoid placeholder sentences – get to the point! This applies to unnecessary clauses and ‘pauses’ in writing.

Instead of: “Throughout the entire novel, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart shows men as being each other's “brothers”, even when they are not actually family, but only clansmen, and this characterisation makes those concepts appear equal, most of the time.”

Write: “Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart equates family and community, as clansmen refer to each other as “brothers”.”

Not embedding evidence

Error explanation: If quotations aren’t embedded, writing doesn't flow as well, and your command over the evidence is slightly undermined.

Correction strategy: Embed your quotations every time.

Example: (from In Cold Blood)

Instead of: “Perry says, “I don’t believe in capital punishment”, demonstrating…”

Write: “Perry “[does not] believe in capital punishment”, demonstrating…”

Spelling/Punctuation/Grammar inaccuracy

Error explanation: Inaccuracies in spelling, punctuation and grammar are harmful to the fluidity of your expression, and leave a bad impression on the reader.

• Request some support to identify spelling errors
• Correct any spelling errors using a good dictionary
• Read over sentences, checking for basic grammatical errors
• Check that your word forms are correct (e.g. “unjust” is an adjective, “injustice” is the noun)
• Write down any errors – keeping a record will help you identify frequent mistakes

Common errors to lookout for:

• Capitalisation – check that all proper nouns (place names, the name of the author, etc.) are capitalised
• Apostrophes – revise particularly in relation to possessions
• Pronouns – check that pronoun use isn't ambiguous
• Full stops and commas – check that these are not used interchangeably
• Ending clauses with ‘is’ or ‘are’ is a common grammatical mistake

Word choice

Error explanation: Often students attempt to use more ‘sophisticated’ words, but can end up with something jarring, because the connotations were a bit off, or just because it didn't suit their writing style. Prioritise precision: above all, your essay has to make sense.

• Check the definitions of any words you’re a little uncertain about.
• Practice using a hard-copy dictionary when you plan essays, as you are permitted to do this in SACs/the exam.
• Build up a glossary of terms that you’re comfortable with
• Remember that your essay can (and will) be impressive without using obscure vocabulary

Handwriting clarity

Error explanation: Assessors can only mark what they can read!

• Practice writing essays to time, and with a pen
• Change up the pen from time to time to see i it helps with clarity
• Time management will allow you to write at a more consistent pace throughout writing time

Metalanguage

Error explanation: Use of metalanguage is a way to demonstrate your knowledge of a text. Not using metalanguage enough, or worse, using it incorrectly, can harm the precision of your writing.

• Review terminology to ensure metalanguage is used accurately Glossaries, samples, and peer work can all be sources of new terms
• Incorporate metalanguage by learning the adjectival/verbal versions Many terms of metalanguage are nouns (e.g. symbolism) but can also be used as adjectives (symbolic) or verbs (symbolises)
• Avoid repeating metalanguage more than once in a paragraph, or more than a few times across an essay

Metalanguage relating to the form and structure of text:

• Omniscient third-person narrator
• Non-chronological narrative
• Non-linear plot

Metalanguage relating to language devices:

• Alliteration

Note that films have lots of metalanguage relating to camera angles and shots.

Referring to the text

Error explanation: The generally accepted format is to underline the full title of the text. Use this, and there is no need to use inverted commas or quotation marks.

In Station Eleven, Mandel…

In Sunset Boulevard, Wilder…

Line formatting

Error explanation: Line breaks are specifically ofr showing where paragraphs start and end.

Correction strategy: Leave one line between paragraphs. Not more, not less.

Additionally:

• Don’t start a new line within your paragraphs
• Don’t label sections of your essay like ‘introduction’ – that's what the line breaks signal for you

Possibly the biggest challenge of a 3 hour, 3 essay exam is cramming all of your best ideas and skills into such a short period of time. However, with enough practice, it won't feel so daunting by the end of the year.

Strategies: As well as practising whole essays within an hour, try the following:

• Writing plans in 5 minutes
• Writing introductions in 10 minutes
• Writing body paragraphs in 12-15 minutes
• Reading an article and planning an argument analysis essay in your head, during ‘reading time’
• Practice writing more by hand – it’s the only way your speed can be accurate, and the more you practise, the faster you get

Don’t forget that you don’t have to budget each essay to one hour. Many students may find Section C quicker to write, and so have a bit more time to dedicate to the other sections of the exam. Experiment to figure out what is comfortable for you.

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VCE ENGLISH: Write a Text Response Introduction

One of the most important pieces of knowledge to any Year 12 English student is how to write a text response essay. Commonly seen as the easiest essay, the method of structuring a text response is often overly simplified, or simply not understood by students! The introduction to an essay is the very first thing your examiner/teacher will read, and is therefore very important to helping you immediately stand out and differentiate yourself from the crowd.

Firstly, your introduction is important because it is a key aspect to fulfilling the criterion of appropriate structure. Be clear and concise: it is always better to be clear than to use lots of big words which are not appropriate for the situation.

An introduction can be divided into three steps:

• Firstly, briefly set up context . This might include the type of text (e.g. play, novel, short stories, poem collection etc.), very basic historical context (time period, subject matter), and any very important information which is the basis to the essay. Definitely do not spend more than one sentence doing so, as the most important part of the essay is to show your own opinion/knowledge of the given text, not just summarising what it is about.
• Explicitly outline your contention . Your contention must be clearly addressing all aspects of the topic you are given, and it also needs to demonstrate that you can think independently (if you are aiming for top grades), even uniquely. Your angle on the topic is the single most important aspect to the essay.
• Finally, briefly signpost the upcoming arguments in your essay. These are the points, or mini-contentions, forming the basis of each body paragraph. You should aim for at least 3 body paragraphs, up to 5 if you are ambitious. These mini-contentions must each relate both to the overall contention, and thus to the topic, which will add a feeling of cohesion and continuity to the essay

Overall, there is no need to write more than three or four or so sentences! If you write these sentences well, however, you will immediately create a positive impression of the essay, crucial to gaining the reader's attention.

If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: Effective Study Techniques , The ATAR and The Importance of Practice .

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Top Tips to Help You Conquer Your Text Response Essays

Monday 25th, September 2023

Throughout your studies of VCE English, you will be writing a lot of text response essays, in response to a set text. The essay is based off a certain prompt, and the most important themes, characters and events are discussed throughout it.

Text response essays are the ones that you will be writing the most often, as you are required to write one in all semesters from Year 10 up. Therefore, it is important that you practise these types of essays often, to ensure you are fully prepared come your final exams.

This article will take you through some things you should keep in mind when writing your own text response essays.

  1. Understand the Structure

Before you write a text response essay, you need to understand the required structure – it is one of the criteria that you will be marked on!

Every essay should have an introduction, 3-4 body paragraphs and a conclusion. However, there are certain things that you need to have in each of these parts. For example, you may have been taught the TEEL structure for body paragraphs and been told that an introduction needs to have a contention and signposting.

Knowing the structural requirements will ensure that you don’t forget to write any vital information in your essay.

  You can find detailed information about the structure of a text response essay in this video: 

2. Comment on the Author’s Intentions

Everything that an author does in their text is intentional (well, not always, but you should think it as so.) Therefore, when you make a claim or notice a significance structural device, you should follow it up with what the author is trying to say about it. Generally, you should aim to mention the author’s name at least 1-2 times in each body paragraph.

The following are some questions that may help you think about the author’s intentions.

•     What views do the author believe in?
•     What is the author trying to say about the real world? (The answer to this question should be in your conclusion).
•     How has the use of a certain structural device added to the authors purpose?
•     Why have they characterised a certain character in the way that they have?
•     What is the purpose of a character/plot?

  Don’t worry – it’s true that you can never be certain about what an author intended. Your teacher just wants to know your interpretations!

  3. Consider the Context

The context is the setting, environment, or period in which a text takes place. The context is going to influence the themes and behaviours of characters immensely, so you shouldn’t omit it in your discussions. Usually, your teachers will explain the context of the text before you even begin reading it so you don’t get completely lost.

The context can include any social, cultural, and historical values. Most of the texts you study would have been written (or set) many years ago – views and values change a lot over time, so something that would have been appropriate back then may seem out of place in current living times.

For example, the play 12 Angry Men was   set in the 1950s   - which was a time of post-war migration and racial segregation in the US. This strongly impacted the way certain Jurors treated the defendant. If the play was set in the 2000s, their discussions would have looked a lot different.  

Considering the context will also help you when discussing author’s intent – what real-world issues have influenced the author to write the text?

4. Have a Clear Contention

In your text response essays, the contention is what your personal stance on the given prompt is. Do you agree or disagree with what the prompt says? Perhaps you’re on the fence? Your contention needs to be very clear, so your marker knows the side you will be taking throughout your essay.  

An easy way to come up with the contention is to rephrase the prompt to fit your opinion. However, this may not always lead to a contention with enough depth.

5. Don’t Summarise, Analyse

One of the most common errors that students make when writing a text response essay is summarising parts of the text. Your teacher knows what happens – they want to know what YOU think of it.

6. Have Counterarguments

When responding to a prompt, you should aim to discuss multiple perspectives. As you construct your contention, using words such as ‘however,’ and ‘whilst,’ can help introduce an alternate view. This shows your marker that you have considered all aspects of the prompt.

To ensure that your essay flows well, it is good to have two body paragraphs discussing one side, and a third paragraph with the counterargument. This is prefarable to having an argument and counterargument within the same paragraph. 

7. Remember Quotes

By using quotes in your essays, you are showing your reader that you have a sound understanding of your text and aren’t making false claims. However, you shouldn’t be adding quotes just for the sake of it. They should be short, well embedded and help support an argument, not detract from it. Additionally, make sure that you aren’t retelling the story when you add a quote in – it is best to avoid saying things like, ‘the character says “XXX”.’

8. Discuss Metalanguage and Structural Features

When writing texts, authors use a lot of different metalanguage and structural devices. Sometimes, they are done simply for literary effect, but other times, they are used to add meaning.

Common structural features used by a writer include:

•     Metaphors
•     Symbols
•     Foreshadowing
•     Allusions

Structural features also depend on the text type – when you are analysing a film things like camera angles and sound will be very important.

•   You should always think about:
•     The effect that a certain device has on a reader
•     What it says about a certain character/event
•     The devices’ main purpose
•     Any themes it relates to

Hopefully this article gave you some ideas that you can implement into your text response essays! The better your understanding of the text, the better your essays will be, so don’t forget to spend time reading/annotating your text before you begin writing. 

If you'd like, you can download a set of notes which summarises the structure of a text response essay here.

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How to write introductions and conclusions in text responses.

Opening and ending your responses on a strong note can help to add cohesiveness and clarity. In this week’s post, English teacher Kylie Nealon outlines how to write effective introductions and conclusions in your text response essays.

Writing a clear introduction and conclusion to a text response essay is key to communicating your understanding of the topic and the text to the assessor. Here are some key points to consider that will help you to improve the quality of your opening and closing paragraphs.

Introductions

You will be presented with three main types of topic for your text response:

• a ‘discuss’ topic
• a ‘do you agree?’ question
• a topic that uses a quote and then asks you a question about a theme suggested by that quote.

Regardless of which topic type you are presented with, your introduction must respond directly to the topic and present a clear contention.

With a ‘discuss’ topic, you have the ability to define the boundaries that you will be exploring. Responses to these types of topic have the tendency to become quite broad, so be careful not to include too many ideas in your introduction. Consider this example.

Text: Like a House on Fire by Kate Kennedy

Topic: ‘The characters in these stories are all finding ways of “keeping up appearances”.’ Discuss.

Sample introduction:

Keeping up appearances is a central concern for many of the characters in Kate Kennedy’s anthology Like a House on Fire . Many struggle with this issue against a backdrop of conflicting familial or work relationships, or the need to maintain physical or mental control. Their ‘happy fronts’ are often put on in an attempt to avoid being perceived as weak or powerless in situations that are informed by gender and generational contexts. Throughout her anthology, Kennedy presents characters who struggle to maintain these external facades, often at the cost of their own identity.

• In this introduction, you’ll notice that the names of the short stories are not included. You can refer to the titles of particular stories if you prefer, or you can simply reference the ideas you’ll be exploring, as in the above example.
• This introduction gives the ‘threads’ of the ideas that will be explored, allowing stories to be linked a little more organically, and making topic sentences a bit easier to handle.
• Throughout, key words from the topic (and appropriate synonyms) are embedded.

With a ‘do you agree?’ question , you’ll want to ensure that you don’t use the dreaded words of ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘I agree/disagree’! These words are off limits, so think about framing your contention in a formal, objective way. How do you do that? Let’s look at an example.

Text: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Topic: ‘Blondal is the irredeemable villain in Burial Rites .’ Do you agree?

While it can be argued that Blondal is an irredeemable villain in Burial Rites , he is not alone. Kent’s exploration of Iceland’s patriarchal society of the nineteenth century paints him, along with many other men in the narrative, as villainous. What Blondal reflects are the social and cultural attitudes that allow him (and others) the freedom to exert this gendered power. While these men can be perceived as villainous, they are merely reflections of the attitudes towards women at the time.

• In this introduction, although there is no use of ‘I’, there is a clear sense of the writer’s point of view on the topic.
• The scope of the essay is intended to focus not only on the character named in the question, but on others as well – this gives some freedom to explore, compare and contrast.
• You’ll notice that there is also a sense of context – time and place – as well as a reference to the author. These are all aspects that you may choose to include in your own introduction.

With a theme-based question , you have more scope to explore. What you want to remember is that, while you may have a quote to get you started, you aren’t required to base your entire response on it. (However, you must reference the quote at some point in your essay, and it is often a good idea to show an understanding of the context of the quote in relation to the text as a whole.)

Topic: “The room is stiff with a charged awkwardness, with languages I can’t speak.” How does Kennedy show communication issues to be central in these stories?

Kate Kennedy’s short-story anthology Like a House on Fire explores issues of communication, both spoken and unspoken, through her construction of familial and intimate relationships. Her characters struggle to express themselves when faced with confronting situations, unable to articulate how they feel or what they want. In these stories, the ‘awkwardness’ can stem from a place of inexperience or a lost connection that makes interaction with a loved one ‘charged’. In many of her stories, Kennedy explores the challenge that communication poses for these characters, sometimes resolving the issues arising in a positive but unexpected manner.

• Rather than discussing how each story contributes to the theme of communication, this introduction deals with ideas more broadly. In writing the introduction in this way, the writer is setting themselves up to look at both explicit and implicit examples and ideas suggested in the stories.
• Key terms from the topic are embedded, and the structure of the introduction establishes how the writer will advance their contention.

With all three types of topic, you want to limit your introduction to around four sentences – any more than that and you run the possibility of starting to encroach on your first main body paragraph. Once you’ve decided on your key points during the planning stage, write down the first sentence of each main body paragraph. Avoid using these sentences in your introduction; this should help you to avoid blending together the two parts of the essay (introduction and body paragraphs) once you start writing.

Conclusions

Conclusions are another area of concern for many students, and often they do tend to either repeat the points already mentioned in the body of the essay or else introduce new ideas or information that have not been discussed elsewhere. Your aim is to avoid doing either of these!

Consider the following points before you start writing your conclusion.

• Revisit the topic again, considering the key words.
• What is the overall contention that you’ve advanced in response to the topic?
• What was the author/director trying to do/show/explore? And how is the reader/viewer left feeling as a result of this? (Consider these in relation to the topic.)

Sample conclusion (concluding the second Kennedy topic):

Kennedy’s exploration of communication underpins her presentation of character actions and evolution. Some, like Anthony in ‘Static’ or Chris in ‘Ashes’, experience moments of wordless clarity that allow them to see to the heart of their situations. Others, like Tyler’s mother in ‘Seventy-Two Derwents’, assert their new-found literal and figurative voices. Throughout her anthology, Kennedy suggests that the ‘awkwardness’ of language and people’s frequent inability to communicate effectively are universal aspects of human experience.

• In this conclusion, you’ll notice that the key words of the question have been incorporated, some (but not all) of the stories mentioned in the main body paragraphs have been grouped together, and the authorial intent has been revisited in the last sentence.
• As with the conclusion above, don’t end your response with a question; end with an assertive statement, leaving the marker in no doubt as to where you stand with your contention.

_____________________

As with any part of your preparatory process, practice is key. When you’re writing up your own responses to your texts, a good tip is to work through a range of these topics, just writing the introductions and conclusions. This will compel you to consider how you construct your ideas in a concise and specific way.

Not sure how to approach your text essay? Insight has at least one Insight Sample Essay for each List 1 text and List 2 text pair. Each high-level essay features annotations and assessor comments identifying the elements of the essay that work and areas for improvement, as well as tips on how to approach the essay topic and appropriate strategies for analysis, all for just $3.95.

Insight Sample Essays are produced by Insight Publications , an independent Australian educational publisher.

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How to Write an Introduction for a Text Response

• by Team Alchemy

Every Year 12 student is expected to write a text response essay. Knowing how to word the essay and structure it appropriately is critical to setting yourself apart from the crowd.

Most students consider text responses the easiest essays. The approach to the essay is overly simplified, leading to students not putting enough effort into drafting and structuring the essay. When writing a text response essay, the introduction is one of the most critical aspects to consider. Writing a well-structured and meaningful introduction sets you apart from the crowd to, the assessor.

Text Response Essays

Every student in year 12 is presented with three main types of topics for your text response:

• A “Discuss” topic
• A “Do You Agree?” question
• A topic that uses a quote then asks questions about the theme suggested by that quote.

Generally, you will need a strong introduction to set the stage for your essay. The introduction must respond directly to the topic and present clear contention.

A “Discuss” Topic

With a discussion topic, you have the liberty to define the boundaries you intend to explore in your essay. These topics tend to have a broad range of responses, so students must practice caution to include too many ideas in the introduction.

The introduction should have a thread of ideas you will explore, organically linking the stories associated with the theme. This makes the sentences easier to handle and understand.

Also, when drafting the introduction, it’s vital to add some keywords from the topic and embed them into the essay.

A “Do You Agree?” Topic

The second type of topic you can find in a text response essay is the “do you agree?” topic. One of the most common mistakes students make when writing an introduction for this kind of topic is using the words ‘Yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘I agree,’ or ‘I disagree.’ These words are entirely off-limits. You should consider a more formal and objective way of framing your contention.

You might use a first-person perspective, but that’s not necessary as long as you present your clear point of view.

You should also focus on other characters named in the question (if any) besides the main character. This gives you more freedom to compare, contrast and explore in your essay.

A “Theme-based” Topic

Theme-based topics have a broader scope of exploration. But you should remember that you shouldn’t base the entire essay on the quote you have to get you started. However, you can reference the quote at some point in your essay. With theme-based topics, you need to show understanding of the context of the quote in relation to the text n general.

Your introduction can focus on some broad ideas you intend to delve into later in the essay. Having a broad approach to the introduction allows the writer to look at both implicit and explicit examples of the ideas suggested in the stories.

The introduction should have critical terms from the topic embedded. Also, remember that the introduction will establish how you advance with the contention. Hence you should take some time to draft and structure your introduction.

How to Write the Perfect Text Response Introduction

You should follow a few steps to ensure you come up with the best possible introduction regardless of the type of topic you’re dealing with.

Set up the context

While dealing with a play, novel, short story, or poem collection, it’s critical to start with a basic historical context. This should include the period, subject matter, and other vital details on which you will base the essay. This shouldn’t take more than a sentence or two. Keep this section brief because it is not the most important part of the essay.

Outline your contention – explicitly

Your contention should address every aspect of the topic you’ve been given. It should also demonstrate your ability to think independently, especially if you’re gunning for top marks. Most importantly, it should be unique. Your angle on this topic is the single most crucial factor of your essay.

Highlight the arguments in your essay

Give the assessor a hint of the points or mini-contentions that will form the basis of each paragraph. Ideally, you should aim for at least three body paragraphs and up to five if you’re feeling ambitious. Each mini contention should relate to the overall contention and the topic to give the entire essay some cohesion and continuity.

The introduction to your text response essay is not just about putting together three or four sentences to get you started. If you write the introduction well, you immediately create a positive impression on the assessor, which could mean getting top marks for the essay.

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English: putting it together

Responding to the topic and writing the text response essay.

The study of a text remains central to secondary English.

While the types of texts read in English classrooms have diversified over time, the dominant way that students respond to these texts continues to be in the form of an analytical text response essay.

The text response essay requires students to respond to a topic on a set text, and largely follows a structure whereby students need to write the following:

• introduction
• body paragraphs
• conclusion.

The scaffolding that was undertaken during the process of analysing the set text should also be repeated in the writing up of the text response essay. To achieve this, explicit instruction about what and how students should be writing in each section is foundational.

Suggested techniques for each stage in the Learning and Teaching Cycle (Love, Baker & Quinn, 2008) are outlined below.

Where relevant, links to strategies explained elsewhere are also included, demonstrating how the strategies in the toolkit can be used in a number of ways across a number of lessons.

It is important to provide students with some sample topics and ways to approach them, before they move onto the unpacking of the specific topic for assessment.

Often students find it challenging to differentiate between the types of topics and questions posed about texts, and the ways that they can respond to them.

In the initial phase of preparation for the writing of the text response essay, students need to be drawn back into the key themes and issues within the set text, and shown the ways that a topic can be unpacked ( HITS Strategy 2 ).

Brainstorming: The brainstorming technique may be used to establish what students can identify as the key themes and issues in the set text. Students may then use these words as prompts to predict the kinds of questions they may be asked about the text. Following this, teachers might get students to predict the kinds of questions that they might be asked about the set text. (See strategy: Activating prior knowledge ).

This opening strategy provides teachers with an opportunity to excite and motivate the students about the learning, but it also allows for teachers to establish what the students know and do not know about responding to topics and writing text response essays.

Building knowledge

When students are presented with an essay topic, they will need some explicit teaching ( HITS Strategy 3 ) around the ways to unpack the topic, as well as how to plan for the writing of the essay.

One way that this can be approached by the teacher is to have students work closely with the styles of questions and topics that may be set.

Sample topics

Students must be aware of the different styles of text response topics that may be set:

• a statement about the text followed by a prompt

Example: ‘Men and women are treated differently in Whale Rider’. Discuss.

• a statement about the text followed by a prompt question

Example: ‘In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline is a difficult character to like.’ Do you agree.

• a direct question about the text

Example: ‘How does The Sapphires, challenge narrow-minded attitudes to gender and race?’

• a quotation from the set text followed by a question

Example: “If you go out to find life, you lose other things,” says Mrs Wilkinson. How is this demonstrated in Billy Elliot?

Topic prompts

Text response essay topics in English generally contain topic prompts. The prompt is the word, statement or short question that completes the topic, and in many ways determines the direction of the response.

Common prompts include:

• Do you agree?
• To what extent…?
• What does…?

Sorting and matching strategy

One way to build knowledge about text response topics is to provide students with an opportunity to engage with the components of a topic by sorting and matching them. This activity can be completed individually, in pairs or groups.

Example: sorting and matching

Students must sort out and match the prompt with the most appropriate definition.

Transformation

Before students can begin writing their own text responses, they will need to be able to unpack the topic, and then plan their work. This can be achieved through the modelling of how to annotate a topic ( HITS Strategy 4 , HITS Strategy 6 ).

Following the annotation of the topic, teachers will need to go through how to plan the essay and how to write the response. (See strategies: Identifying key vocabulary and Annotating text ).

Example: Annotating or colour-coding a topic

The Sapphires directed by Wayne Blair

Topic: " To what extent is Dave responsible for the 'Sapphires’ success ?"

• Define: responsible, success
• To what degree is Dave the one who creates the success? Solely? Mostly? Partly?
• How does Dave do this?
• Who else helps the women to accomplish their dreams?
• What are the other factors that support the women in their quest for success?

Providing students with model sample paragraphs for the text response is important.

Teachers can use these paragraphs in a variety of ways including:

• reading them aloud with the class
• annotating the key components with students
• comparing them with the expected qualities of effective paragraphs
• asking students to collaborate to write another paragraph or writing practice introductions and conclusions. (See strategy: Using model texts to teach genre ).

Example: Modelling the text response

Topic: “To what extent is Dave responsible for ‘the Sapphires’ success?”

Presentation

Depending on the stage in the process of writing the text response, the presentation of student work can take many forms.

Generally, the completed essay is a summative task, but this learning sequence also allows for formative work as students may present some of their sample paragraphs to the teacher or to the class as a whole. These shared paragraphs could be used as further examples for annotation and modelling ( HITS Strategy 4 , HITS Strategy 5 ).

See strategies:

• Annotating text
• Selecting and incorporating evidence and quotes
• Using worked examples
• Using model texts to teach genre .

The reflection stage of the learning sequence can take place upon the submission of the completed text response or after the student has received feedback on their piece of writing ( HITS Strategy 8 ).

A useful strategy to employ so that students think carefully about their learning in relation to the process of writing the text response is to provide them with a set of reflective questions. These questions can be tailored to elicit responses from students that the teacher is particularly interested in, as well as being a source of data to inform how to approach the text response in future teaching.

Example: set of reflective questions

Learning Sequence

The learning sequence for Level 7 in English, demonstrates how literacy teaching strategies can be used in a sequence.

A learning sequence tool is also available to assist in the planning of English and Literacy across a series of lessons.

• Love, K., Baker, G. & Quinn, M. (2008). LASS: Literacy Across the School Subjects

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Understanding the structure of a text response (essay) and writing your essay.

Close All | Expand All

Essay writing – the text response.

Topic : The film,  Remember The Titans, demonstrates how teamwork and determination can defeat racism. Discuss.

The film Remember the Titans Demonstrates how team work and determination can defeat racism.

Brainstorm the topic - first, does teamwork and detemination defeat racism? Which examples could you use to prove this?

Next - is there racism in the film? Discuss and choose examples to write about.

Then - discuss film techniques you could use.

Introduction and Conclusion will be done in class at the end of this class.

First body paragraph will discuss the negative effects of racism.

First topic sentence :

Racism causes many problems at the beginning of the film . (discuss with evidence)

Second body paragraph will discuss how this changes.

Second topic sentence :

However, as the two groups get to know each other, attitudes begin to change.

Yet by the close of the film, the hostility changes as the groups integrate and gain a new understanding of each other .

Film techniques :

1. Separation of different race – how is this shown?

2. The song lyrics ‘Peace Train’ – when do we hear this and why has the director chosen this particular place in the film?

3. Focus on hands – Emma shakes Julius’ hand and Yakin uses a close-up of hand holding between Julius and Gerry’s mother in closing funeral scene. This demonstrates…?

4. Close-ups, medium and long shots.

How to organise essay :

Introduction

Body paragraph 1 - discuss racism

Body paragraph 2 - discuss how racism is challenged and changed

Next class - introduction and conclusion - writing the essay in class with your notes to help you.

• Remember the Titans topic sentences

Use the document in Resources and follow instructions.

The film Remember the Titans demonstrates how team work and determination can defeat racism.

• modified essay and assistance for Remember The Titans

Essay writing – the text response.

Each body paragraph is structured as follows : TEEL structure

Topic : The film, Remember The Titans, demonstrates how teamwork and determination can defeat racism. Discuss.

Brainstorm the topic :

Step 1 - is there racism in the film? Discuss and choose examples to write about. 

Step 2 - when and why does this change?

Then - discuss film techniques you could use. for Step 1 and Step 2.

Introduction and Conclusion (see instructions below).

Second body paragraph will discuss how this changes

1. Separation of different races – how is this shown?

2. The song lyrics ‘Peace Train’ – when do we hear this and why has the director chosen this particular place in the film?

3. Focus on hands – Emma shakes Julius’ hand and Yakin uses a close-up of hand holding between Julius and Gerry’s mother in closing funeral scene. This demonstrates…?

4. Close-up, medium and long shots.

How to organise your essay :

HOW to write an Introduction and a Conclusion

The film,  Remember The Titans , demonstrates how teamwork and determination can defeat racism. Discuss.

The introduction :

1. State the director's name, the title of the film and provide some background :

when and where is the film set?

2. Write about the problem :

what is the main problem in the film that causes so much conflict?

3. Now address the other part of the essay topic - is racism overcome and how?

write a sentence or more about this as this is your main contention or viewpoint.

Conclusion - consider the following to help you :

What is the purpose of the film?

How important is it that the Titans learn to cope with prejudice and overcome intolerance?

By the close of the film, how strong is the bond between the different races and what has this achieved for society?

Summation and reflection :

Has this helped you understand the purpose of an introduction and a conclusion?

Does every student have to write these in the same way?

 IMPORTANT :

Students are to write essay in class.

Hand write the first draft of your essay in this class OR the next class . (This will be submitted with your final edited typed copy in the next class)

Students may use notes and quotes.

Teacher may provide assistance.

*Independent students are encouraged to complete this task in class independently. 

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How to write response essay: guidelines from expert team.

January 31, 2022

Response writing can be tricky, but if you follow our step-by-step guide, you’ll have no trouble coming up with a great one! We will walk you through exactly how to write a response paragraph, how to properly structure it, and even give you some helpful tips to make your essay shine!

So, let’s get writing!

Table Of Contents

What is a response essay, structure of a response essay, steps to write a good response essay, 5 key features needed in a response essay, tips to write a stellar response essay, response essay example.

First things first – what exactly is a response essay? A response essay is a type of writing that allows the writer to respond to a piece of work. It can be a text, image, or event. It’s essentially a reaction paper – you’re giving your thoughts and feelings about whatever it is you’re responding to.

Response essays allow you to freely communicate your thoughts and feelings about any topic. Unlike summary essays where you just restate what you read, response essays require you to genuinely understand the content and context of the work you’re assigned.

Once you have a strong grasp of the subject material, you have to concisely put forth your insights, opinions, and analysis.

Now that you know what a response essay is, it’s time to learn how to structure one. A good response essay follows a specific format, which allows your ideas to be conveyed clearly and concisely.

Here’s the basic essay response format :

• Introduction
• Summary Of The Work
• Reaction, Response, and Analysis

Let’s take a closer look at each of these elements that form the response paper format.

• Introduction Your introduction should introduce the work that you’re responding to and mention the name of the author. You should also include your thesis statement in this section – this is your position on the subject matter. Overall, this part should be about 1-2 paragraphs long and it should keep the reader interested to read the rest of the response paper.

For example : “Should America atone for its past sins against black people? This is the question raised by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his powerful article ‘The Case For Reparations’. The author strongly believes that America should make reparations to the African-American community, and after much contemplation, I wholeheartedly agree with him”.

• Summary Of The Work In your summary, you want to give a general overview of the content without giving away too much. You’ll highlight the main points of the work, provide direct quotations, and keep the writing objective and factual.

For example : “Ta-Nehisi Coates makes many compelling arguments for why America should make reparations to the African-American community. He cites statistics, historical evidence, and personal stories to support his position. According to him, “To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting American’s origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte.”.

• Reaction, Response, and Analysis In this section, you’ll want to go into detail about your reaction to the work. What did you like or dislike? What were your thoughts and feelings? Be sure to back up your claims with evidence from the text.

For example : “I found Coates’ argument to be very convincing. He makes a strong case for reparations by providing ample evidence to support his position. I was also moved by his personal stories about the impact of slavery on African-Americans today. His writing is powerful and emotional, and it made me think about America’s history in a new light”.

Many students struggle with writing a good response essay simply because they’re confused about how to write response essay, where to begin, how to begin, and what to do next. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process of writing a fabulous response paper that is sure to get the attention of your teachers and professors.

• Step 1 – Read and Understand the Work Before you can write a good response essay, you first need to read and understand the work that you’re responding to. Whether it’s a book, movie, article, or poem, the quality of your response paper is directly proportional to how well you’ve understood the source material. Take notes as you read and highlight important passages so that you can refer back to them later. This is an important step in learning how to start a response essay.
• Step 2 – Brainstorm Your Ideas Once you’ve read and understood the work, it’s time to brainstorm your ideas. This is the part of the process where you let your thoughts flow freely and write down any and all responses that come to mind. Don’t worry about making sense or sorting them out yet – just get everything down on paper.
• Step 3 – Write Your Thesis Statement Your thesis statement is your position on the subject matter – it should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. This is what you’ll be arguing for or against in your essay. Don’t be afraid to genuinely put forth your opinion, whether it’s positive or negative.
• Step 4 – Support Your Thesis with Evidence Now it’s time to support your thesis statement with evidence from the text. Quote directly from the work and provide a brief explanation of how it supports your argument. Don’t forget to cite your sources! The summary of the work and your personal opinion on the matter will form the core content of your paper.
• Step 5 – Write a Conclusion Once you’ve finished arguing for your position, it’s time to write a conclusion. Restate your thesis and summarize your main points. You may also want to leave readers with something to think about or a call to action. A solid conclusion can sometimes make all the difference between a great response essay and a mediocre one!

By following these steps, you’ll be able to write some of the best response essays that are well-organized, informative, and persuasive. All it takes is a little time and practice! On the contrary, you can choose buying custom college papers and be free of this assignment.

When writing a response essay, there are certain key features that you need to keep in mind. Whether it’s for school, college, or university, these five features will make your response essay unique and interesting.

• Summarizing – This is probably the most important feature of writing a response essay. You need to be able to summarize the work succinctly, highlighting the most important points without giving away too much of the plot or story.
• Paraphrasing/Quoting – In order to support your argument, you’ll need to quote and paraphrase the work extensively. Make sure that you always credit your sources!
• Organization – Your essay should be well-organized and easy to follow. Start with a strong introduction, then move on to your main points. Wrap things up with a conclusion that reiterates your position. No professor likes reading a haphazardly put-together essay!
• Transitions – To keep your essay cohesive, you’ll need to use strong transitions and connecting words between paragraphs. This way, the reader can move between different portions of your writing (e.g. Introduction > Summary > Thesis > Conclusion) without losing interest.
• Argumentation – Last but not least, your essay needs to be filled with strong argumentation. Make sure to back up your points with evidence from the text, and don’t be afraid to state your opinion openly. This is what will set your response essay apart from the rest!

We’ll share with you a few of our tried and tested essay writing tips that will masterfully elevate your response essay.

• Take your time and read the source material carefully.
• Write a strong thesis statement that reflects your position on the matter.
• When stating definitive opinions, cite instances from the text to strengthen your stand.
• Argument your points persuasively and with conviction.
• Proofread your essay for errors such as grammar, language, punctuation, and spelling.
• Have someone else, like a trusted friend or teacher, read it over for you as well – fresh eyes can sometimes catch mistakes that you’ve missed.
• Use the help of a reliable paper writing service to assist you in the process.

Now that you’ve read all our instructions, there’s only one thing left to do. You have a chance to ged extended response essay sample and see all our tips in practice.

Response Paper In his article “The Militarization of the Police”, James Bouie argues that recent traegy in Ferguson is only one symptom of the broad problem of increasing police militarization in the USA. The purpose of the author is to bring this question into light and warn American citizens about the danger it entails for the whole society, with a special emphasis being placed on racial minorities. Bouie addresses the general public who are concerned with political and social tendencies in the US. The author begins his article with discussion of the photographs from Ferguson demonstration, pointing out the signs of inadequate aggression of the police toward the citizens. He puts the Ferguson tragedy in the context of increasing militarization of the US police force, which he believes to be one of the major problems of the American society. Bouie asserts that this process began with the war on drugs in the 1980s and intensified after the 9/11 attacks and the wars in the Middle East. He estimates that the value of military hardware owned by U.S. police agencies increased at 450 times from 1990 to 2013, despite the falling crime rates. Bouie also discusses the issue of increased SWAT deployment, which is disproportionately utilized in black and Latino neighborhoods. The conclusion the author draws is that the availability of heavy military weapons and a long-standing tradition of punitive policing toward racial minorities are the major factors that are likely to cause repressive reactions of the police. The Ferguson tragedy has recently riveted the attention of the whole U.S. population. While we may lament the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, it is important to view these events in the broader context of police misconduct, as the author does it. Despite numerous changes and advancements in law enforcement over the last decade, such as community policing and recruiting more officers from racial minorities, the society is still staunchly opposed to the police force, and the negative sentiment has predictably grown after the Ferguson unrest. The frequent SWAT raids are definitely an overreaction, given that they are mostly deployed for low-level offenses, such as drug use. Repressive and punitive actions with the disproportionate targeting of racial minorities suggest that positive changes in the police were of purely decorative nature and were not effective to eradicate stereotypes, prejudices and aggression from the mind of law enforcement officers. While the author does not explore this perspective in detail, the increasing militarization of the police is often viewed as a logical consequence of the militarization of the whole US politics, which is obsessed with identifying and eliminating national enemies. Incessant employment of war rhetoric by the officials has the power to alter the mindset of the whole society, not only police officers. The article provides a comprehensive account of the author’s opinion. No doubts arise as to the appropriateness of his observations, largely because they are aligned with the common social reaction to Ferguson tragedy. However, the author does not explore any potential solutions to the problem, thus leaving this question open for the readers to consider. Another overlooked issue, which may interest the readers, is how the situation in the USA compares to other developed countries and what policies they implement to prevent the overreaction of police force. The author has achieved the purpose of persuading his readers that events in Ferguson are linked to a broader social problem, as his arguments appeal to the common sense and show clear causality between acquisition of military equipment and overreaction to offenses and unrest. The author made his article more persuading by referring to Ferguson photographs, statistics and authoritative specialists to support his argument.

Want Someone To Write An Essay For You?

We hope this guide has taught you everything you need to know about how to write a strong response essay. Keep these key points in mind, and you’re guaranteed to produce a top-notch paper! If you want additional advice on how to write a response paper, simply hire someone to write an essay . Our team of professional, educated academic writers will write high-quality papers and essays that will get you in the good books of any of your teachers! It’s fast, affordable, and always 100% original. You won’t be disappointed! Good luck with all of your future academic endeavours!

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THINK in the "Think and Execute" Text Response Strategy

January 1, 2019

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Go ahead and tilt your mobile the right way (portrait). the kool kids don't use landscape....

Most people only think about EXECUTING their essay - the writing. Whether that be essay structure, memorising quotes or how to avoid repeating yourself in the dreaded conclusion. However, my strategy places emphasis on the THINK. 

THINK is the brainstorm, exploration, and development of ideas. Get this right, and you'll come up with ideas and a response that pushes you ahead of your peers. The EXECUTION comes next, only strengthening your lead to the finish line.

So what does THINK actually involve? 🤔

You need to consider aspects of an essay topic that most students gloss over, including:

💭What's the essay topic type ?

Knowing the essay topic type will change your essay structure. While you might wish for a one-size-fits-all essay structure, this is a limited viewpoint that stops you from reaching your potential. Different essay types include:

• Theme-based prompts
• Character-based prompts
• Author's message-based prompts
• Metalanguage-based prompts

By understand what's required in each one of these essay topic types, you'll have a template you can follow to ensure that you answer the prompt (no more complaints from your teacher complaining that you're going off topic!).

💭 What are the question tags ?

Never heard of this term previously? That's because majority of teachers don't teach you to change your Text Response according to the question tag. A ' do you agree?' essay topic expects a different response from a 'discuss' essay topic.

💭 How do I ensure I respond to each keyword ?

This is important so you don't go off topic (we've all at least experienced this once in our high school writing careers 😥). Sometimes, one missed keyword is all it takes to derail your entire essay. No matter how well you've written your essay, an essay that doesn't answer the prompt won't fare well.

For example, have a think about which keywords can be found in this essay topic "Jeff's attempt to pursue justice are entirely without honour. To what extent is this true?".

For me, the keywords include:

- 'Attempt'

- 'Pursue justice'

- 'Entirely'

- 'Honour'

- 'To what extent is this true?'

Even though I've labelled almost every word in the essay topic, individually, each of these keywords will shape my response. Majority of students will pick up the necessity to discuss the keyword 'entirely' in their essays. They will potentially argue that Jeff's attempt isn't entirely without honour, and mention instances where honour was shown. However, a less obvious keyword that needs further exploration is 'justice'. Most students will take this word for granted, and won't really explore what the word 'justice' means in this sentence. A more advanced student will understand that 'justice' in this essay topic is viewed from Jeff's perspective, meaning that what Jeff deems to be 'justice', might not be the same 'justice' for a viewer. These are the nuances in an essay topic that I'd like you to be very confident in.

Knowing how to THINK will ensure that you EXECUTE your essay writing most effectively, optimising your potential to nail that A+. If I went from average to consistent A+s in Year 11 and Year 12, I have no doubt you can do it too. That's why I created the How To Write a Killer Text Response ebook.

I know that you are probably like I was, searching for a clear, simple way to get better at English without just relying on my teacher (despite the fact that I had a great teacher!). I've compiled my 10 years of tutoring English, refining this strategy year after year. With this knowledge, many of my students achieved a study score they thought was impossible (one student Ruby, wanted a study score of 30 to get into her university course, and ultimately achieved a 40 study score! WOW! 😮).

If you're interested, How To Write a Killer Text Response ebook shows you the inner workings of my brain 💭- what I think when I see an essay topic, how I tackle it, and how I turn these thoughts into a high-scoring essay. The ebook includes:

‍ - 50-pages teaching you how to respond to ANY essay topic

- Examples from 15+ popular VCE English texts

- Know exactly what to  THINK  about so you can formulate the best possible essay response

- Plus a bonus 20-pages of high vs low scoring essays , fully annotated (what works and what doesn't) so you know exactly what you need to do and what not to do

Click here to access the FULL version now!

Get our FREE VCE English Text Response mini-guide

Now quite sure how to nail your text response essays? Then download our free mini-guide, where we break down the art of writing the perfect text-response essay into three comprehensive steps. Click below to get your own copy today!

Struggling to answer the essay topic?

Has your teacher ever told you:

"You're not answering the prompt"

"You're going off topic"

Then you're not alone! If you struggle to understand and stay on topic, learn how to answer the prompt every time with our How To Write A Killer Text Response study guide.

Whether you consider yourself a Frankenstein expert, or someone who is a bit taken back by the density of the novel and Shelley’s writing, do not fret! Below I will outline 3 tips which, will hopefully give you a clearer perspective on how to approach writing on Frankenstein! Let’s get started!

1. ALWAYS TRY TO TALK ABOUT SHELLEY’S CONCERNS

Since the book was set during the Age of Enlightenment and the Romantic era, Shelley essentially used Frankenstein as a vessel to criticise and warn readers against many of the values upheld during her era. It’s therefore crucial that you address this!

The late 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century were exciting times for science and exploration. Shelley’s two main protagonists, Walton and Frankenstein, both passionately sough to discover what had previously been hidden. Walton wanted to be the first to find a passage through the Arctic Circle; Frankenstein wanted to be the first to create manmade life, to uncover the mysteries of Nature.  Both men claimed to be desirous of benefitting humankind but both wanted glory more. This obsession to win accolades for their discoveries will destroy Victor, and turn Walton for a while into a hard taskmaster over his crew.

Juxtaposed against these two characters is Henry Clerval. Clerval, too, has an inquiring mind but he also cares about humanity, family and friends. He represents the balanced human being who is sociable, compassionate, intelligent and loyal to his friends. Victor’s ability to reanimate the dead, to bring to life his gigantic Creature using the newly discovered electricity, makes him a genius but also a monster. In his inexperience he botches the work producing a hideous and terrifying creature with, ironically, initially all the virtues of the ideal man of he world. Repulsed by his amateurish handiwork, Victor abandons his creation, setting in place the vengeance that will unfold later.

Try to ground any response to Shelley’s text in the enormous enthusiasm for new discoveries and new geographic phenomena that attracted lavish praise for those who went where others feared to tread. It was this praise that drove Walton and Frankenstein to exceed reasonable expectations becoming reckless and careless of the consequences of their actions.

2. ALWAYS TRY TO DRAWS LINKS AND CONTRAST DIFFERENT CHARACTERS AND THEMES!

Walton, Frankenstein and the Creature are interconnected in so many ways – whether it be their isolation, ambition, desire for companionship, desire for vengeance or the Romantic values they share. I’ve also noted that it is also really easy to connect themes in Frankenstein as the tragic story-arc of the novel is built upon many different causes. What I mean by this is that there is a clearly define relationship between isolation, ambition and vengeance (and ultimately tragedy) in the sense that isolation is what led to the brewing of unchecked ambition which essentially causes the resultant tragedy.

Take Frankenstein for example: having left his loving family and friends, who provided him with love and companionship for Ingolstadt, there was no one to hold him back from his natural tendencies towards unchecked ambitions, leading him to creating the monster who out of spite towards society kills all of Frankenstein’s loved ones, leading them towards the desire for mutual destruction. Being able to see these links and draw them together will not only add depth to your writing but it also arms you with the ability to be able to deal with a wider array of prompts.

3. ALWAYS TRY TO LOOK FOR MORE NUANCED EXAMPLES AND DISCUSSIONS!

While Walton, Frankenstein and the Creature can be discussed incredibly thoroughly (and by all means go ahead and do it), but it is also very important to consider the novel as a whole and talk about, if not more thoroughly, on the minor characters. While characters such as the De Laceys, villagers and the rustic in the forest can be used to highlight the injustices brought upon the creature and people’s natural instincts of self preservation and prejudice, innocent characters such as Elizabeth and Justine can be used to emphasise the injustice of society and the consequences of unchecked ambition and isolation.

Henry Clerval (like previously mentioned) can be contrasted against Walton and his best friend Frankenstein to show that as long as we have a balanced lifestyle and companionship, ambition will not lead us to ruin. Characters such as the Turkish merchant can also have parallels drawn with Frankenstein in telling how our selfish desire and actions, born out of inconsideration for their consequences, can backfire with great intensity. Lastly the character of Safie (someone I used a lot in my discussions) can be compared and contrasted with the Creature to show the different treatment they receive despite both being “outsiders” to the De Laceys due to their starkly different appearances.

Mentioning these characters and utilising these contrasts can be monumental in showing your understanding of the novel and by extension, your English analytical ability.

[Video Transcription]

‍ Hey guys, I'm Lisa, welcome back to Lisa's Study Guides. Today, we're going to be talking about Frankenstein and breaking down an essay topic for it. So in the past, I've done plenty of videos looking at different types of essay topics and breaking them down by looking at keywords and then going into the body paragraphs and looking at those ideas. This time round, the takeaway message that I want you to leave with is understanding what types of evidence you should be using inside your body paragraphs. Specifically, I wanted to talk about literary devices or metalanguage. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein uses so many literary devices that it's impossible to ignore. If you are somebody who is studying this text or other texts that you use and are heavily embedded with literary techniques, then it's really important that you don't just use dialogue as part of your quotes, but actually reading between the lines. I'll teach you on how it's not just about finding dialogue, which you include as quotes inside your body paragraphs, but reading between the lines, so looking at literary devices like metaphors, symbols, imagery, so let's get started. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein constitutes escaping critique of the prioritization of scientific advancement over human welfare and relationship. Dr. Frankenstein is fascinated with science and discovery, he is consumed with the idea of a new and more noble race by stitching up dead body parts from a cemetery. He feverishly works away at his experiment until one day the creature is born. Frankenstein is horrified at the living thing he has made and completely rejects the creature, leaving it without a parental figure. The creature is left alone to look after himself. He educates himself and on repeated occasions tries to approach people in society, however, is rejected every time because of his monstrous appearance. As a result, the creature becomes enraged at humanity and Frankenstein's unfair treatment towards him and consequently exacts revenge on Frankenstein and his family. The essay topic we'll be looking at today is, Our sympathies in this novel ultimately lie with the creature. Discuss. So in previous videos, we've looked at keywords, how to identify them and how to define them. Since it's pretty straightforward for this essay topic, I thought I would skip that part and then go into the more nitty gritty with the body paragraphs. But, if you are unfamiliar with these steps, then I'll link them in the card above and also in the description below so you can have a look at how I went ahead and did the keyword section in my planning, now back to the prompt. Unequivocally within Frankenstein, Shelley portrays sympathy as spread throughout the text through depicting the creature as innately human through his desire for relationship and the challenges he faces at the hands of the prejudice enlightenment society he's born into, Shelley elicits sympathy for his situation. However, through the notable absence of the female gender throughout the text, Shelley portrays those silent within society as most deserving of sympathy. So, with this in mind, here are the potential paragraphs in response to this prompt. Paragraph one, Shelley's depiction of the creature as innately human motivates support for his challenges at the hands of a prejudice society. The action of the creature to open his dull yellow eye, symbolic of his nature as a human being alongside a green wrinkled on his cheeks, with one hand stretched out, indicates his simple desire for paternal connection. Through constructing the creature's actions as innately human Shelley acts proleptically of the inequitable experiences the creature will experience throughout the structural architecture of the text. And through doing so, depicts his character as worthy of support. Similarly, through the metaphor of fire, Shelley explores the duality of progress and innovation of which the creature desires. The fire, one that gives light as well as heat, yet also causes a cry of pain, indicates the hardships of the creature in his isolation, whereby, his forced to withdraw from his desire for education. Upon viewing himself in a pool, the creature becomes "fully convinced that I was in reality [a] monster" with the consequent sensations of despondency and mortification granting the reader the opportunity to sympathize with the creature in order to indicate the intensely negative social prejudices that are inflicted upon the creature. So you can see that we've looked at symbols of the creature's nature and the metaphor of fire to support our topic sentence. Using literary techniques is what's going to make the difference between you and another student who might be saying the same thing. Why? Because when you look at literary devices, it means that you're reading just beyond the lines, just beyond what's in front of you. You're now introducing your own interpretation, so you're looking at fire and thinking about what that means in connection to the text, and why Mary Shelley would use the term of a fire and revolve her discussion around that. So let's see how we keep doing this in the next body paragraph. Paragraph two, Shelley indicates the significance of relationships as a key element of human nature that the creature is denied, motivating affinity from readers. In replacement of human relationships, the creature rather seeks comfort within the natural world. The metaphorical huge cloak that the creature takes refuge within indicates this, illustrative of an ecosystem, the forest allows the creator to surround himself with life. The subsequent attempts to "imitate the pleasant songs of the birds" reveals the desperate urge of the creature for companionship as he is abandoned by the paternal relationship represented by Victor Frankenstein, which forms a core of human relationships. Again, here we've discussed the metaphorical huge cloak and its connection with the forest, I strongly encourage you to have the goal of discussing at least one literary device per body paragraph. And no, there is no such thing as talking about too many literary devices because it's really just about whether or not your argument is concise and whether or not you're backing that up with evidence. Paragraph three. However, it is Shelley's depiction of the submissive female sex within Frankenstein that becomes most deserving of sympathy. Each female character is characterized as passive, disposable, and they're serving a utilitarian function, namely as a channel of action for the male characters within the text. Notably, the complete lack of absence of Margaret Saville, functioning only as an audience for Walton's letters exemplifies this. Margaret's role within the text is simply to enable Walton to relay the story of Frankenstein and as such were the most necessary character of the texts whilst the most distant. This ironic dichotomy enables Shelley to exemplify the difficult role of the female within society, arising sympathy from the readership. Here, even the purposeful emission of a character is discussed as a language technique. So, this type of literary device definitely tops the cake because you're literally looking at what's not even there. That's definitely reading between the lines. Frankenstein is a very complex novel, and sometimes that's what makes it a difficult text to study. But, it lends itself to many unique interpretations and it's heavily dressed with heaps of literary devices or metalanguage, however you want to call it. So, that's what makes it an absolutely fantastic text for high school students to study. If you wanted to find out more on how to nail a Frankenstein essay, then I'll link you to my blog just down below, because there are definitely more tips there to help you excel in this particular text. Thank you so much for watching, and especially even if you're not studying this text, I hope you've been able to take something away from this video. And I'm confident that you have because talking about literary devices is definitely a topic that isn't necessarily the fore front of discussion in classrooms, and it's something that a lot of people struggle with. So, I hope you are able to walk away with a new goal in sight in order to improve your English essays. So, I will see you guys next time, thank you so much for joining me, see you guys soon. Bye!

Text Response  is seen, often, as ‘bipolar’: weeks of inactivity followed by sharp spikes of panic as you churn out 20,000 words in six days. If not, students fall for the “quantity=quality” trap, pumping out essay after essay as their one form of study.

Don’t get me wrong. Diligence is key. But here’s what many miss :  Essays are the  END PRODUCT,  not the starting point. To begin, foundations are required:

Step 1: Deliberate Reading

Remember: the better and sooner you engage with your text, the easier to write on it. So. Even when first reading,  have a pen in hand ! At this stage, nothing fancy is needed ---annotate what you can. Circle, highlight and underline anything that catches your attention.

Afterwards, a helpful tip is the “21 words” exercise, which forces you to summarise the text’s messages as  early prep  for topic sentence construction.

“Macbeth, a dark, brooding tragedy, explores the corruptive effects of extreme ambition through the moral decay of a great man.” (21)

“Whilst seemingly about human flaw, Macbeth declares that all mortals are in fact vulnerable to supernatural forces beyond their control.” (21)

LESSON LEARNT:  First impressions matter. The author ALWAYS seeks to make readers feel and think a certain way. Even before you write, you should be tapping into these currents as best you can. All early thinking,  guaranteed , will turn into priceless essay ammunition because you’ve given time for your thoughts to develop and mature.

Step 2: Understanding Context

VCE English involves the study of some sophisticated literature. Authors/filmmaker have used the written word to  comment  on past and present society. For a high score, then, you too must understand these contexts.

---Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950s film  All About Eve : a satirical jab at the post-war ideal of a traditional nuclear family ---Hannah Kent’s  Burial Rites:  critiquing the patriarchy of 19th century Iceland

Step 3: Note taking

Now we’ve gained some understanding of the text, time for rigorous and more detailed analysis. There are three tiers involved.

1. Chapter summaries

Basically a timeline of significant moments: what happens and what is said. Note the  STRUCTURE  of the text: is it chronological or non-linear? Is it a circular narrative? Why is this structure  employed , and what is its literary function for the broader story?

2. Event significance

This is where we begin to understand not only WHAT HAPPENS and WHAT IS SAID, but WHY. Go back to each chapter and write down the significance of each defining moment. What does it show about a character or theme? Does it reveal an author’s viewpoint on a certain idea?

Put these thoughts into “essay” sentences.  This way, you are constantly practicing how to ANALYSE complex ideas . Come SAC or exam time, you will have already honed your written expression to a far more sophisticated level and what’s more, increased your familiarity with  RELEVANT CONCEPTS. This approach is far more efficient than starting off by writing essays on random topic questions. Build up the knowledge base first!

3. Language

Now, it’s time to elevate your analysis to the divine by understanding the text’s CONSTRUCTION: HOW significant events, significant people are portrayed, and what it all means. Go back to each chapter and look for compelling language/filmic devices, including its impact:

Metaphor Juxtaposition Imagery Sentence length Setting Word choices Intertextual references Symbolism/motifs Camera angles Diegetic/non-diegetic sound

Step 4: Themes and Characters

After close reading and closer analysis, we come to the last stage: bringing all the elements together by zooming BACK OUT FOR A BIG PICTURE VIEW OF THE TEXT: its themes and underlying ideas, its central characters, and the lasting messages conveyed as a result.

Notes on Themes

By now, a ‘theme’ no longer has to be a one word affair like in our younger years: “identity” “friendship”, “tragedy”, “ambition”, “evil” etc. Rather, a theme is closely linked to the text’s  views and values:  put simply, it can express opinion.

E.g. “The struggle for personal identity”

“The unbreakable bonds of childhood friendship”

“The vulnerability of all ordinary men to extraordinary tragedy”

“The harms of excessive ambition”

“The pervasiveness of evil”

Once you’ve identified the themes, use the notes you’ve made on  context, plot, significant events and language , to help support your interpretation.

Notes on characters

Using the previous evidence you’ve gathered, you can now also make detailed and insightful character studies. Obviously, a focus on their defining traits, relationships and flaws is important.

However, in Year 12, what is more crucial is understanding what the character  represents. After all, an author will never craft someone out of thin air. Just like a theme, a character is used as a vehicle to express opinions on the nature of society and humans in general.

Now you’ve finished the four steps. Using your understanding of 1) big ideas and 2) close evidence, you’re ready to start writing!

Of course, along the way, there are a few extra tricks one can deploy.

• Read academic/critical/high scoring essays

Exposing yourself to the widest possible range of academic literature---whether it be your friend’s 20/20 essay or a New York Times review on the text----is a sure fire way to juice up vocab.

• Keep reading the text

Whenever you’ve got spare time, open up the book or film you’re studying and refresh your memory! This way, you’ll really internalise what you’re studying. Quote learning will be easier, you’ll form a genuine attachment to the characters… overall, the insights will flow all the faster. To learn more about studying for Text Response, read our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Happy studying!

1. Summary 2. What Is Magical Realism? 3. Themes 4. Symbols and Analysis 5. Quotes 6. Sample Essay Topics 7. Essay Topic Breakdown

Flames is a bit of an out-there story right from the beginning: Levi is attempting to build a coffin for his sister Charlotte because the women in their family come back to life after dying. Neither of them is that close to dying - both are young adults. Charlotte doesn’t really want a coffin so she runs away from home, as far as she can while still remaining in Tasmania at least, and Robbie Arnott takes us on this adventure through interweaving perspectives and rich imagery of his home island .

Some of these perspectives are surprising and unexpected, ranging from a hardcore private investigator to a river god in the form of a water rat, but each of them earns their place in the story. Our job when studying this text is to follow these shifts in perspectives and make sense of how they contribute to the overall text. If you’re writing creatively, you may want to play around with this sort of structure as well in your piece.

2. What Is Magical Realism?

Before we get stuck into the text itself, it might be useful to first discuss its genre . Magical realism books tend to be extremely confusing if you’re not familiar with the genre (and sometimes even when you are!). This is because authors in this genre will typically set their stories in the real world (in this case, in Tasmania), but they’ll add supernatural elements , which vary wildly from story to story.

Let’s unpack the genre a bit more, in particular, what it involves and why it’s used.

Elements of Magical Realism

The most important element of magical realism is that it blends the real world with fantastical elements . In Flames , the most obvious example is gods : gods don’t exist as far as we know, but they walk among humans and play key roles in this text. Less obvious examples of fantastical elements include the wombat farm at Melaleuca (fortunately nobody actually skins wombats) as well as the Oneblood tuna and (unfortunately!) the pet seals.

The fact that these examples are narrated as perfectly normal is another element of magical realism: the author usually operates as if the fantastical elements are perfectly real. We, as readers, enter a world where the existence of these magical things is taken for granted by the characters.

Purpose of Magical Realism

This blurring of the lines between real and magical is primarily supposed to suspend our disbelief : we can’t really be sure what’s real about the novel’s world and what isn’t. All we know is that in many respects, it looks like our own. Within this familiar setting, Arnott lets his own imagination run wild and leaves the reader to figure out the rest. This helps to create a sense of wonder , as if these elements could be real and as magical as described.

These elements also contribute to the story in other ways: in particular, they open up new possibilities for commentary . For example, the voice of the South Esk god is used to highlight the impacts of colonialism and the “blood-tasting tang of iron” that was brought with it.

Other Magical Realism Books

If you’re liking the sound of this genre and/or if you enjoyed Flames , there’s plenty more to discover in the way of magical realism. It’s a hallmark of Latin American literature (Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez), and it’s also been picked up in Japan by the likes of Haruki Murakami. A prominent Australian example is Carpentaria by Alexis Wright.

Death and Grief

Let’s move more closely into Flames , starting with its central theme of death and grief. It’s what defines this central point of tension between Levi and Charlotte throughout the novel, since it starts with their divergent responses to their mother’s death (and reincarnation etc.). Their divergent responses suggest that there’s no one way to cope with death, and their father’s reaction on top of that introduces further complexity: he disappears from their lives altogether, “not want[ing] to be close to them when they [died]”. Between the three of them, there are three very different expressions of grief .

But Edith McAllister is not the only death of significance in the novel. Another standout is the passing of Karl’s seal , after which he becomes haunted by “clicks”; he subsequently leaves tuna-hunting behind. The death of the South Esk god is also explored as causing grief, this time in the form of divine emotional outpouring, “a cloud’s sorrow”. Arnott is thus exploring many processes of grieving, from solitude and callousness to physical and emotional labour.

Family Relationships

Outside of these moments of grieving, Arnott explores the background relationships between family members as well. Again, Levi and Charlotte are central to this. As siblings , they don’t always see eye to eye: “Levi and I have never understood each other”. However, that does not diminish their love for each other, particularly as they were left alone after their mother’s death. Their father Jack again makes this dynamic more complicated: he sees an “unbridgeable gap” between himself and Levi for example, but the omniscient third-person narrator in that chapter knows otherwise. Consider what difference it makes when Arnott writes in first person from within these relationships (as he does with Charlotte) versus when he writes in third person , observing from outside.

We also see interesting relationships between Karl and his daughter Nicola. Unlike the McAllisters, the two of them are remarkably close despite his ongoing grief for his seal: “nothing could match the blaze of love in her father’s smile”.

Romantic Relationships

Nicola crops up again under this theme, as she begins to navigate a relationship with Charlotte. In a book review for The Guardian , Sam Jordison argues that this is a bit trite, but we can think of it as one perspective on how relationships begin : organically and sincerely, and out of a desire to protect someone else. By contrast, the start of Jack and Edith’s relationship was founded on something more artificial and manipulative, a “tiny spark” which he ignited in her mind.

This is bookended with romantic relationships that have come to an end , as explored through the eyes of the private investigator: her and her ex-husband, Graham Malik, have settled into something of an “ecosystem”. With these various beginnings and endings, Arnott shows how it can be natural - or supernatural - to fall in and out of love.

Colonisation

Finally, this novel touches on the impacts of colonisation . It’s a few quiet allusions here and there, but they are important: Arnott acknowledges the impact of colonisation on the natural landscape of his birthplace. He does this firstly through the eyes of the South Esk god, who observes the “foul industries” of the “loud, pale apes” when they first arrived on palawa and pakana land, the land we now know as Tasmania.

Arnott also explores colonisation through the eyes of Jack, who experiences racism when taking on the human form of an Aboriginal person. He wanted to learn more about how European colonisers were using fire, but he found “they reacted poorly to his dark appearance”. Meanwhile, First Nations people in Tasmania were being “hunted in their own homeland”, and he chooses not to intervene.

As immortal outside observers, their perspectives are the only ones in the novel that can really trace this history. Arnott might be including them so readers take his descriptions of nature with a grain of salt: even as we appreciate Australia’s beautiful landscape, it’s worth acknowledging its custodians who have kept it that way for tens of thousands of years.

4. Symbols & Analysis

Supernatural creatures.

We’ve traced the major purposes of these deities already, but to reiterate them here these ‘gods’ symbolise different parts of nature and the wonder Arnott derives from them. Although nature is already alive, these figures help it feel even more so. They also serve the important purpose of highlighting and acknowledging Tasmania’s colonial history , as well as the disconnect between humankind and nature .

The one natural element worth discussing as its own symbol is water. There are many bodies of water identified in the novel, from rivers and lakes to the ocean , and they each have their own significance. For example, rivers connect parts of the natural landscape while lakes (particularly Crater Lake) represent a getaway, solace, solitude and peace.

The ocean is the most complex of these symbols though: it’s all around the island of Tasmania, and it appears to be a vicious and unforgiving place filled with orcas and tunas the size of “mountains”. But it’s also a place that brings calm to Edith and Charlotte, and even Levi as a child. Arnott canvasses all of these different relationships to nature through the different manifestations of water. Water even exists as rain , which in the novel’s denouement represents a new beginning, a washing away of past tensions and conflicts.

• “My sister is struggling to cope with the loss…I cannot allow her pain to continue.”
• “They (Levi and Jack) were so alike” 
• “The tears were flames, and they were coming from within Charlotte.”
• “Levi and I have never understood each other” 
• “Some wore fur and feathers and watched over the creatures they resembled… Some, like a blood-hungry bird spirit he encountered deep in the southwest, were cruel. Most were calm, seeking only to care for the creatures and land that they felt drawn closest to.”
• “He (the South Esk god) continued on, soothing his rage in a simple, humble way - by nipping screws out of the hull of an idle jetski”
• “Living with humans did not work”

6. Sample Essay Topics

• More than anything else, Flames illustrates the importance of family. Discuss.
• Levi McAllister is the hero of Flames . Do you agree?

How does genre contribute to the storytelling effect of Flames ?

• What is the effect of shifting narrative perspectives as used in Flames ?
• “I could have spoken to him but he would not have listened.” What does Arnott say around family? 

7. Essay Topic Breakdown

Whenever you get a new essay topic, you can use LSG’s THINK and EXECUTE strategy , a technique to help you write better VCE essays. This essay topic breakdown will focus on the THINK part of the strategy. If you’re unfamiliar with this strategy, then check it out in How To Write A Killer Text Response .

Within the THINK strategy, we have 3 steps, or ABC. These ABC components are:

Step 1: A nalyse

Step 2: B rainstorm

Step 3: C reate a Plan

Step 1: Analyse

When talking about the genre of this text, we’ll definitely need to discuss magical realism . The question here is about how magical realism enriches or contributes to the story, so it might be worth breaking down the elements of magical realism and thinking through each of them one-by-one. The fact that this prompt is framed as a ‘how’ question (one of the 5 types of essay questions ) also means we’ll have to bring in Arnott and how he chooses to tell the story.

Step 2: Brainstorm

One magical realism element Arnott adopts is the gods, who play a few roles symbolically in the novel, but there are other elements too: the seals, the flames, the cormorants and so on. Do these elements add as much as the gods, and if so, what are they adding?

Consider also not just the elements as they appear, but also how Arnott is treating them . The fact that a lot of them are taken for granted as perfectly normal is in itself another genre element.

Step 3: Create a Plan

Instead of talking about the elements too disparately or separately, I think a lot of them revolve around this central question of how humans relate to the earth and to one another . This will help connect my ideas to one another.

Paragraph 1 : Elements of magical realism show how humans adversely impact nature

• Nature is a huge part of the story: around the island, we see everything from beaches and rivers to “undulating moorlands of peat and buttongrass”. Sometimes, these elements are personified as deities (e.g. South Esk god) – this is where genre comes in, since these deities are supernatural or ‘magical’, though they are written to exist in our world.
• These voices, made possible by magical realism, highlight the impact of human industry on the environment: for example the “blood-tasting tang of iron” that seeps into Tasmania’s waterways.
• Even Jack and Edith’s relationship could be seen as a metaphorical take on our incompatibility with nature: “living with humans did not work”.

Paragraph 2 : At the same time, not all humans contribute equally to this pollution, and magical elements also facilitate commentary on this perspective

• Before European colonisers arrived in Australia, the land had been tended to by the First Nations peoples for over 60,000 years - and pollution had been minimal. We cannot blame the entire human race equally for the deteriorating natural environment (see this Instagram post for an explanation!).
• This is pointed out by the South Esk god: it is the “pale apes” who are trying to “swamp[] over everything”.
• Jack, the deity of flame, also recognises this, although he is far more complicit: “he liked learning from the pale people more than he wanted to help” Aboriginal people.
• Magical realism adds this historical and political dimension to the narrative.

Paragraph 3 : However, Arnott’s use of magical realism also shows possibilities for ‘ideal’ relationships between humans, and between humans and nature

• This paragraph gets to draw on some examples that aren’t just the deities: the seals for example coexist really poetically with humans, “the half of themselves they had been born without” (these were inspired by dogs , by the way).
• Plus, even though Jack and Edith’s relationship was founded on a lie, Arnott is able to use that as a point of contrast for the relationship between Charlotte and Nicola, born from Nicola’s “desire to help”, plus her “fast and firm” attraction to Charlotte. This relationship is highly organic, and the ‘magical’ relationship between Charlotte’s parents proves a useful foil.
• Even though some textual elements are exaggerated because of genre, Arnott still manages to use magical realism to highlight what might be possible , inviting the reader to imagine possibilities for harmony between people and nature within their own worlds.

Flames is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

We've curated essay prompts based off our All the Light We Cannot See Study Guide which explores themes, characters, and quotes.

LSG-curated All the Light We Cannot See Essay Topics

• Contrary to what the title might suggest, All the Light We Cannot See explores light more so than darkness. Is this true?
• How does Doerr’s narrative structure highlight the similarities and differences between Marie Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See?
• All the Light We Cannot See demonstrates that war brings out the best and worst in humanity. Discuss.
• Explore the forms of courage demonstrated in All the Light We Cannot See.
• What is the role of family in All the Light We Cannot See?
• Werner’s character is defined by his cowardly and harmful conformity to the Nazi regime. To what extent do you agree?
• All the Light We Cannot See is a warning against unethical and selfish scientific pursuits. Discuss.
• Who deserves our sympathy in All the Light We Cannot See and why?
• Throughout All the Light We Cannot See, various forms of guilt are shown to be emotionally crushing. Is this true?
• “Don’t you want to be alive before you die?” Explore the value and meaning of human life as evinced in All the Light We Cannot See.
• No character from All the Light We Cannot See is totally monstrous, just as no character is totally pure. Do you agree?
• In All the Light We Cannot See , Doerr suggests that nobody truly has agency over themselves. Discuss.
• More so than any other object, it is the radio which drives the plot of All the Light We Cannot See . Is this an accurate statement?
• All the Light We Cannot See posits that strength must come from within. Discuss.
• “Open your eyes and see what you can see with them before they close forever.” To what extent do characters exhibit this sentiment in All the Light We Cannot See ?

If you'd like to see a fully planned, written and annotated essay, see our All the Light We Cannot See Essay Topic Breakdown .

All the Light We Cannot See is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Rear Window was released nearly 65 years ago. Back then, Hitchcock was a controversial filmmaker just starting to make waves and build his influence in Hollywood; now, he is one of the most widely celebrated directors of the 20th century. At the time of its 1954 release, Rear Window emerged into a world freshly shaken by World War II. The fear of communism riddled American society and Cold War tensions were escalating between the two global superpowers, the USSR and USA. Traditional gender stereotypes and marital roles were beginning to be challenged, yet the ‘old way’ continued to prevail. The culture of the 1950s could hardly be more different to what it is today. Within the Western world, the birth of the 21st century has marked the decline of cemented expectations and since been replaced by social equality regardless of gender, sexual preference and age. So why , six decades after its original release and in a world where much of its content appears superficially outdated , do we still analyse the film Rear Window ?

Rear Window is a film primarily concerned with the events which L.B. (Jeff) Jefferies, a photographer incapacitated by an accident which broke his leg, observes from the window of his apartment. He spends his days watching the happenings of the Greenwich Village courtyard, which enables Jeff to peer into the apartments and lives of local residents. The curiosities which exist in such an intimate setting fulfil Jeff’s instinctual need to watch. The act of observing events from a secure distance is as tempting as reality television and magazines. To this day, these mediums provide entertainment tailored to popular culture. At its roots, Jeff’s role as a voyeur within Rear Window is designed to satisfy his intense boredom in a state of injury. As the film is seen through Jeff’s voyeuristic eyes, the audience become voyeurs within their own right. Until relations between Thorwald and his wife simmer into territory fraught with danger, Jeff’s actions are the harmless activities of a man searching for entertainment.

So, if Rear Window teaches us that voyeurism is a dangerous yet natural desire , does the film comment on the individuals who consent to being watched? Within Greenwich Village, Jeff’s chance to act as an observer is propelled by the indifference of those he observes. Almost without exception, his neighbours inadvertently permit Jeff’s eyes wandering into their apartments by leaving their blinds up. The private elements of others’ lives, including their domestic duties, marital relations and indecencies, are paraded before Jeff. Greenwich Village is his picture show and its residents willingly raise the stage’s curtains . This presentation of Hitchcock’s 1954 statement remains relevant today. Jeff’s neighbours’ consent to his intrusion into their lives bears striking similarities to current indifference. The prevalence of social media enables information to be gathered as soon as its users click the ‘Accept Terms & Conditions’ button. Rear Window is a commentary on social values and provokes its audience to examine habits of their own, especially in a world where sensitive information is at our fingertips. Just as Hitchcock’s 1954 characters invite perversive eyes to inspect their lives, society today is guilty of the same apathy .

The characters of Hitchcock’s thriller are a pivotal element of the film’s construction. They add layers of depth to the text and fulfil roles central to the plot’s development. One of Hitchcock’s fundamental directorial decisions was leaving multiple characters unnamed – within Greenwich Village alone, we meet Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Torso and Miss Hearing Aid. The stereotypical nature of these labels, based on superficial traits that Jeff observes from his window, exemplifies the sexism prevalent in the 1950s. Jeff’s knowledge of these women is limited to such an extent that he does not know their names, yet considers himself qualified enough to develop labels for each of them. The historical background of stereotypes is imbedded within Rear Window and shares vast similarities with the stereotypes we recognise today.

Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller Rear Window portrays a little world that represents the larger one . Its themes, primarily voyeurism, and character profiles illustrate Hitchcock’s societal messages and provide a running commentary on issues which govern America during the 1950s. In the six decades since the film’s release, the Western world has undergone significant developments both socially and culturally. L.B (Jeff) Jefferies’ perception of women and married life is inconsistent with the relations between men and women that we observe today. Regardless, the timeless views that Hitchcock’s conveys through Rear Window continue to speak volumes about our society. Jeff’s voyeurism, which comprises much of the film’s major plotline, is a channel for Hitchcock to comment about the instinctual desire for individuals to observe others. Additionally, Hitchcock delves into the flip side of this matter, presenting the theory that those he watches are just as guilty of allowing his intrusion into their private lives. Apathetic mindsets in today’s digital world are responsible for the same indifference that Hitchcock explores within his film. Let’s not forget the sexist stereotypes that Jeff develops to label certain women within Greenwich Village. Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Torso and Miss Hearing Aid are all victims of Jeff’s narrow mindset towards women, emphasised by these superficial and demeaning names. Stereotypes remain as apparent within society today as they were within the world of Rear Window and can be identified within the media’s diverse presentation of social issues. It is easy to assume that Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller, Rear Window , lacks the relevancy we expect from films. Contrary to this perception, its ingrained messages are fundamentally true to this day.

[Modified Video Transcription]

What's up everyone! So, I want to get a new segment started and it's pretty much the ‘essay questions with Lisa Tran’ segment. And basically, what this includes is every now and then I will choose a topic on one of your suggestions of whatever book, or film you’re studying, and break that down together with you on camera, on YouTube. So, if you like the idea of that, then make sure you give this video a thumbs up so that I know that this is something that you're super keen on and that you'll find helpful. 

So, I've taken liberties (since this is the first one that we've ever done) of choosing my own essay topic that I was interested in doing. It's based on The Handmaid's Tale , and if any of you have read this or watched it (it's a TV series on Hulu) I have read and watched both and it has just been sensational, so I wanted to basically break down this prompt with you. If it's something that you haven't watched, or if you haven't read it, that's not a problem at all because the skills that I will be teaching you when it comes to breaking down an essay topic will be invaluable when it comes to actually applying it to your own studies. So, let's get started. 

The Handmaid's Tale Quick Summary

Just as a really quick summary (that will probably butcher the overall meaning and the experience that you get from the book, but I don't want to really spoil it for you either), The Handmaid’s Tale is set in this future world where America, or the United States, has become a dystopian society, and women in particular are reduced to nothing more than just a child bearing species. Men are in charge and these women, who are deemed to be people who can give birth, are kept alive and kept around in these rich people's homes or people who are higher up in the hierarchy, and they basically have to have sex with the male leader of the home and just create children, and that is their purpose. If they're no longer fertile, then they'll pretty much be out-casted from society and rejected. 

As a book, it's very thought-provoking because it's set in the future. Of course, this is something that we cannot guarantee won't actually happen. It's really scary to see how a world that was progressive (because they lived in modern American society, there was a lot of free movement happening, there were same-sex relationships that were out in the open, people were taking contraceptives) regressed, and it went back to a lot of old values that we had moved on from. It really opens up a pot of questions that you can ask about where we’re going as a society, where we think we're going as a society and where we'll actually end up. 

That's just my quick two minute spiel. If you wanted to get your hands on the book then I highly recommend it - I'll pop it down in the description box below (on Youtube). 

Part 1: Brainstorm

The question here is ‘Atwood’s concerns in The Handmaid's Tale go beyond women's freedom’ Discuss.

  So, the first thing I always do is I look at the keywords; we've got ‘Atwood’s concerns’ , ‘go beyond ’ and ‘women's freedom’ . 

The reason why we look at keywords is because we want to confirm to ourselves (as the writer of this essay), that we are going to stay focused and not go off topic with the essay topic, and the keywords will ensure that not only we stay on topic, but they emphasize the ideas that we really need to focus on. So, let's break down each of the keywords individually.

‘Atwood’s concerns’ 

This means that we have to focus on the author's intention or message in writing The Handmaid's Tale . We'd be thinking about ‘what ideas does she criticize or condemn?’, or ‘what does she endorse on the other hand?’

‘go beyond’

So, ‘go beyond’ is a very straightforward way of saying that an essay that is only focused on women's freedom probably won't be holistic or well-rounded enough. We have to look beyond the obvious. 

‘women’s freedom’

The third one is ‘women's freedom’ . So, what does this mean? To live in a patriarchal society, to be constantly monitored by guards and potential eyes. 

It's very easy to slip into just speaking about handmaids. Like I mentioned before, there's a male lead in the house who is the highest up in the hierarchy. He has a wife as well. Serena Joy is a perfect example of someone who on the surface ranks as the highest in female roles, because she is the wife of the commander. So, we see things from her perspective.

Part 2: Main Arguments

From this exploration of the key words, I can come up with two main body paragraphs. The two ideas are one:

‘To live in a chilling, post-modernism dystopia, Atwood showcases the evils of the patriarchy ’

My second one is:

‘Moreover, Atwood reveals how, despite being at the top of the female hierarchy as commander’s wives, even they suffer’

Let's have a look at both of these ideas individually. 

‘To live in a chilling, post-modernism dystopia, Atwood showcases the evils of the patriarchy’

Some of my rationale behind this idea include one: Offred, who is our protagonist. Offred is actually not her real name, and because Offred is not her real name, she therefore represents any type of handmaid. She's just another one of them with a name assigned to her. Our identity is connected with our name, so her identity, which is what makes her feel human, is completely shredded from her. She has trouble remembering what she even used to look like.

The second thing is that it's dehumanizing. It doesn't matter whether Offred is intelligent, educated or even beautiful, what matters are viable ovaries and therefore, she's classified as a handmaid, and this is her last chance at being able to survive in this type of society. 

The third one is that she isn't even given the freedom to take her own life. Suicide is almost impossible, “I know why there was no glass in front of the watercolor picture of the blue irises, and why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatter-proof. It isn’t running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get that far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge”. For us as humans, we get the opportunity to do things that we want, but even to take her own life away, to save herself from the world that she's living in, is impossible. 

Onto our second idea.

The first example I have for this is how Serena Joy, the commander’s wife, actually used to have her own television show. She used to be really popular, she was a celebrity, and yet she's been reduced to basically just being the commander's wife, where she lurks around in the house. She really doesn't do that much anymore, she's just there to support her husband and that is her role. 

The second example is that she's forced to partake in a ritual where her husband has sex with a handmaid, “Which of us is it worse for, her or me?” (her meaning Offred). So, you can see that even for a commander’s wife, somebody who is in a high position in this society (she's the elite basically of what women could be), even she is suffering. 

Going back to our keyword of ‘go beyond’  

This means that in fact, we should speak about other major issues in the novel and not just about female concerns. Our first two ideas revolve around female concern, but let's see what else we could discuss. To me, another major issue revolving around freedom that's important to talk about is ‘has the Gilliad society actually influenced men and men's freedom?’ It's super easy to just target men and say that, you know, men are in power now and so it's all about the women, but there are ample examples that show that even the men are suffering. 

Of course there are heaps of other issues that are brought forward in The Handmaid's Tale , but the ideas that I’ve discussed here are the ones that personally interest me the most, meaning that I've got a lot more to say and a lot more opinion to offer in my discussion. 

At this point, I'll leave it up to you guys. If you have read or watched The Handmaid's Tale , tell me what you think or ask me any questions you have about how you would structure this essay. I'd really love to have a productive discussion with you that includes some critical thinking on your part. So, let's get it started. 

If you like this type of advice, you may like joining my mailing list . Basically I send out weekly emails to you where I answer student questions and give you more advice, tips and resources that I don't give anywhere else. 

And, if you're in need of a more detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

It's 32 degrees today for the first time in Melbourne, in like forever, so I'm going to the beach and I'm going to spoil myself right now. I'll see you guys next week. Bye!

• Symbols and Analysis
• Discussion Questions
• Sample Essay Topics
• Essay Topic Breakdown

Go Went Gone revolves around an unlikely connection between a retired university  professor , Richard, and a group of asylum seekers who come from all over the African continent . While he’s enjoyed a life of stability and privilege as a white male citizen, the lives of these asylum seekers could not be more different: no matter where they are in the world, uncertainty seems to follow. Richard initially sets out to learn their stories, but he is very quickly drawn into their histories of tragedy, as well as their dreams for the future. 

However, the more he tries to help them, the more he realises what he’s up against: a potent mix of stringent legal bureaucracy and the ignorance of his peers . These obstacles are richly interwoven with the novel’s context in post-reunification Germany (more on this under Symbols: Borders ), but bureaucracy and ignorance are everywhere - Australia included . This novel, therefore, bears reflection on our own relationship with the refugees who seek protection and opportunity on our shores - refugees who are virtually imprisoned and cut off from the world .

Richard ultimately realises that these men are simply people , people who have the same complexities and inconsistencies as anyone else. They sometimes betray his trust; at other times, they help him in return despite their socio-economic standing. The end of the novel is thus neither perfect nor whole - while the asylum seekers develop a relationship with Richard and vice versa, neither is able to entirely solve the other’s problems, though both learn how to be there for each other in their own ways. We don’t get many solutions to everything the refugees are facing, but what we end up with is a lesson or two in human empathy. 

The title of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Go Went Gone is a line she weaves into a couple of scenes. In one example, a group of asylum seekers in a repurposed nursing home learn to conjugate the verb in German. In another, a retired university professor reflects on this group, about to be relocated to another facility.

The various privileges Richard holds shape his identity in this text. It shapes how he approaches his retirement for example: now that “ he has time ”, he plans to spend it on highbrow pursuits like reading Proust and Dostoyevsky or listening to classical music. On the other hand, the asylum seekers sleep most of the time: “if you don’t sleep through half the morning, [a day] can be very long indeed.” Richard has the freedom to choose to spend his time on hobbies, but the asylum seekers face a daunting and seemingly-impossible array of tasks. After getting to know them more, he realises that while his to-do list includes menial things like “schedule repairman for dishwasher”, the refugees face daunting socio-political problems like needing to “eradicate corruption”. 

Freedom in general is a useful way to think about privilege in this text, and besides freedom to choose how you spend your time, this can also look like the freedom to tell your story. While Richard helps the men with this to some degree, even he has a limited amount of power here (and power can be another useful way of thinking about privilege). Richard realises that “people with the freedom to choose…get to decide which stories to hold on to” - and those are the people who get to decide the future of the refugees, at least from a legal perspective. 

Though Richard can’t necessarily help with these legal issues, he finds himself doing what he can for the refugees over time. He demonstrates a willingness to help them in quite substantial ways sometimes, for example buying a piece of land in Ghana for Karon and his family. In the end, we see him empathising with the refugees enough to offer them housing: though he is not a lawyer, he still finds ways to use his privilege for good and share what he can. He taps into his networks and finds housing for 147 refugees. 

The tricky thing with empathy though is that it’s never one-sided, not in this book and not in real life either. It’s not simply a case of Richard taking pity on the refugees - we might think of this as sympathy rather than empathy - but he develops complex, reciprocal and ‘real’ friendships with all of them. This can challenge him, and us, and our assumptions about what is right. When Richard loses his wallet at the store, Rufu offers to pay for him. He initially insists he “can’t accept”, but when he does Rufu doesn’t let him pay him back in full. Erpenbeck challenges us to empathise without dehumanising, condescending or assuming anything in the process. 

It’s an interesting way to think about social justice in general, particularly if you consider yourself an ‘ally’ of a marginalised group - how can we walk with people rather than speak for them and what they want?

Freedom of movement is sort of a form of privilege, but movement as a theme of its own is substantial enough to need a separate section. There are lots of different forms of movement in the novel, in particular movement between countries . In particular, it’s what brought the refugees to Germany at all, even though they didn’t necessarily have any control over that movement.

Contrast that with Richard’s friends, Jörg and Monika, who holiday in Italy and benefit from “freedom of movement [as] the right to travel”. Through this lens, we can see that this is really more of a luxury that the refugees simply do not have. Refugees experience something closer to forced displacement , rather than free travel, moving from one “temporary place” to the next often outside of their control. In this process, their lack of control often means they lose themselves in the rough-and-tumble of it all: “Becoming foreign. To yourself and others. So that’s what a transition looks like.”

3. Symbols & Analysis

Language and the law.

Many of the barriers faced by the refugees are reflected in their relationships with language; that is, their experiences learning German mirrors and sheds light on their relationship with other elements of German society. For example, there are times when they struggle to concentrate on learning: “It’s difficult to learn a language if you don’t know what it’s for”. This struggle reflects and symbolises the broader problems of uncertainty, unemployment and powerlessness in the men’s lives.

The symbol of language often intersects with the symbol of the “iron law”, so these are discussed together here. It’s hard on the one hand for these men to tell their stories in German, but it’s also hard for the German law to truly grapple with their stories. Indeed, Richard finds that the law doesn’t care if there are wars going on abroad or not: it only cares about “jurisdiction”, and about which country is technically responsible for the refugees. In this sense, the law mirrors and enables the callousness which runs through the halls of power - not to deter you from learning law if you want though! This might just be something to be aware of, and maybe something you’d want to change someday. 

There’s one law mentioned in the novel stating that asylum seekers can simply be accepted “if a country, a government or a mayor so wishes”, but that one word in particular - “ if ” - puts all the power in lawyers and politicians who know the language and the law and how to navigate it all. These symbols thus reflect power and privilege. 

Borders (+ Historical Context)

Throughout the novel, there’s a sense that borders between countries are somewhat arbitrary things. They can “suddenly become visible” and just as easily disappear; sometimes they’re easy to cross, sometimes they’re impossible to cross. Sometimes it’s easy physically, but harder in other ways - once you cross a border, you need housing, food, employment and so forth.

This complex understanding of borders draws on the history of Germany , and in particular of its capital Berlin, after World War II. After the war, Western powers (USA, UK, France) made a deal with the Soviet Union to each run half of Germany and half of Berlin. The Eastern half of Germany, and the Eastern half of Berlin, fell under Soviet control, and as East Germans started flocking to the West in search of better opportunities (sound familiar?), the Soviets built a wall around East Berlin. The Berlin Wall , built in 1961, became a border of its own, dividing a nation and a city and changing the citizenship of half of Germany overnight. Attempts to escape from the East continued for many years until the wall came down in 1989, changing all those citizenships right back, once again virtually overnight.

This history adds dimension to Erpenbeck’s novel. Refugees pass through many countries, but Erpenbeck draws on Germany’s history specifically as a once-divided nation itself. This helps to illustrate that national borders are just another arbitrary technicality that divides people, at the expense of these refugees. 

Bodies of Water

One motif that comes back a few times in the novel is the drowned man in the lake by Richard’s house. This has a few layers of meaning.

Firstly, the man drowns despite the lake being a perfectly “placid” body of water, and for whatever reason, this bothers Richard immensely: “he can’t avoid seeing the lake”. There’s an interesting contrast here to be drawn between this one death in a still body of water and the hundreds of deaths at sea that are recounted in the novel. Rashid’s stories are particularly confronting: “Under the water I saw all the corpses”. Erpenbeck questions the limits of human empathy - whose deaths are we more affected by, and why - through contrasting these different bodies of water, and those who die within them. Richard is more affected than most, who visit the lake all summer leaving “just as happy as they came” - but even he has his limits with how much he can see and understand. 

The next layer of meaning with this symbol then is more around the surface of the water itself: it is significant that in Rashid’s story, the casualties are below the surface. This reflects the common saying, “the tip of the iceberg” - the survivors who make it to Europe are really just the tip of the iceberg , only representing a fraction of the refugee experience. Often, that experience ends in death. Erpenbeck asks us to keep looking beneath the surface in order to empathise in full. 

Music and the Piano

This symbol is specific to Richard’s relationship with Osarobo , to whom he teaches the piano. There’s one scene where this symbolism is particularly powerful, where they watch videos of pianists “us[ing] the black and white keys to tell stories that have nothing at all to do with the keys’ colours.”

It speaks to the power of music to bring people together, and also to the importance of storytelling in any form: Rosa Canales argues the keys’ colours, and the colour of the fingers playing them, “become irrelevant to the stories emanating from beneath them”.

• “What languages can you speak?”
• “The German language is my bridge into this country” 
• “Empty phrases signify politeness in a language which neither of them is at home” 
• “The things you’ve experienced become baggage you can’t get rid of, while others - people with the freedom to choose - get to decide which stories to hold on to”
• “He hears Apollo’s voice saying: They give us money, but what I really want is work. He hears Tristan’s voice saying: Poco lavoro . He hears the voice of Osaboro, the piano player, saying: Yes, I want to work but it is not allowed. The refugees’ protest has created half-time jobs for at least twelve Germans thus far” 
• “Not so long ago, Richard thinks, this story of going abroad to find one's fortune was a German one”
• “Is it a rift between Black and White? Or Poor and Rich?” 
• “Where can a person go when he doesn't know where to go?” 

5. Discussion Questions

Here are some questions to think about before diving into essay-writing. There’s no right or wrong answer to any of these, and most will draw on your own experiences or reflections anyway. You may want to write some answers down, and brainstorm links between your responses and the novel. These reflections could be particularly useful if you’re writing a creative response to the text, but they’re also a really good way to get some personal perspective and apply the themes and lessons of this novel into your own life.

• Where do you ‘sit’ in the world? What privileges do you have or lack? What can you do that others cannot, and what can others do that you cannot?
• Think about the times you’ve travelled around the world - how many of those times were by choice? What might be the impact of moving across the world against your will?
• How do you show empathy to others? How do you receive empathy from others? What is that relationship ‘supposed’ to look like?
• What are some different names for where you live? How can you describe the same place in different languages or words? If you’re in Australia, what was your area called before 1788?
• Have you ever learned or spoken a language other than English? What language do you find easier to write, speak and think with? How might this impact someone’s ability to participate in different parts of life (school, work, friendships etc.)?
• Go Went Gone teaches us that anyone can be empathetic. Discuss. 
• In Go Went Gone , Erpenbeck argues that storytelling can be powerful but only to an extent. Do you agree?
• How does Erpenbeck explore the different ways people see time? 
• It’s possible to sympathise with Richard despite his relative privilege. Do you agree?
• Discuss the symbolic use of borders in Go Went Gone .
• Go Went Gone argues that the law is impartial. To what extent do you agree?
• “The German language is my bridge into this country.” How is language a privilege in Go Went Gone ?
• Who are the protagonists and antagonists of Go Went Gone ?
• Go Went Gone shows that it is impossible to truly understand another person’s experiences. To what extent do you agree?

In what ways do the people Richard meets challenge his assumptions about the world?

• Go Went Gone is less about borders between countries than it is about borders between people. Do you agree?

This prompt alludes to certain assumptions that Richard might make about the world. If it’s hard to think of these off the top of your head, consider where our assumptions about the world come from: maybe from our jobs, our families and friends or our past experiences. Maybe there are some assumptions you’ve had in the past that you’ve since noticed or challenged. 

Then it asks us how the people Richard meets challenges those assumptions. There’s no way to get out of this question without discussing the refugees, so this will inform our brainstorm.

I think some of Richard’s assumptions at the beginning come from his status: being a professor emeritus makes you pretty elite, and he can’t really empathise with the refugees because his experiences of life are so different. Part of the challenge with this prompt might be to break down what life experiences entail, and where those differences lie: particularly because it’s asking us ‘in what ways’. These experiences could be with language, employment, or personal relationships just to name a few ideas. 

Because Richard’s life experiences are so vastly different, I’d contend that his assumptions are challenged in basically every way. However, I also think that his interest in the refugees exists because he knows they can challenge his assumptions. I want to use the motif of water surfaces to tie this argument together, particularly in the topic sentences, and this could look as follows:

Paragraph 1 : Richard realises that he only has a ‘surface-level’ appreciation of the refugees’ life experiences.

• He realises that he knows little about the African continent (“Nigeria has a coast?”) 
• He suffers from a “poverty of experience” which means he hasn’t had to interact with this knowledge before
• His renaming of the refugees (Apollo, Tristan etc.) suggests that he still needs his own frame of reference to understand their experiences
• He learns about the hardships of migration through the tragic stories of those like Rashid

Paragraph 2 : He also realises that he has a ‘surface-level’ understanding of migration in general.

• This comes from the fact that he has never actually moved countries; he’s only been reclassified as an East German, and then again as a German. Neither happened because he wanted them to.
• On the other hand, the refugees want to settle in Europe: they want the right to work and make a living - it’s just that the “iron law” acts as a major barrier. Their powerlessness is different from Richard’s.
• Part of migration is also learning the language, and Richard is initially quite ignorant about this: he observes that the Ethiopian German teacher “for whatever reason speaks excellent German”, not realising this is necessary for any migrant to survive in the new country.
• We can think of this as the difference between migration and diaspora, the specific term for the dispersion of a people.

Paragraph 3 : Richard is more open than most people to looking beneath the surface though, meaning that his assumptions are challenged partly because he is willing for them to be.

• The symbol of the lake works well here to explain this: he is bothered by its still surface, and what lies underneath, while others aren’t
• We can also contrast this to characters like Monika and Jörg who remain quite ignorant the whole time: Richard’s views have departed from this throughout the course of the novel
• Ultimately, the novel is about visibility: Richard’s incorrect assumptions mean that he isn’t seeing reality, and his “research project” is all about making that reality visible. 

‍ Go Went Gone is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Wondering what VCAA examiners might be looking for in a high-scoring essay? Each year, the VCE EAL Examination Reports shed light on some of the features that examiners are looking for in  high-scoring responses for the Listening and Language Analysis sections of the EAL exams. Let's go through 5 key points from the reports so that you know how to achieve a 10/10 yourself.

For advice on how you can apply the VCE EAL Examination Reports to strengthen your skills in the listening section, see Tips on EAL Listening .

Tip #1 Analyse How the Overall Argument Was Structured 

Let’s take the 2017 VCAA EAL Examination Report as an example: 

‘The highest-scoring responses analysed argument use and language in an integrated way. Some responses used a comparative approach that analysed arguments and counter arguments from both texts in the same paragraph. However, only comparatively few responses focused on how the overall argument was structured .’

So how do we write about/analyse ‘how the overall argument was structured’? 

To save time during the exam, we can adopt templates that can help us transfer our thoughts into words in a fast and efficient way.  You can construct your own templates, and you may want to have various templates for various scenarios or essays. Below, I have provided a sample template and I’ll show you how you can use this template in your own essays.

Sample Template

(AUTHOR)’s manner of argument is proposed in real earnest in an attempt to convince the readers of the validity of his/her proposal of...by first…and then supplying solutions to...(DIFFICULTIES), thus structuring it in a logical and systematic way.

The above template ONLY applies to opinion pieces that satisfy these 2 rules:

• The opinion piece commences by presenting the ‘bad effect/consequence/situation’ of the topic 
• The opinion piece supplies the solution to resolve the ‘bad effect/consequence/situation’ of the topic 

For example, say the author, John White, contends that plastic bags should be banned and does so by:

• commencing the piece with the fact that plastic bags can travel long distances by wind and water. They litter our landscapes, float around in waterways, and can eventually end up in the oceans, ultimately polluting the ocean and posing a threat to marine animals
• then supplies solution to ban plastic bags 

When we use our template here, the intro may look like this - note that I’ve bolded the ‘template’ parts so you can clearly see how the template has been used:

John White’s manner of argument, proposed in real earnest in an effect to convince the readers of the validity of his proposal of banning plastic bags by first exposing the deleterious nature of these bags to our environment and natural habitat and then supplying solutions to ban plastic bags, putting it in effect in a logical and systematic way.

Head to Introductions for EAL Language Analysis for more templates and guidance on how to nail your Language Analysis Introduction. 

Tip #2 Keep the Listening Answer Succinct 

The 2019 VCAA EAL Examination Report states: 

‘Students are encouraged to use the key words in the questions as a focus for their listening...Short-answer questions require concise and precise answers. Responses that demonstrated understanding provided what was asked for without including extraneous information .’

Some students tend to add unnecessary information in their answers. Although the answers are correct, they will NOT earn you any extra marks. Listening answers should NOT be a mini essay. Writing irrelevant information will not only waste time but may also compromise the accuracy and overall expression of your response. 

Tip #3 Practice Makes Perfect

The examination reports frequently point out that students struggle with identifying and describing the tone and delivery. For example, the 2017 VCAA EAL Examination Report states:

‘Identifying tone and delivery is challenging for students and emphasis on this is needed...Students are encouraged to use the key words in the questions as a focus for their listening’. 

The good news is, just like most skills, listening and identifying the tone can both be improved with practice. In fact, VCAA acknowledges the importance of daily practice as well. 

‘Students need to develop their critical listening skills both in and outside of the classroom. They are encouraged to listen, in English, to anything that interests them – current affairs, news, documentaries and podcasts can all be useful.’ (2017 VCAA EAL Examination Report)

Practicing listening does not necessarily mean sitting down and doing Section A questions; it can be as simple as talking with classmates, teachers, neighbours, friends from work, church, etc. 

Take a look at our EAL Listening Practice and Resources for a comprehensive list of external resources for practicing listening and a step-by-step guide on how to use them!

Tip #4 How To Formulate a Cohesive Response?

VCAA encourages us to write answers that make sense to the reader and are grammatically correct. Make sure you do address, and ONLY address, what the question is asking, because marks will not be rewarded for redundant information. 

‘Short answer questions require concise and precise answers. Responses that demonstrated understanding provided what was asked for without including extraneous information . Expression skills need to be sufficiently controlled to convey meaning accurately. ’ ( 2017-2019 VCAA EAL Examination Report )

HINT: This may sound super simple, but a lot of EAL students struggle with it. If you do, you are definitely not alone. Some students seek to use complicated words and/or sentence structures, but we should not compromise clarity over complexity.  

Tip #5 Use a Range of Precise Vocabulary 

VCAA acknowledges the importance of sophisticated vocabulary. This phrase ‘a nalysis expressed with a range of precise vocabulary’ has been repeatedly used to describe high-scoring essays in the examination reports from 2017 onwards

Below is a list of commonly misspelled, misused and mispronounced words. If you don’t know the meaning of a word, check out Collins Online Dictionary for definitions OR you can use a physical copy of the Collins Dictionary (which you are allowed to bring into the exam and SACs).

Words That Look the Same/Have Super Similar Spelling:

• Abroad vs. Aboard
• Adapt vs. Adopt vs. Adept
• Affect vs. Effect
• Altar vs. Alter
• Angel vs. Angle
• Assent vs. Ascent vs. Accent
• Aural vs. Oral
• Baron vs. Barren
• Beam vs. Bean
• Champion vs. Champagne vs. Campaign
• Chef vs. Chief
• Chore vs. Chord
• Cite vs. Site
• Compliment vs. Complement
• Confirm vs. Conform
• Contact vs. Contrast vs. Contract
• Contend vs. Content
• Context vs. Content
• Costume vs. Custom
• Counsel vs. Council vs. Consul
• Crow vs. Cow vs. Crown vs. Clown
• Dairy vs. Diary
• Decent vs. Descent vs. Descend
• Dessert vs. Desert
• Dose vs. Doze
• Drawn vs. Draw vs. Drown
• Extensive vs. Intensive
• Implicit vs. Explicit
• In accord with vs. In accordance with
• Later vs. Latter
• Pray vs. Prey
• Precede vs. Proceed
• Principal vs. Principle
• Sweet vs. Sweat
• Quite vs. Quiet

For an overview of the EAL study design plus tips and tricks for reading comprehension, time management and more, check out The Ultimate Guide to EAL .

Metalanguage is language that describes language. In films, we also need to consider cinematography – the technical side in the making of the film. For a detailed discussion, see  What is metalanguage?  

The prospect of writing a Text Response or Comparative essay on a film can be daunting—it’s difficult to know how to identify filmic devices let alone analyse why the director has used them to give meaning to particular scenes. To start us off, below are some filmic devices commonly used by directors that all students should be aware of when studying films.

Filmic devices

Camera shots.

This refers to the amount of space that is seen in one frame, which can be used to emphasise different aspects of the film’s setting or characters.

Example: An extreme close up of a character’s face to portray their emotions.

Camera angles

The way in which the audience is positioned to view the setting or character/s. This can enhance the audience’s understanding of the relationship between characters, or the way in which a character is feeling in a particular situation.

Example: a low camera angle can be used to demonstrate how a character is feeling empowered at a particular point in the film.

Any sound where the source of it can be seen in the scene (or is implied to be present) 

Example: Voices, are diegetic. Any sound that comes from outside the scene itself, for example, soundtrack, is non-diegetic. We can analyse the way in which sound enhances the mood of the film.

In the Made in Dagenham clip above, diegetic sound such as the pouring rain, spoons tapping on cups, radio in the background are all used to offer viewers a 'real' sense that we're in the cafe too.

The way in which the scene is lit can create interesting effects in what it suggest about the characters in the scene.

Example: if the main source of light comes from the side of the screen, lighting up one side of a character’s face, this can create a sense of mystery.

How a character is dressed in any given scene is very important; their clothes can say a lot about their present state of mind or their physical situation.

In-depth analysis using Mabo

Even once we know all this, it can still be difficult to use these devices as evidence to support our ideas in a text response essay. So let’s put our knowledge into practice and take a look at a few scenes from the film Mabo, directed by Rachel Perkins.

Opening scene:  Perkins uses a series of  long shots  of Murray Island in the opening scenes of the film, with  high camera angles . This is done to contextualise the setting, as well as foreshadow the great significance the land will have on the events of the film. The subsequent  low camera angle shots  of the trees on the island present them as being tall and majestic. Paired with the upbeat, vibrant native  music  (non-diegetic sound) that is playing, it is evident that Perkins is celebrating the beauty of the land and emphasising its importance, not just in the film, but in the islanders’ lives.

Benny Mabo and a young Eddie walking the beach: a  mid-shot  is initially used in this scene to show father and son walking in the water. This alludes to the strength of the connection that the Mabos have to the island in depicting them as being immersed in water. The subsequent  close ups  of their faces, conveying their contentment, with the waves of the ocean in the background, indicate that this connection to the land goes beyond the mere fact that they live there; the pair are shown to have a profound spiritual and emotional connection with the island. This is emphasised by the soft, peaceful  music  that plays alongside Benny’s recital of Malo’s law.  

Killoran exiles Eddie off Murray Island: side  lighting  is used in this scene to shadow some of Killoran’s face. This has a sinister effect. It suggests that his intentions toward Eddie are not honest, and further symbolises the corruption and lack of transparency in the Australian government in their dealings with the Indigenous. The cloud of cigarette smoke that surrounds him further highlights he toxicity of his presence on Murray Island, as does the solemn, foreboding  music  that plays throughout his conversation with Eddie. The  close up shots  of Eddie’s face convey the strength of his resolve in refusing to “[work] as a slave” for Killoran in penance for his crime.

Eddie on the railway tracks: this scene is all about Eddie’s internal conflict; his desire to return to his homeland, and the allure of the opportunities that the ‘mainland’ offers him (in particular, Bonita). The  high camera angle  is used to show him dancing across the railway tracks, which is heavy with symbolism, representing the choice between his old and new life. The  close ups  of his face as he sings his native  song  convey his emotional attachment to Murray Island and the depth of his despair at

not being able to return to it. His  costume  is comprised of old, dirty clothing, which is representative of his confused, weary and sorrowful state of mind. Yet the use of  backlighting  as he dances suggests that his decision to embrace his new life on the mainland will empower him. It further foreshadows the significance of this choice in enabling him to pursue the land rights case.

The Indigenous protest: Perkins deliberately uses  archival/stock footage  in this scene to enhance the viewer’s experience of the Indigenous’ protest at the Mayday march. By using real life footage from this actual historical event, Perkins adds authenticity to this scene, in order to effectively convey the importance of Eddie’s decision to participate. The  high angle shots , and  long shots , are used to show the sheer number of people who were fighting for change. The  music  quickens in pace to indicate a change, a turning point in Eddie’s life, in which he can no longer overlook the racism that his people have suffered. The  close ups  of his and his wife’s face during this scene express their passion and determination in supporting this cause, as well as their strong love for each other.

List of film techniques

These are just a few examples of the way in which you can use the techniques discussed to make your ideas more credible in text response essays. Some teachers may say that these filmic devices are a secondary source of evidence, but I believe they are equally as important as quotes in demonstrating a thorough understanding of the text—as long as you analyse why the director has chosen to include them.

Remember: the director only has a certain amount of time to tell the story, so every scene is important, and every technique is deliberate. That being said, don’t use these devices at the expense of quotations! 

This study guide is written by Gabrielle O'Hagen (Mabo examples), and Lisa Tran.

Sunset Boulevard is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Introduction

Sunset Boulevard is perhaps the most famous film about film . A darkly funny yet disturbing noir, it follows washed-up screenwriter Joe Gillis being pulled into the murky world of even-more-washed-up former silent film star Norma Desmond, disingenuously helping with her screenplay. Critical commentary on the film industry is obviously included here, but Billy Wilder’s 1950 film digs deeper to explore the blurred line between fantasy and reality, as well as power, authenticity and self-delusion. Crucially, these themes are often shown in the film’s construction , via the cinematic techniques implemented by Wilder in each scene. This blog will explore the most important examples of these cinematic techniques. Remember, VCE examiners are on the lookout for students who can offer a close reading of the text they are discussing, giving specific examples of how its creator has constructed it to support their arguments. Just look at the difference between an essay that says:

' Through the final shot of the film, Wilder shows Norma completely succumbing to her fantasy.’ 

Compared to one that argues:

‍ ‘Through his utilisation of an increasingly glossy and distorted filter in the ominous final shot, Wilder depicts Norma being completely overtaken by her romanticised fantasy of ‘Old Hollywood’.

So read below to learn how to use the most effective and crucial cinematic techniques within Sunset Boulevard.  ‍

Camera Techniques: Shot Types & Angles

Camera techniques are arguably the primary way that a director will intentionally direct the eye of the audience, directly framing how they view a film. The two most basic ways in which the camera is used for this are through the distance between the subject (what the scene is about) and the camera, or the ‘shot type’ and the ‘camera angle’ at which the subject is being filmed. Four key examples of these from Sunset Boulevard are explored below. 

Key Examples of Shot Types

Our first look at Norma Desmond is within the wide shot above, just as Joe Gillis has entered her dishevelled mansion early in the film. As a rule, the introductory shot of a character is always worth closely analysing, as the director typically establishes their characteristics and place within the film’s wider world. 

Shown above, this distant first look at Norma establishes her distance, both physical and mental, from the world around her. Removing herself from an industry that has long since moved on from her, she is severely out of touch with the reality of the world outside her home. Crucially, as this same shot is from Joe’s perspective, Wilder also foreshadows the more specific character ‘distance’ that will emerge between the two. Here, the audience sees the space Joe will similarly leave between himself and Norma, disingenuously humouring her poor-quality scripts and romantic advances and, therefore, always keeping her ‘at a distance’.

Another shot conveying crucial information about character relationships is shown when Joe officially ‘loses’ Betty towards the end of the film, refusing to give up his ‘long-term contract’ with Norma. Here, Wilder consciously frames the scene’s subject (Betty) at a distance with a medium shot. Supported by her refusal to make eye contact with Joe and her literal statement that she ‘can't look at [him]’ we again see physical distance between the camera and the subject translating to emotional distance between two characters. The impact of them no longer ‘seeing eye to eye’ is additionally heightened by the clear chemistry they previously demonstrated across the film. 

Key Examples of Camera Angles

Just like the introductory shot of a character is worth digging into, the opening shot of a film is also incredibly important to unpack. Sunset Boulevard’ s seemingly straightforward opening shot simply includes the film’s title, by showing the real-life Hollywood street. However, notice that we are not seeing a ‘Sunset Boulevard’ street sign (the more obvious choice), but instead a dirty and stained curbside. Further, Wilder shoots this curb from a high angle . Therefore, the film’s opening shot establishes maybe the most central aim of Wilder’s film; offering a critical look at the superficiality and flawed nature of Hollywood. As such, we are literally looking down on the film industry in the first moment of the film, represented by this dirty and unflattering visual symbol of Hollywood. This, therefore, is setting the stage for the satire and critical commentary that will follow. 

Wilder’s careful use of camera angles is further shown at the end of the film after Betty abandons Joe at the gate of Norma’s mansion. Crucially, this all happened due to the desperate exertion of power by Norma, who called Betty and revealed the details of her relationship with Joe. As such, Wilder shoots Norma at a low angle, as Joe looks up at her haughty gaze. The level of power that Norma has exerted over Joe may seem minimal within the moment, but when we consider what happens next, this shot becomes much more important. On the brink of descending completely into madness and taking Joe’s life, Wilder uses this shot to establish that Joe should be looking up in fear at Norma, and his dismissive and pitiful opinion of her will soon lead to his death.  

Mise-en-scène

Mise-en-scène is perhaps the most deceptively simple cinematic technique. It involves analysing what appears within a frame and where it has been placed by the director. This includes elements such as the actor’s costumes, the props and the design of the set. Often, mise-en-scène is used to reinforce something we are being told about a character already through the film’s dialogue and acting.  

Key Example of Mise-en-scène 1

We can see a key example of characterisation through mise-en-scène early in the film, where the audience’s introduction to Joe Gillis visually communicates his unconcerned and detached attitude, as well as his tendency to settle for something convenient despite its inauthenticity. His being dressed in a bathrobe with the blazing sun outside (and his debt collectors clearly up and doing their jobs) speaks to his slovenliness and uninvested approach to life. The set design within this scene further characterises Joe, with the script directly describing the ‘reproductions of characterless paintings’ that cover his walls. Here, the set arguably provides a visual metaphor for the profit-driven ‘Bases Loaded’ script he is writing at that very moment, later described by Betty as having come ‘from hunger.’ 

Key Example of Mise-en-scène 2

Equally, our introduction to the home of Norma Desmond helps establish the key elements of her character. The house is, as Joe describes, ‘crowded with Norma Desmonds’, in the form of countless framed photos of her from her silent film era. These self-portraits constantly looking out onto Norma symbolise the deluded fantasy world she has placed herself in. They both show how this world is based around her still being a youthful and famous actress, and that this delusion is maintained through Norma only communicating inwardly, refusing to face the reality of the outside world.

As ‘symbolises’ is a verb that is very commonly misused, it’s necessary here to provide a very simplified definition:

A symbol is something that contains levels of meaning not present at first glance or literal translation.  

In film, the most obvious symbols are often physical objects that reappear within the story, working to symbolise concepts that develop the text’s key themes. 

The Dead Chimp & The Organ

One of the more seemingly inexplicable parts of Wilder's film actually contains one of its most important symbols, with Norma’s pet monkey playing a key foreshadowing role from beyond the grave. The chimp, a pet owned and trained by Norma to amuse her, leaves a vacant role that Joe will gradually fill after having unknowingly interrupted its funeral. From this point in the film, Joe is manipulated, or ‘trained’, by Norma to entertain and provide companionship to her. Naturally, Joe also ends up dead within the bounds of Norma’s estate, with this symbol, therefore, foreshadowing the full trajectory of his character. All of this is directly alluded to through Joe’s description of the ‘mixed-up dream’ he has the night of the funeral, imagining ‘an organ [player]’ and the ‘chimp…dancing for pennies’ that he will soon become. 

This naturally brings us to the organ itself, which serves as a physical reminder of the unflattering parts of the new role Joe must play. Included after Joe wakes from his ‘mixed-up dream’, the shot above frames Max’s organ-playing hands as massive and overpowering, as the much-smaller Joe storms in demanding to know why his ‘clothes and things’ were moved to Norma’s house without his say-so. Crucially, Norma then reveals that she ordered this action and that Joe's apartment debts are ‘all taken care of’, hand-waving his attempt at grasping back some control and dignity by proposing it be ‘deduct[ed]...from [his] salary’. This scene reveals the symbolic role the organ plays within Sunset Boulevard, reminding Joe of the shameful and powerless role of the ‘pet monkey’ that he now fills, as well as what he will be ‘dancing’ for. 

Finally, we come to allusions, one of the techniques that Sunset Boulevard is most famous for. Allusions refer to anytime something from outside the world of the text is referenced, including other texts and real-world people, places, events, etc. Biblical and mythological allusions are commonly found in fiction, but references to something closer to our world can often bring a degree of realism to certain texts, working to strengthen their social commentary. 

Cinematic Allusions

Being a film about film, Sunset Boulevard naturally contains many allusions to other films. However, Wilder does not shy away from adding an extra level of realism to his references to the film industry. Central to this is the use of the real (and still functional) Paramount Pictures studio to which Joe attempts to sell his clichéd baseball script. Notably, this is the studio that actually released Sunset Boulevard , all of which adds a self-deprecating edge to the satire of the film industry these scenes contain. The scene where the cigar-chomping Paramount executive, Mr Sheldrake, cynically suggests that changing Joe’s film concept to a ‘girls' softball team’ might ‘put in a few numbers’, packs an extra punch due to the use of the real film studio, therefore, showing the effect of this allusion in strengthening the film’s satire. 

Allusions to specific films are additionally used for humorous purposes and character development. For instance, take Joe’s dry observation that the extravagance of the funeral for Norma’s pet means that he ‘must have been a very important chimp’, perhaps the ‘great-grandson of King Kong’. Here, Joe’s sardonic and witty character is revealed to the audience. Additionally, these kinds of references further place the film firmly in the world of real Hollywood , again working to strengthen the satire it offers of this industry. 

Literary Allusions

Similarly, allusions to the world of literature flesh out both the characters and the world of Sunset Boulevard . The most stand-out example of this is the allusion to Charles Dickens’ classic novel Great Expectations . Here, Joe muses that the ‘unhappy look’ of Norma’s house reminds him of ‘Miss Havisham’ from this text. This is a character, who, after being abandoned by her fiance, refuses to change her clothing and lives secluded in a ‘rotting wedding dress’. Havisham directly parallels Norma, being a tragic figure immovably stuck in the past, with Norma's excessive placement of young self-portraits being reminiscent of Havishman’s insistence on keeping her house’s clocks at the exact time she received her letter of marital rejection. Therefore, this comparison to the Dickens character, who engages in a more exaggerated version of Norma’s behaviour, seeks to highlight just how detached Norma is from reality through her attempts to live in the past, implying that what she is doing is just as deluded as refusing to remove a rotting wedding dress. Further, the eventual fate of Miss Havisham within Great Expectations, with her wedding dress catching fire and leaving her as an invalid, foreshadows Norma’s similar descent to invalidity through her madness.

Written by Milo Burgner

Whenever you write anything, whether it be a creative piece, a text essay or a literature discussion, keep these four words in mind:

Simple language, complex ideas.

It seems a basic concept, and at the heart of it, it is! But these four words hold the key to unlocking your English potential. 

To write at your own personal best, you need to utilise the language that you are familiar with. This way, you won’t confuse yourself, and as an extension, the marker too!

Writing clearly and precisely is a skill that all academics can improve on, so how do we outdo ourselves? It’s really quite simple. 

Whenever you write, choose words familiar to you. Searching for longer and more complex words can be dangerous. Rather for the simple word, the word that can be universally understood. When you truly understand the language you use, you then have the power to explore your arguments with far more efficiency.

Of course, with progression of writing comes an increase of sophistication, but do not let this be your goal. Rather, aim to allow your vocabulary to increase organically, looking up definitions when and where you need to. Expression is a facet of writing that every person can improve on, so why overcomplicate your task?

Next time you write anything, consciously focus upon how you express your argument, point of view or analysis. Often, you will find, the simplest word can be the most effective!

So, what about the complex part? This too will grow organically. Find a concept, idea or theme that you understand, and simplify it through the best language you can think of. This way, you ensure that nothing becomes lost in translation, and you demonstrate clearly to the marker that you understand the core of your topic. Next, find another idea, this time of a greater complexity. Break it down and put it into your own words. Over time, you will not only build a concise and accurate writing style, but you will also learn your arguments intimately. You can never go wrong!

Passage 1: Act 1 Scene 3

   [Aside] Two truths are told,

   As happy prologues to the swelling act

   Of the imperial theme.--I thank you, gentlemen.

[Aside] This supernatural soliciting

   Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,

   Why hath it given me earnest of success,

   Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:

   If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

   Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

   And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

   Against the use of nature? Present fears

   Are less than horrible imaginings:

   My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,  

   Shakes so my single state of man that function

   Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is

   But what is not.

Passage One from Act 1 Scene 3 takes place just after Macbeth has just been announced as Thane of Cawdor proving part of the Witches’ prophecy true “All hail Macbeth…Thane of Cawdor…/that shalt be king hereafter.” This part of the play is the first insight we have on Macbeth’s inner thoughts.  

Macbeth’s firm and thoughtful tone in the opening alliteration “two truths are told ” stresses how serious he takes the Witches’ predictions. Shakespeare presents this passage as a soliloquy in order to convey Macbeth’s true inner thoughts and motives. As this is Macbeth’s first soliloquy, it emphasises the strong possibility of Macbeth heading down a dark journey as he cannot forget the Witches’ predictions “(it) cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, / Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth?”

Shakespeare uses the metaphor of theatre for fate . The meta-theatrical reference, ‘as happy prologues to the swelling act’ makes the audience consider the action that will unfold in the following scenes through foreshadowing.

Macbeth feels that committing regicide will be a “supernatural soliciting”. The word “supernatural” demonstrates that Macbeth acknowledges that such an act is “against the use of nature.” It suggests that if Macbeth kills Duncan, he will forever be trapped in the supernatural world for his dishonourable action. The alliteration of “supernatural soliciting” sounds incredibly seductive, and therefore highlights Macbeth’s lust and thirst for the crown.

There is a physiological response to his unnerving thoughts as the ‘horrid image doth unfix my hair’ and ‘my seated heart knock at my ribs’ , emphasising the horror of Macbeth has with himself  at his thoughts.

The personification “my seated heart knock at my ribs” once again depicts the increasing fear that Macbeth experiences as his heart is not “seated” with its connotations of calmness and steadiness but “knock(ing)” which is associated with alarming fear.

As Macbeth struggles with his conscience and fears “my thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,/ Shakes so my single state of man,”  he is uncertain whether or not he should take the prophecy into his own hands and murder Duncan or, let time decide his fate “time and the hour runs through the roughest day”. The consonance ’s’, Shakes so my single state of man”.. ‍

The alliteration “smothered in surmise” demonstrates how Macbeth’s vivid imagination causes him to struggle with fear and hesitate undergoing the action that is foreseen by him as a “horrid image.” These mental images are of significance throughout the play as it is evident that Macbeth’ conscience results in him “seeing” a dagger and also Banquo’s ghost.

The antithesis “and nothing is,/ But what is not” is deliberately broken up into two lines to demonstrate the ambiguity of Macbeth’s thoughts and the confusion which evidently contributes to his overall fear. Macbeth’s actions become overpowered by his imagination until ‘nothing is but what is not’ or imagination carries more weight than action. The partial alliteration of ‘smother’d in surmise’ and the antithesis of ‘nothing is but what is not’ makes this notion seem again, particularly seductive to the audience. The word ‘smother’d’ , with it’s connotations of oppression, further amplifies the notion and even suggests that Macbeth’s imagination takes the place of his will.

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recruitment case study examples

Skills-based success: 10 recruiting case studies.

The working world has been turned on its head with the pandemic, the Great Reshuffle, and the resulting skills shortage. Companies are searching for a powerful, sustainable way to recruit and retain talent, and 73% of them are now opting for skills-based hiring practices.

Skills-based recruitment practices are for everyone. Don’t believe us? We've put together 10 recruiting case studies that demonstrate how different individuals, industries, and regions have successfully implemented skills-based hiring.

Table of contents

What's the purpose of a recruiting case study, 3 personal recruiting case studies, 3 recruiting case studies by industry, 4 recruiting case studies by region, looking for more recruiting case studies, the state of skills-based hiring 2023.

Read TestGorilla's annual report to discover why over 70% of companies chose to adopt skills-based hiring methods in 2023.

In recruitment, case studies are helpful tools for employers seeking to build, develop, or optimize their recruitment processes. They can be great sources of information and inspiration. By understanding the successes and failures others have had with their hiring processes, hiring managers can take any relevant learnings without having to make the same mistakes that others have.

To make these recruiting case studies relevant for as many people as possible, we've divided them into personal case studies, case studies by industry, and case studies by region. Let's dive in.

Let’s first look at the personal stories of some stellar individuals who were recruited into their ideal industries using skills-based practices. These people didn’t have traditional backgrounds, but because of their unique skills, they got into amazing roles. All that was needed was a chance to prove those skills during recruitment.

1. Justin Hutchinson

Justin Hutchinson wanted a future in football, but he was faced with a hard choice at age 14: Focus on his career prospects or take care of his father with cancer.

Justin, of course, chose his father and has never regretted that choice, but it did mean giving up the chance of achieving his dream job.

After his father’s passing, Justin attended a community college to fulfill his father’s wish for him to get a degree. To pay rent and living expenses, Justin got a job at a smoothie franchise.

His aim was to simply support his cost of living by making fast food – but it turns out Justin’s real skill was people and communication.

Justin would study the cars that drove up, memorize their orders, and have them ready so he could spend time talking and getting to know the customers instead of making drinks.

One of Justin’s customers was a chief executive of a marketing company and was so impressed with his people skills, he offered Justin an internship.

It wasn’t long before Justin used his soft skills to turn that internship into a full-time position. He dropped out of college, poured his heart and soul into the role, and attained the role of Director of Business Development.

Justin attributes his success to his best skills:

Workplace empathy

Strategic and critical thinking

Sales management

Justin didn’t have a typical marketing background – his experience was a partial college education with no degree, on-the-job experience (and not a traditionally “relevant” job), and his internship.

Not everyone can find the perfect marketer in a charismatic smoothie server, but online skills testing holds the same principles: Look at abilities first and ask questions later.

Sales and marketing are industries that are uniquely dependent on soft skills, which makes skills-based hiring an obvious choice for recruiting. For information on how it helps with the tricky subject of ramp time, read our article on skills-based hiring and ramp time.

2. Latisha Carter

Latisha Carter had a dream of excelling in corporate America, but she never got the opportunity to attend college.

At age 17, Latisha became a single mother. This put her dreams of college on hiatus for the foreseeable future.

Three years later, after having another child, Latisha got a job as a nursing assistant. But she still couldn’t shake her desire to make it in the corporate world.

She secured a call center job with NCR, a software company, driven by their offer of extensive employee training. 

Offering extensive upskilling and reskilling is one of the best things you can put on the table for potential candidates. A study by Lorman showed that 59% of Millennials believe that development opportunities are extremely important when deciding whether to apply for a position.

Latisha used her experience at NCR to get a role in customer service at the software company Sage.

With determination and hard work, she continued to work her way up for 20 years until she became a director at Xero, an accounting technology company.

Latisha is now proudly a director in corporate America with no college degree. Her company is reaping the benefits of her presence and skills. 

In the second half of 2021, Xero’s approach to skills-based hiring and its emphasis on diversity pushed a 7% increase in racial and ethnic diversity.

Jana Galbraith, the executive general manager for people experience partnering for Xero, says: “ [H]istorically, hiring based on degree exclusively has perpetuated discrimination .”

This boost is great news for Xero because the benefits of diversity are broad and include increased productivity, innovation, and financial performance.

Latisha’s struggle to succeed is unfortunately common for working mothers. To learn more about this, read our article on the motherhood penalty .

3. Cindy Veach

Cindy Veach didn’t have a traditional background. She had all the tech know-how, but she only had experience involving massage therapy and social services.

But she had the skills and she knew it. Cindy says it was a happenstance that she stumbled upon her perfect role; she just wanted a role where she could use her best talents.

“I was looking for jobs I had the right skills for, organizational skills in particular,” said Cindy.

She happened upon a tech administration apprenticeship program at IBM. Before then, she saw her tech skills as just a hobby and never imagined herself in the tech industry – but she applied and was accepted.

Cindy had a steep learning curve ahead of her. She possessed the base tech skills but needed the training to reach the right level.

She attributes much of her success to the flexibility of her mentors. They continually told her that if a path “didn’t feel right,” she was welcome to experiment and try something new.

At the end of the apprenticeship, she applied for a network operations technician role and was hired. She took a position with flexible work options so she could still care for her two children comfortably. 

Skills-based hiring made this outcome possible. Cindy’s communication skills, digital expertise, and problem-solving abilities helped her secure her role, and the focus on continuous improvement is helping her develop it .

She says that the combination of her appetite for learning and her employer’s support for her success is the perfect duo for creating limitless growth.

We’ve heard plenty of people say “skills-based hiring doesn’t work in my industry.” But that’s just yet another myth we’ve debunked . Let’s take a look at a handful of case studies about how companies within certain industries have succeeded with skills-based recruitment initiatives.

4. Healthcare

Healthcare administration is an industry that’s notoriously difficult to get into. Between receiving a bachelor’s degree and completing a master’s program, it can take six to eight years of rigorous commitment.

However, more opportunities are arising that allow equally qualified candidates to get in without obtaining specific educational requirements.

Sam Saucedo-Hernandez had a tumultuous life, but she only ever wanted a solid career. As a child of parents who emigrated from Mexico, she wanted to be the first generation in her family to attain a degree.

Sam watched her parents struggle with low-wage jobs and promised herself she would do better for herself.

Her first attempt was at law school where she spent several years studying hard. Sam was ecstatic to get her degree and begin a career in law.

But two weeks after she got her associate of science degree, the school got shut down for fraud, leaving Sam jobless and $60,000 in debt.

Sam faced many challenges, but the turning point in her story was the day she received a letter promoting a no-cost medical administrative assistant job training program from JVS.

JVS is a program that helps people build skills and find solid career connections – particularly in the healthcare industry.[1]

JVS has seen amazing success with over 500 employer partners and an emphasis on promoting diversity: 88% of their participants are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or a wide range of other ethnicities.

Sam applied for the program and was accepted. She secured a position as a medical administrative assistant, but her training has led her to her current role in the audiology department.

Though she’s fortunate for her position, Sam says she’s still looking forward, wondering where her skills can take her from here. 

Programs like JVS are working tirelessly to make more stories like this possible. With a focus on skills over experience, they bring in valuable candidates to industries that may otherwise be restricted to them.

5. Manufacturing

Steelcase, a furniture manufacturing company, wanted to build a fairer place for employment opportunities and encourage better representation for employees of color. So they adopted skills-based hiring practices.

They’re far from the only ones. According to TestGorilla’s State of Skills-Based Hiring report, 85% of businesses in 2023 had the goal to increase diversity.

And companies are succeeding at this by implementing skills-based hiring: 91% of organizations saw an increase in diversity due to skills-based hiring.

Steelcase realized that if they truly wanted to boost their DE&I initiatives , traditional hiring methods wouldn’t do.

They decided their hiring processes needed to be revamped for the better, so they adopted some new practices:

Prioritizing skills over resume and pedigree

Removing experience requirements wherever possible

Favoring continuous improvement over perfection

Revamping job descriptions to reduce biased language

Prioritizing diversity among equally qualified candidates

Steelcase decided that practices like these would enable them to reach diverse talent organically, and it worked. Since the program started, Steelcase’s new hires are 55% women and 30% racial or ethnic minorities.

Steelcase’s initiatives are amazing, so we encourage similar active moves to boost diversity. To read more about this topic, read our blog on why being intentional about workplace diversity is non-negotiable .

6. Software

ADP, an HR management software company, adopted a recruiting strategy to focus on skills , rely less on credentials, and make an effort to provide opportunities for candidates with nontraditional backgrounds.

This strategy included training talent acquisition professionals on best practices, hiring specific diversity recruiters, removing degree requirements from high-volume recruiting roles, and leveraging better training and mentorship for new hires.

What were the results? ADP saw great success in one year:

An increase in the number of candidates with no college degree

An increase in Black representation in the candidate pool

An increase in Hispanic representation in the candidate pool

This program was heavily inspired and backed by Maria Black, the chief executive of ADP, and her strong belief in corporate social responsibility.

She has a strong passion for supporting working women, veterans, and other underrepresented talents.[2]

Maria is an excellent example of the power of leading from the top. When your company’s leadership supports a great cause, it benefits both employees and company alike and builds a better organizational culture .

Next, let’s take a look at some case studies about the regions and countries that are taking on skills-based recruitment practices. For more on this subject, check out our post on skills-based hiring around the world .

7. Maryland, USA

In 2022, the state of Maryland dropped four-year degree requirements for thousands of jobs in the government sector.

The aim of this initiative was to draw attention to the value of alternative credentials and experience. State officials want to give people a better shot at securing a stable, fulfilling job.

Governor Larry Hogan was quoted as saying:

“[W]e are ensuring qualified, non-degree candidates are regularly being considered for these career-changing opportunities.”[3]

Over 38,000 people work for the state of Maryland and it’s estimated that more than half of those jobs can be performed by people whose alternative skill routes can easily substitute for a college education.

These alternative routes include:

Life experience

Non-relevant job experience

Hobbies and volunteer work

Alternative training

Community college education

Maryland estimates that about 47% of its working population are STARs (skilled through alternative routes). That’s 2.8 million workers, and these people need solid opportunities – opportunities that they can access through skills-based hiring.

To learn more about how unnecessary degree requirements are holding top talent back, read our blog on degree inflation .

8. Indiana, USA

Indiana’s tech leaders are struggling to attract and retain great talent. They’re facing a major skill shortage and they can’t solve it with the “usual” hiring methods.

Traditional recruiting methods exclude over 95% of Indiana’s workforce.

Indiana has a workforce of 3,332,239 people, but consider this:

A four-year degree requirement removes 75%

Biases can eliminate up to 30% of the pool

Requiring specific past experience removes 93% of the talent pool

With all of that in mind, a pool of more than three million candidates is reduced to just over 42,000.

Indiana’s Office of Technology (IOT) realized that skills-based hiring practices could fix this problem and solve their shortage.

They started by removing degree requirements from most job descriptions, then took the next step and started offering reskilling opportunities to workers from alternative industries, such as line cooks and truck drivers.

Tracy Barnes, IOT’s chief information officer, said that the results of the program have been positive and they’re “very pleased” so far. She also said that she’s equally excited to see the positive life impacts for the candidates involved.

9. Asia-Pacific

Skills-based hiring is quickly gaining traction in the Asia-Pacific area.

One study showed that 79% of businesses in the Asia-Pacific area look for skills when hiring versus the 21% that prioritize education and experience.[4]

The same study found that internal mobility is more important than ever and that companies want to prioritize gender equality and disability inclusion . These points can also be accomplished by adopting skills-based hiring.

Asia-Pacific is looking to skills-based practices to improve the future of their recruitment processes, but Singapore-based TruTrip is already reaping the benefits .

TruTrip is a business travel management company that needed help assessing candidate skills and hiring the best candidates, so they gave TestGorilla a try.

Here are a few ways that TestGorilla’s pre-employment skills testing helped TruTrip’s recruitment processes:

Gives them a way to objectively assess applicants’ skills and knowledge

Helps them eliminate bias from the hiring process

Enables them to consistently make better hiring decisions

Reduces their reliance on resume screening

Enhances teamwork and communication

Improves the employee experience of new hires

According to Hugh Batley, the founder of TruTrip, their new hires are a better fit. These employees become great contributors and have a better initial experience with the company.

TestGorilla also helps TruTrip save thousands of dollars by reducing the chances of a costly mis-hire. 

This isn’t unusual. According to TestGorilla’s State of Skills-Based Hiring report, 92.5% of organizations using skills-based practices saw a reduction in mis-hires in 2022.

10. The UK and the EU

The UK and the EU have developed a strong focus on skills over the past few years.

Interest in skills-based hiring in the UK rose 63% from 2021 to 2022 . This drastic increase is due to employers wanting a wider talent pool and candidates prioritizing and valuing their alternative experience.

This move is helping job opportunities reach the 73.6% of people in the United Kingdom who don’t possess a four-year degree. [5]

As for the European Union, they developed the “Pact For Skills” program in 2020. This program was created to encourage and fund better upskilling and reskilling while also promoting greater diversity and gender equality.[6]

A good example from both areas is the British-Lithuanian bank, Revolut.

Revolut adopted skills-based hiring by using TestGorilla’s skills tests and, as a result, improved their time-to-hire by 40% .

Among many other benefits, Revolut found TestGorilla’s language tests life-saving. Assessing language proficiency is essential for a multinational company, but traditional methods are time-consuming and laborious.

TestGorilla’s language tests help Revolut to quickly and easily evaluate their candidates’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. This helped them to nearly fully automate their screening process, improving time-to-hire greatly.

To read more case studies and success stories about skills-based hiring, check out our 10 stories that demonstrate the power of skills-based hiring or our collection of customer case studies .

Here are 3 top picks from our case studies:

Revolut improves time-to-hire by 40% using TestGorilla

Design Pickle uses TestGorilla to boost application completion rate by 25%

TestGorilla helps TruTrip to save money and improve employee experience

If you’d like to acquaint yourself with a solid skills-based hiring practice, browse our test library and review our skills tests.

“JVS 2022 Impact Report”. (2022). JVS . Retrieved March 6, 2023. https://impact2022.jvs.org/

“Maria Black, president and CEO”. (n.d). Business Roundtable. Retrieved March 6, 2023. https://www.businessroundtable.org/about-us/members/maria-black-president-and-ceo-adp

McGraw, Mark. (April 4, 2022). “Dropping Degree Requirements: Do Employers Still Care About Education?”. World at Work . Retrieved March 6, 2023. https://worldatwork.org/resources/publications/workspan-daily/dropping-degree-requirements-do-employers-still-care-about-education

“The Future of Talent”. (2021). LinkedIn . Retrieved March 6, 2023. https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/talent-solutions/resources/pdfs/future-of-talent-whitepaper.pdf

“Overview of the education system”. (2022). Education GPS . Retrieved March 6, 2023. https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=GBR&treshold=10&topic=EO

“Pact for Skills”. (November 10, 2020). European Commission . Retrieved March 6, 2023.  https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1517&langId=en

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Executive search. recruitment. talent advisory. career coaching. outplacement., case studies in the recruitment process – an assessment method for gathering data on a candidate.

Recently I started recruiting for a management consulting company who uses client case studies as part of their selection process. For them, it has proven to be an effective way of gathering information on a candidate to assess suitability.

To better understand the use of case studies in the recruitment process, my assistant Laura and I did research into the topic, this blog post is to share that information with you.

An overview of case studies in the recruitment process

Case studies are used as a method of competency measuring. Competency methods can focus on technical abilities, social and behavioural skills, or a combination of the two.

Case studies are most popular in management consulting (though they are used in some other industries) since they are able to mimic the kinds of tasks that would be required in the job.

They are done face-to-face during a specified time slot or given to the candidate to complete in their own time.

See Hiring by Competency Models, Patty Grigoryev (2006)

University of Sydney, Case study interviews https://sydney.edu.au/careers/students/applying-for-jobs/interview-tips/case-study-interviews.html

Research on case study efficacy

The premise behind administering a case study as an assessment method is that it offers a level playing field, to some degree, by allowing shortlisted candidates to demonstrate their technical abilities and personal qualities irrespective of past experience and qualification(s).

Case studies enable interviewers to see the strengths and weaknesses of candidates in action, including:

• Engaging in logical and analytical reasoning.
• Thinking creatively and generating innovative solutions.
• Problem-solving.
• Working under time pressure.
• Effective communication skills, including presenting in front of one or several interviewers and using a whiteboard to express concepts.

Case studies are detailed in their nature, add cost to the overall recruitment process (because they require time and resources to administer) and are often one of the final stages in the recruitment process.

Reducing the risk of a bad hire

It is well-established that the costs of a bad hire for a business are huge, especially in leadership roles where it can affect the performance of the whole team.

The hard costs of a bad hire are estimated to range between 50% and 200% of the first-year salary. In management consulting, a bad hire cannot only affect the internal team – a poor client experience can have significant impacts from a brand and billing perspective.

Finding ways to reduce the number of bad hires isn’t easy, case studies have been developed to provide additional data points to make a more informed hiring decision. Using competency modelling methods such as case studies, it has been shown to increase success in hiring decisions, with the most significant improvement stemming from a better culture fit.

Talent Management 360, Using case studies to recruit talent https://talentmanagement360.com/using-case-studies-to-recruit-talent/

Case studies and management consulting companies

Big 4 accounting firms and strategy consulting houses like McKinsey and Bain consistently use case studies in their recruitment process, for example:

PWC appears to only use case studies in relation to taxation and when hiring recent graduates. They are described as “provide students with realistic fact situations in which a number of tax problems and opportunities can be identified”. They acknowledge that law students and business students may choose to approach them differently and give some background regarding the issues and deliverables expected, such as that students are expected to “incorporate a certain amount of tax planning into their solutions”.

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university-relations/tax-case-studies.html

By contrast, Deloitte’s approach is broader. The case interview is designed to assess problem-solving and analytical skills, as well as logic and strategy. However, it is also designed to give candidates an insight into their prospective role, since the cases align with real projects. They clearly step out a five-step approach that candidates should use to address the case interview and give a list of helpful tips that they recommend will help interviewees get the most out of the experience. There is also an interactive case interview practice website ( http://caseinterviewprep.deloitte.com/ ) designed to assist.

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/careers/articles/join-deloitte-careers-case-interview-tips.html

McKinsey & Company who are notorious for gruelling recruitment methods, with some prospective employee’s having up to 20 interviews before receiving an offer, including a compulsory case interview.

McKinsey offer four example case interviews, which can all be found at this link:

https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing

Bain states that any candidate applying for a consulting role should expect a case interview, and those cases will be based on Bain’s client work. They provide two examples, as well as a mock interview for candidates to watch:

https://www.bain.com/careers/interview-prep/case-interview/

Capital One

Capital One also has a detailed case study guide which demonstrates what they will assess (problem solving and analytical skills) as well as providing examples:

https://jobs.capitalone.co.uk/business-analyst-case-study-guide

Time allotted

The PWC case studies are to be done in the student’s own time, but there is a general guideline offered: “The time required of the student to complete the case requirements will vary greatly, depending upon the level of tax knowledge of the individual student, their software skills, and the number and type of issues in each case. As a very general guideline, each case study, with all issues included, should require not less than 10 hours of issue formation, research, and analysis by a graduate tax student, before the final deliverable(s) are developed.”

Deloitte’s case interview preparation page states that each case is 15-20 minutes long but does not give any set time limits and there is no suggestion that responses are timed.

See PWC Case Studies in Taxation https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university_relations/documents/Case-Studies-in-Taxation-2018.pdf

Measuring the responses

PWC’s case studies are designed to test both technical skills (tax knowledge, Excel ability) and broader skills such as problem solving and creativity. It is stated that the ‘deliverables’ can be in many forms including “a letter to the client identified in the case study, a memo to the client file, or preparing a ruling request for the IRS. Some case study users require oral presentations. These may take the form of a straight presentation or role-play in the setting of a client meeting, resolution of an audit, or representation of a client in a court.” Actually measuring these is not expressly dealt with, but the document does provide a set of solutions to each case study for comparison, akin to a marking key.

By comparison Deloitte is focused less on finding the ‘right answer’ and emphasises that candidates will do well by clearly demonstrating a logical thought process. Having a clear structure and acknowledging any assumptions are listed as recommendations. Possible answers are given in the example attached and they focus on having both justifications and implications for each point. It’s all about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’. For numerical/technical questions however, there is a clear right and wrong.

Other methods of work sample testing

There are alternative methods for collecting data points on a candidate, these include: written questionnaires, take home or in office real life job tasks, online assessment tools and group assessment centres.

One hiring manager I was recruiting for would take a full two hours to conduct an interview with a candidate. In the first hour he would cover off behavioural and company ‘fit’ questions, in the second hour he would launch into a long list of technical questions, including real case study examples from working at his company.

This thorough approach made the hiring manager more confident in his decision to hire the individual (or not hire if the candidate wasn’t strong enough).

Here are some other quality articles on evidence based interviewing and testing.

• The Case for Evidence Based Interviewing: Part 1 and Part 2
• Assessing Soft Skills

When I’m engaged to conduct a recruitment process for a client I recommend gathering as many data points on the candidate as possible – including a type of work sample, if possible.

I’m always looking for ways to help organisations recruit better. Leveraging years of experience in corporate recruiting I can assist with finding the bottlenecks and weak points in your hiring process and improving hiring outcomes.

Find out more about my services here: https://elite-human-capital.com/consulting-services/

To talk with me about how I can help, make contact today.

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Reengineering the Recruitment Process

The skills needed in many roles are continually changing—and sources of talent are too.

The Covid-19 pandemic has upended many traditional business practices. When it comes to recruiting, the crisis has not so much disrupted as accelerated shifts in the talent landscape that were already under way, leaving many companies poorly served by their current hiring practices. In a period of steep unemployment, it might seem that companies looking to add workers would be in the driver’s seat. But job openings have also been rising in recent months, meaning that competition for top talent remains keen—and in uncertain times, bringing on the right people is more important than ever.

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Case studies, our case studies..

Real examples with real results that demonstrate how we approach recruitment projects, committed to supporting our clients from all types of businesses.

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13+ HR Case Studies: Recruiting, Learning, Analytics, and More

Reposting a piece from the blog over at Lighthouse Research because I know not all of you subscribe over there!

While much of the work we do at Lighthouse Research & Advisory focuses on quantitative research studies, we do a fair amount of qualitative research as well. We’ve collected case studies over time (and continue to) that highlight interesting approaches and examples of innovation within human capital management. The list below offers a wide variety of industries, examples, and flavors for you to learn from.

Want to see another topic or example not listed here? Comment below and and I will see what we can do to find that for you!

Wal-Mart, Automation, and Compassion Training

Walmart’s Fastest Growing Line of Business is Delivering Experiences

The Motley Fool: Blending Talent Management and Engagement

Motley Fool: The Coolest Talent Processes You’ve Never Heard Of

Chipotle: How Internal Mobility Reduced Turnover by 64%

Internal promotion-how Chipotle reduced turnover by 64%

Adtran: Using Hackathons for Employer Branding, Employee Development, and Retention

Using Hackathons for Branding and Retention

Stout Advisory: Performance Management, Peer Feedback, and Employee Engagement

How to Radically Change Your Performance Management Practice [Podcast]

H&R Block: Seasonal Hiring, Strategic Recruiting, and Hiring Manager Communications

Patagonia: measuring the roi of hr programs, hr strategy, employee perks and benefits.

Measuring the ROI of HR Programs is Critical: Here’s How Patagonia Does It

Hot Chicken Takeover: Employee Benefits, Corporate Culture, Leadership, and Social Responsibility

Can a Business Grow Competitively While Doing Social Good? [Podcast]

AlliedUniversal: Talent Acquisition, Employee Referrals, and High-Volume Hiring

How Does AlliedUniversal Hire 90,000 Workers a Year? Referrals and PURPOSE [Podcast]

Duie Pyle: Remote Worker Engagement, Blue Collar Challenges, and Competitive Recruiting

Talent Lessons from the Transportation Industry [Podcast]

Ohio Living: Core Values, Company Culture, and Employee Recognition

We’re Only Human 39: Ohio Living Serves 70,000 Clients Annually with Core Values

Cox Enterprises: HR Analytics, Business Impact, and Strategy

We’re Only Human 53: How to Partner with Your Talent Analytics Team

McDonald’s: Learning Measurement, Business Impact, and ROI

Southwest airlines: corporate culture, employee perks, and employee engagement.

We’re Only Human 40: How Southwest Airlines Lives and Breathes Corporate Culture

HJF: HR Technology Selection and Implementation, HR Leadership, and Modernization

We’re Only Human 55:The HR Leader’s First Year on the Job

Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership

Amazon recruiting – a case study of a giant among children.

January 17, 2022

Compare their results to all others, and you too will call Amazon… A Giant Recruiting Machine.

Note this case study is designed for quick scanning.

Yes, Amazon recruiting is in a class by themselves because they relentlessly hire when others cry for applicants. Of course, I don’t loosely use the phrase “A giant among children.” However, after doing numerous corporate case studies over the years covering other recruiting powerhouses (including Google, Apple, and Facebook). I quickly found that their record recruiting volumes across a broad range of jobs and locations could only be labeled as breathtaking. And just by chance, if you think that I’m not giving enough credit to most other corporate recruiting functions (even Google pales in comparison). You should realize that only a mere 18% of HR professionals even describe their own recruiting function as “top-notch” or “advanced.”

The Six Pillars Of Recruiting Excellence At Amazon

This Amazon case study reveals the many factors that cause Amazon’s recruiting function to be so far ahead of the competition. They are truly a giant because they excel in each of the six pillars of excellence in recruiting. The six pillars that make Amazon so successful are:

• Their recruiting impacts business results
• Their proven capability of handling huge recruiting volumes across a wide range 
• Their fanatical insistence on quality hires
• A scientific data-driven recruiting approach is the foundation of their success
• They utilize a one-size-fits-one agile hiring process 
• Their targeted recruiting sub-programs are second to none

Let’s jump immediately to the first and most important strategic pillar – Amazon’s record-breaking strategic business and recruiting results. 

Pillar #1. Amazon’s Recruiting Impacts Business Results

Amazon recruiting is aiming to go beyond simply producing recruiting results. And to also directly impact their corporation’s business results. Those results include:

• Hiring is the single most important element in Amazon’s business success – Jeff Bezos made it clear. “Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success” (that’s not just the most important HR function, but the most important business function). Jeff began making this recruiting priority clear in the company’s very first annual shareholder letter in 1998. Most other corporations don’t admit this reality. But, it’s simply not possible for a large corporation to innovate and grow rapidly without fully funded exceptional recruiting. 
• Yet with all this emphasis, recruiting remains their primary challenge – The CFO recently publicly revealed that even with its current high priority, recruiting maintains a primary challenge. When he noted, for example, in the package movement area, “The availability of workers is Amazon’s primary challenge .” Rather than resting on their laurels, they realize that they continuously need to get much better is a primary reason they continue to improve in recruiting. 
• Amazon’s size and growth are made possible by its excellence in recruiting – the prime limiting factor that restricts the company from maintaining its quantum growth rate is the ability to successfully recruit a huge volume of employees each year. And because Amazon employs about 1.4 million people globally , they have already done a high recruiting volume. The employee headcount makes them the US’s second-largest private employer (after Walmart). I predict that they will soon surpass Walmart for the #1 spot as the largest employer in the US. I would also note that Amazon has helped to reduce unemployment. Because of the 400,000 people they hired for their U.S. operations network, 45% were previously unemployed. Their new CEO, Andy Jassy, reinforced the importance of continuous growth through recruiting by announcing that he was planning to hire 55,000 people for corporate and technology roles globally during his first months. That’s close to all of Facebook’s current headcount and nearly 1/3 of Google’s headcount.
• Recruiting has made a major contribution to its stock value – businesswise, their recruiting and operational excellence have directly contributed to the corporation’s incredibly high stock valuation. Currently, Amazon is the fifth most valuable global company in market cap valuation, nearly 1.65 Trillion dollars. 
• Recruiting has made a major contribution toward having an extremely productive workforce – the average revenue generated by each employee last year was $353,000, which is an amazing ROI. HR helped maintain that productivity by increasing management prerogatives by remaining a 100% union-free workforce. 

————————————————-

Pillar #2.  A proven capability for handling a huge volume of recruiting across a broad range of positions and locations

Amazon recruiting has proven over the years that it has the capability of recruiting a huge number of new hires across many different job families and locations.

• Recruiting volume and capability are second to none – the fact that during 2021 Amazon’s recruiting increased headcount by a whopping 63%  in a single year. The largest percentage increase in headcount ever accomplished by any large employer during peacetime! This is but one startling indication of recruiting’s agility and capability to ramp up their recruiting capability dramatically. Amazon, of course, must have an exceptional recruiting capability because it is America’s second-largest employer (and I predict that it will soon surpass Walmart). The workload handled by their recruiting function is unparalleled because it has as many as 30,000 openings at a single time.
• Powerful Employer Brand means that everyone considers them – it is clear that because of its HR work, Amazon is recognized as an excellent place to work. And its rankings, notoriety, and exposure are major contributors to its recruiting success. Some of their notable recognitions include:
•  This year, LinkedIn’s top US employer ranking – Amazon ranked by the prestigious professional network LinkedIn as the #1 company where Americans want to work and develop their careers. 
• A global best employer also – this year and a ranking of global employers, Amazon was ranked #2 on the “World’s Best Employers” list by Forbes. 
• Fortune’s world’s most admired companies – this year, Amazon was ranked #2 on Fortune’s prestigious “World’s Most Admired Companies” list for the fifth year in a row. (After Apple). 
• BCG’s most innovative firms – this year, the Boston Consulting Group rated Amazon #3 on their “most innovative firms” list (after Apple and Alphabet). 
• Amazon is the best at attracting a record-breaking volume of applicants – as previously noted. In 2020 Amazon received a record-shattering 30 million applications , an all-time record. But it is especially impressive because it occurred when almost every major corporation and business struggled to get even a few applications for each job. The attractiveness of Amazon is illustrated by the fact that they received a breathtaking “ 1 Million Job Applications (in 1 day) ” as part of their 2021 annual Career Day event.
• Amazon has the capability of recruiting over an amazing range of jobs – companies like Google and Facebook have an easy recruiting job because they recruit mostly engineers. In comparison, Amazon must have the capability of recruiting everything from AI experts, pilots, book specialists, entertainment specialists, and cloud experts down to package handlers. In fact, Amazon can recruit across five extremely diverse business units (Amazon.com, AWS, Alexa, Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Prime) and 32 distinct technical groups. Their new Project Kuiper will even require them to hire rocket scientists as they attempt to launch satellites into orbit to widen their broadband access. In my view, their recruiting leaders deserve major kudos for developing their recruiting capability in so many completely different skill areas. And because they are a technology company, they rely heavily on technology throughout their recruiting function. 
• Amazon’s recruiting capability is truly global – because it is a worldwide e-commerce company, Amazon operates and recruits in 13 countries. In the US alone, it operates more than 930 facilities (including two headquarters locations). And last year, it received job applications from 170 different countries.

Pillar # 3. Fanatical Insistence On Quality Hires

Their third and most important pillar of recruiting excellence is their fanatical insistence on only hiring quality candidates. In comparison, few corporations spend the time defining and measuring the quality of hire (i.e., top-performing new hire). And only 36% even attempt to measure the quality of hire . Amazon ensures that they will get those quality hires using seven unique recruiting approaches. They include:

• Their goal is to be the “Earth’s Best Employer” – yes, Jeff Bezos’ stated, and only a little bit outrageous, goal is to make Amazon “ the world’s best employer . However, in my experience, it is a goal that they have already met. Executives, managers, HR professionals, and recruiters work together to reach it. In their words, they reach that goal because  “Their leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher-performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: “Are my fellow employees growing?” “Are they empowered?” “Are they ready for what’s next?” “Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.”
• The Bezos approach to hiring is laser-focused on quality – their hiring managers and the recruiting function’s insistence on quality has remained solid throughout the years. I find that this fanatical insistence on quality is in direct contrast to the approach taken by most hiring managers at other corporations. During this candidate shortage, managers have been allowed in desperation “to fill butts in chairs.”

Amazon’s #1 advocate of hiring only quality employees is Jeff Bezos. He has shown his expectations in many often-repeated quotes, statements, and expectations. Including: 

• “It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people… Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success.”
•  “If you can’t hire quality, don’t hire at all.” “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”
• “Don’t “settle for second best” when hiring. Instead, “Do what it takes to find the best people available.”
• “Every time we hire someone, he or she should raise the bar for the next hire so that the overall talent pool was always improving.” Bezos “ doesn’t care about an efficient hiring process .” “And he certainly “Doesn’t believe in making a hire, simply for the sake of filling an open role.”
• At Amazon, raising the bar means answering three questions for each candidate. First, “Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering?” Next, it asks, “Will you admire this person?” And last, it asks, “In what important area might this person be a superstar?” (In cases where they should be placed in a different job than they applied for). 
• Amazon utilizes “bar raisers” as its primary way to ensure quality – a key Amazon expectation for leaders – “Is to raise the Amazon’s use of “ bar raisers .” They get that name because their sole role is to ensure that each new hire will “raise the bar over the last incumbent” in each open job. The work during the interview process is to provide outside and neutral candidate assessments. To prevent a candidate from focusing on these individuals, they are anonymous to the candidate. These quality control individuals are from outside the team that is doing the hiring. And as a result, they are more likely to be critical because they don’t face the same “pressures to immediately fill the job” that hiring managers and teammates do. With this volunteer role, they accept the responsibility to literally “veto” any candidate they feel will not be a good fit for Amazon. Amazon’s new hires are quality employees because Amazon promoted more than 68,000 employees globally during 2020.
• Hiring is a unanimous team decision – a second method for ensuring that they only hire a quality candidate requires a unanimous team decision. One prominent former Amazon executive noted that Bezos “ Believes hiring should not only be a team effort. It should be a team decision.” So in most cases, “After final interviews, each member of the hiring team meets in a room to share their opinions on each candidate. And after a discussion, a vote takes place, and the results have to be unanimous for the person to be hired.” A single “no” vote would mean that the team will have to go back and search again for the ideal employee. 
• Amazon’s “unregretted turnover metric” helps fix hiring errors – Amazon assigns an “unregretted turnover metric” to its managers. It serves as an imperfect post-hire check on weak performing employees that somehow made it through their hiring process. This after-hiring double-check mirrors the approach that General Electric had under Jack Welch. Under this “regrettable turnover metric,” Managers at Amazon have a target rate for annual employee turnover. This means they are expected to lose a specified number of employees that they “ wouldn’t regret losing ” (i.e., below-average performing employees). Although this practice may appear harsh on the surface, it forces hiring managers to reassess each new hire periodically. 
• Paying employees to quit – this “Pay Employees to Quit” approach is a second post-hiring check on quality under this program (borrowed from Zappos). Amazon proactively offers incentives to unhappy recent hires during their first five years. The goal is to force unhappy recent hires to take a minute once each year to decide if they “really want to stay.” Based on the premise that keeping workers unsure of their commitment to Amazon will harm both the customers and the team. So if a worker decides that they don’t want to be here, they can get between $1000 and $5000 for walking away.
• Finally, improve new-hire quality by assessing candidates on Amazon’s leadership principles – one of the primary ways Amazon maintains quality hiring and fit. By assessing every candidate on Amazon’s published “leadership principles.” So each candidate at Amazon is expected to know and commit to following them ( these principles are posted on their jobs website ). As a result, everyone involved in hiring is expected to assess every candidate’s knowledge and commitment to these principles. At least 3 of these 15 principles relate directly to recruiting. Those three principles are below:
• Hire and develop the best – leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take their role in coaching others seriously. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.
• Insist on the highest standards – leaders have relentlessly high standards. Many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders continually raise the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed, so they stay fixed.
• Deliver results – leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle. 

If you’re interested in the 12 remaining leadership principles, click here . The remainder mostly focuses on key workforce capabilities, including customer obsession, innovation, learning, and ownership of problems.

Pillar #4. A scientific data-driven approach is the foundation for their success

During my assessment, I found that a primary reason why Amazon recruiting excels in so many different areas is that it operates under the umbrella of one of the most strategic HR functions. Their HR function is guided by 7 HR tenets , which are the guidelines that every HR function follows to “Maintain a Culture of Builders and Innovators. In my experience, shifting to a data-driven approach is required to maintain a culture in a large organization. Fortunately, Amazon is one of only a handful of HR functions (along with Google, Sodexo, and Nestlé Purina) that already makes decisions based on data and results metrics. Find that HR tenet in the box below. 

Every strategic recruiting function should know and follow three additional Amazon HR and leadership tenets. They are:

• Recruiting must focus on directly impacting business results – because BCG research revealed that “ recruiting has the highest impact on business results .” Therefore, it makes sense to follow and adhere to their HR tenet “We manage HR as a business.” Acting like a business starts with, rather than simply “aligning with business goals,” recruiting leaders purposely set recruiting goals and manage recruiting actions and resources to produce the maximum direct and measurable impact on business results. The next step is to reduce recruiting approaches that can’t demonstrate their business impact. And the final step is to convert recruiting problems and results into their dollar impact on corporate revenue (e.g., our recruiting efforts on sales jobs allowed us to maintain $232.5 million in sales revenue). Reporting recruiting results in dollars of revenue impact allow executives to quickly compare your dollar impacts to those from other HR and business functions.
• You must assume continuous obsolescence along with rapid learning – you should also follow another of Amazon’s HR tenets. Which is “Learn and Be Curious.” Because in an unpredictable world, you simply can’t prepare for most things. The secret to thriving is rapid continuous learning immediately as new problems and opportunities arrive. So the first step in a recruiting world where everything changes should be operating under the assumption that every current thing in recruiting will soon become obsolete. And, of course, you won’t be able to detect that obsolescence without collecting and applying performance data. Next, you must also continually be looking for a replacement for every current recruiting approach and tool. And that can only be accomplished by continuously learning about evolving business and recruiting approaches at other advanced companies. To identify the ones that might be applied to your recruiting situation. And finally, you won’t be able to determine if your new solutions are superior without following the tenet hypothesis testing covered in the next bullet point. 
• The utilization of hypothesis testing and experimentation – perhaps the most prominent difference between traditional and scientific recruiting is an insistence on hypothesis testing to discover what works and what doesn’t. The HR tenet is “ We form hypotheses about the best talent acquisition, talent retention, and talent development techniques and then set out to prove or disprove them with experiments and careful data collection.” For example, a split-sample experiment could prove or disprove the hypothesis that “Diverse interviewers select more diverse candidates” (They don’t). Google HR has also long been a supporter of hypothesis testing. An outrageous example of Amazon’s hypothesis testing occurred when their AWS group experimented by placing a job ad on the Tinder dating site.

Amazon Recruiting – A Case Study Of A Giant Among Children (Part 2 of 2 parts)

Today, every manager needs to learn great recruiting… and to find it, they need only follow Amazon!

The title of this case study includes the phrase “A Giant Among Children.” That’s just how large I found the differential between Amazon’s recruiting and the recruiting practices at most corporations. And if you take the time to read this case study, I am sure that you will agree with the sharp assessment. Of course, many managers already justifiably study Amazon because of its excellence in well-known areas, including customer service, supply chain, and cloud computing. However, most don’t realize that Amazon can only excel in so many divergent business areas because it is “a recruiting machine .” It recruits effortlessly even during our current talent shortage when most others starved for applicants. This case study is designed to show you their best practices and what makes them “a recruiting giant among children.” 

Pillar #5. Amazon’s amazing array of targeted recruiting programs

In my view, the most surprising of all of Amazon’s 6 pillars of excellence is their willingness to develop and offer numerous individual recruiting and career transition programs that are “customized” to the needs of distinct groups of candidates and employees. Targeting subprograms is essential because different groups are attracted and motivated by different offerings. At Amazon, they specifically target a wide array of people, including diverse women, veterans, the elderly, and those that need internal movement or an upward push. Unfortunately, space limitations prevent me from highlighting all of the amazing, targeted programs in operation at Amazon. However, you will find a representative sample of 14 of their exceptional targeted recruiting programs below. The programs that likely have the largest impact appear first on the list.

• The Returnship program helps the unemployed reenter the workforce – The Returnship is a reentry program designed to help the underemployed and those who have been out of the workforce for at least a year (usually due to unemployment, children staying at home, or Covid concerns). This program aims to provide this target group with a rare opportunity to restart their careers by joining Amazon. At the beginning of the program, “returners” work on a specific project. And after four months, they have earned the possibility to move into full-time positions at Amazon. During those four months, participants work remotely from home. If they need it, they provide child and elder care assistance. So they can ease back into the workforce without making any major life changes while they are in this program. And when they accept a permanent role, Amazon will also pay for their relocation if needed. Since their Returnship pilot initiative in January of 2021, Amazon reports that the program has enrolled more than 60 people, and 95% of them received an offer for a full-time role at Amazon. In the future, Amazon has stated that they plan to hire 1,000 professionals into the program during the coming years in roles ranging from finance to engineering.
• The Best Fit Program makes it easier for software engineers to find their perfect job – this best fit program is an accelerated job identification program. Designed specifically to help software engineers that are applying find their perfect job fit among all relevant Amazon jobs. This program helps make their job search at Amazon quicker and more accurate. Those in the program can avoid putting in the traditional multiple hours of searching for their right job. It allows these software engineers to apply once and then be automatically considered for thousands of relevant jobs across the company. A combination of electronic and human matching approaches finds the jobs that fit their preferences during the first step. For their ideal kind of team and their desired working style. But the program will still recommend jobs in new areas in which Amazon thinks they would also be successful. During the last part of the process, applicants get to meet all of the hiring managers for each of the recommended jobs. And finally, they get to choose their first job at Amazon.
• The Career Choice Program supports employees who want a college degree – support for getting a college degree or GED is a major attraction factor. One of the goals of this Career Choice educational opportunity program is to help lower-level Amazon employees transition into more lucrative paying and high-demand fields (and perhaps even leaving Amazon). For eligible employees, Amazon will now pay 100% of its employee’s college tuition and fees for earning a diploma or certificate in a qualified field of study at eligible schools. Recently the program has been updated to allow more flexibility.
• The UX Apprenticeship – It encourages development in research and design – Amazon’s User Experience Design and Research Apprenticeship program provide a combination of instructor-led training and real-world experience in a one-year program. It offers employees the opportunity to learn and develop research and design skills on Amazon teams, including Prime Video, Alexa, AWS, and Amazon Fashion. Apprenticeship graduates can move into jobs that help improve the experience of Amazon customers, from making payments easier on Amazon sites to designing features that make devices more accessible.
• Surge2IT – Proactively encourages career advancement in IT – their Surge2IT program is another career transition program designed to help entry-level IT employees across Amazon’s operations network. It focuses on IT employees who don’t possess a software development degree. After completing this program, they can become software development engineers after about nine months. This program allows lower-level IT employees to pursue careers in higher-paying technical roles through this self-paced learning resource. The course helps employees develop the skills necessary to advance their careers in the information technology field. Participants who complete this course and move up at Amazon can make up to an additional $10,000 a year.
• The Amazon Technical Academy makes you a software developer in nine months – this career transition program requires nothing more than an interest in software development. It started as an experiment, and since then, it has successfully enrolled hundreds of employees. Amazon Technical Academy builds on their initial interest by training them in the essential skills needed to transition to an entry-level software developer engineer role at Amazon. The program is free for their employees. And it requires a high school diploma or GED. And the fortitude to get through a rigorous nine-month, full-time program that expert Amazon software engineers created.
• The Mechatronics program prepares employees for robot maintenance jobs – under this career transition program in robotic repair . It is designed for employees interested in learning engineering and mechanical skills necessary to repair and maintain the equipment and robots inside Amazon facilities. Those that are accepted get the opportunity to go back to school for a free 12-week course. After that, employees begin a year of on-the-job learning under a technical maintenance specialist. After completing this final step, employees who now have these highly sought-after skills are eligible for a full-time role as a mechatronics and robotics technician, which may increase their paycheck by up to 40%.
• Project Juno – aids in relocating current employees – this internal movement program helps out when a current employee must relocate. After they have decided that they must move, this Amazon job finding process electronically finds the relocating employee the same or a similar job available at the Amazon facility in their new city.
• CamperForce – This Program offers jobs to traveling seasonal workers – CamperForce offers jobs for those who travel in RVs and work along the way. They are known as Work Campers. And because Amazon especially needs people to work in its warehouses during the holidays. They now encourage and hire seasonal help that live in a trailer or RV. In addition to welcoming them, Amazon pays them a small monthly stipend to live in their own trailer at an RV facility close to an Amazon warehouse site where they will work.
• The Military Spouses Program –  provides jobs for military spouses – the goal is to find jobs for the spouses of Amazon’s 45,000 veteran and military employees. Designed to find military spouses an appropriate job at Amazon. Either for the first time or when he or she must relocate along with their military spouse. In addition, Amazon recently pledged to hire over 100,000 U.S. veterans and military spouses by 2024, further building on their commitment to military families. 
• Amazon Warriors – provides support for transitioning veterans – this veterans support program is designed to help recent veterans transition into Amazon’s workforce. It helps by offering a professional network of Amazon employees that are veterans. It also provides a mechanism for community outreach.
• People with disabilities – They have their own targeted website – Amazon offers a targeted site specifically to meet the needs of applicants with disabilities. The site also educates them on how to take the best advantage of what Amazon has to offer applicants and employees with disabilities.
• Amazon hires felons – Amazon has no blanket policy against hiring felons. In fact, they are open to hiring them into seasonal jobs. Depending on the type of felony, time since they fulfilled their sentence, and the corrective actions completed, however, after successfully completing that initial assignment and based on their performance. The felon may then be considered for a more permanent position. 
• Amazon employee referrals – like most large corporations, Amazon has a formal referral program. Unfortunately, I only rate it as a little better-than-average because only 11% of those interviewed are employee referrals . And they pay a range of bonuses up to $5000 for a referral that is hired .

Pillar #6. Unique elements in their “one-size-fits-one” agile hiring process

I have discovered 7 unique hiring process elements that contribute to making Amazon’s hiring process highly agile, flexible, and adaptable. These seldom found elsewhere elements make it possible for their hiring process to adapt to the recruiting needs of every Amazon business unit and location. Those unique elements include:

• By design, their hiring process flexes to fit every unique job – they hire in so many global locations and across so many jobs from pilot to janitor. Their candidate assessment process must be modifiable to fit the unique assessment requirements for each job family. We call this capability “one-size-fits-all one.” Of course, the hiring process includes the basic elements for all jobs, including the standard ATS/recruiter resume screen, a phone screen, and at least one structured remote or live behavioral interview. Some portion of that interview will be devoted to assessing the candidate’s understanding of Amazon’s culture through its leadership principles .  However, the interviews will likely last all day for most professional jobs. Often it will include an online test and a verbally presented work sample or problem to complete. The candidate may also be asked to write up an idea in a press release format (because that’s the way ideas are presented at Amazon). Or, developers may be required to participate in a virtual or in-person interactive whiteboard exercise for developer jobs where they have the candidate walk them through the steps they would take to solve a current software problem. In the end, the team will always make the final hiring decision, and the “bar raiser” gatekeeper will have the option of vetoing that choice.
• To increase innovation, Amazon specifically targets problem-solving skills – one thing that is common across all business units at Amazon is the need for innovation. And as a result, Amazon targets candidates that thrive at solving a never-ending queue of complex problems. They consider a spirit of innovation part of their DNA at Amazon. They clearly state upfront that they are looking for “analytical and critical thinkers with great judgment, who can both think big and roll up their sleeves to solve hard problems on behalf of our customers.” 
• Amazon increases its applications by removing the mystery from its hiring process – many firms talk about their “candidate experience.” However, I have found that applying for a job at most firms is a long way from being user-friendly. We know this because the number one complaint from applicants is almost always that the hiring process that they are about to face “is a complete mystery.” Amazon, instead, leads the way ( along with J&J ) in removing the mystery out of what the candidate can expect during their hiring process. They offer an extensive array of numerous free resources that guide applicants ( our hiring process website ) to meet this goal. It highlights what any candidate can expect from the day they apply until they begin work. In addition, they also offer suggestions on the best interviewing practices for its candidates to follow on its YouTube channel and its LinkedIn feed . They also make it clear that serious candidates must study the company’s leadership principles mentioned earlier. Finally, they help applicants understand the different teams they can work in. By providing them with a list of the 32 possible teams , a description of what they do, and how many open jobs are currently open in each team. They even have a “best-fit program” that uses artificial intelligence to help software engineers find their perfect job within Amazon.
• Amazon holds a national Career Day event like no other – many firms, including McDonald’s and Walmart, hold “national hiring days.” However, I find that they pale in comparison to Amazon’s. They call their unique Career Day “America’s biggest training and recruiting event.” It actually is unique because it goes well beyond the typical job fair. In addition to displaying open jobs, it offers remote personalized career coaching sessions and even some tactical training. It further provides candid advice on how job seekers can start, build, or transition their careers at Amazon. Last year, they received 1 million applications for their Career Day event.
• Amazon relies heavily on seasonal workers as a talent pipeline source – research has shown that often the new hire has the highest probability of success. Someone that has recently successfully served as a temp, intern, or contractor at the organization. Amazon takes advantage of this high-quality source by hiring well over 100k seasonal workers each year. In addition to filling their seasonal need, the seasonal workforce serves as an effective screening process for determining which seasonal workers should be offered a full-time job. It also gives the worker a chance to determine if they really want to work at Amazon.
• They use FC brand ambassadors to improve their brand proactively – I’ve never seen this done before. But, to counter the massive amounts of negative Twitter messaging found about working at their warehouses. Amazon has asked long-term employees at its fulfillment centers to act as brand ambassadors in an extraordinary move to improve their online employment branding. They don’t get extra pay, but they get $50 gift cards as a small reward for tweeting positive things about working in their warehouses.
• A shift in emphasis to remote and broader college recruiting – makes college recruiting more effective, diverse, and remote. Amazon is curtailing some campus visits and heavily emphasizing virtual student meetings. It has also broadened its reach to many more campuses to get added diversity to the point where for example, last year, it extended offers to students from 80 M.B.A. programs (instead of exclusively going to a few elite schools).

Amazon Utilizes Data To Identify The Most Powerful Attraction Factors

Rather than assuming that applicant attraction factors stay the same in a fast-changing world. A critical part of Amazon’s highly agile and adaptable recruiting process is continually gathering data to update “the most effective attraction factors” for their targeted potential applicants. Here are 8 examples of how they identify the attraction factors and the current ones.

• They start by using data to identify the most current attraction factors – most corporations simply guess at them or assume that they are the same as last year. In comparison, Amazon uses data to identify its current attraction factors. At Amazon, these attraction factors currently fit into four categories. Each of the four is emphasized on their main career website . The four primary attraction categories include benefits , career advancement , work/life balance, and culture . As part of their data-driven approach, they continually survey new hires to determine the general and the specific factors that actually attracted them to Amazon. And last year, 93% of their new hires cited Amazon’s Career Skills and Upskilling training program s as their top attraction factor. As a follow-up, Amazon is investing $700 million in upskilling 100,000 employees in the U.S. by 2025.
• They proactively encourage work/life balance – although some may argue about their level of success. Amazon boldly lists work/life balance as one of its four primary attraction categories. And on its work/life balance website , it describes how Amazon strives to help its employees reach that balance.
• Amazon is acting to reduce applicant health and injury concerns – during the pandemic. Amazon has focused on reducing Covid risks and workplace injuries as roadblocks that reduce potential warehouse applicants. So in that light, Amazon is currently developing a new automated staff schedule process. It reduces the risk of injury by utilizing computer algorithms to rotate employees between jobs when completed. A more frequent rotation is needed because their data reveals that roughly 40% of their work-related fulfillment center injuries are due to sprains and strains caused by repetitive motions. 
• Higher base pay – Amazon was one of the first companies to realize that they needed to raise employee pay and its hourly jobs in a tight U.S. job market. So Amazon’s average starting wage is now over $18 per hour, with an additional $3 depending on their shift.
• Sign-on bonuses – like many companies, Amazon has begun offering significant sign-on bonuses at some of their fulfillment centers (up to $4000).
• Being dog friendly is surprisingly an attraction factor – in work areas where it is safe. Amazon is one of the few companies that actively encourage dogs in the office. And because of their efforts, Amazon was listed as the #1 dog-friendly company in the US by Rover.com . Their leadership has noted that “Amazon has found that dogs in the office actually contribute to their collaborative company culture.” 
• They stopped testing applicants for cannabis –   in many states recreational or medical cannabis use is now legal. Amazon has been a leader in announcing that it will no longer screen finalist candidates for marijuana use. In part because this testing was unnecessarily reducing their candidate pool. But Amazon went one step further. It alerted its independent delivery service partners that if they too stopped testing for marijuana during their application process and prominently advertised that fact. They could boost their own business’s job applications by up to 400%.
• They offer anytime pay – this last attraction factor may not seem like much. However, it has proved to be an attraction factor for the many hourly workers that live paycheck to paycheck. Amazon’s free fast pay program offers the option, in some jobs, for eligible employees to receive 70% of their eligible earned pay whenever they choose (24×7).

Of course, Amazon is working on its weak points

Amazon is still far from perfect in areas other than recruiting despite all its efforts. Despite its ranking by LinkedIn as the #1 employer. They still receive relentless criticism because of their corporation’s size, speed of innovation, impact on small businesses, their percentage of diversity, and the waste they produce. Even some innovators criticize them for excessively keeping some innovative projects secret from other internal teams (just like Apple). 

In management, they have also received volumes of criticism, especially because of their anti-union stance and their common practice of continually replacing “human jobs” with robots. The media revealed that they once selected which workers to release using an algorithm, and they subsequently fired them via email. Its managers have been criticized for not telling their employees when placed under a performance management plan. They are also well-known for their fast-paced work environment that some argue can lead to excess injuries and employee burnout. And as a result of that work stress, in some cases, they have had to pay “show up bonuses” to reduce their sometimes-rampant warehouse absenteeism. Finally, as most great firms do, they have a relatively high employee turnover rate. This can be partly explained because they are constantly under attack by their competitor’s recruiters, who are logically targeting their exceptional talent. 

Final Thoughts

Today when I am asked by those beginning their career where they should work, I, without hesitation, say Amazon. It is primarily an innovation machine that dominates in so many different product areas and across so many industries. In the same light, if you are a recruiting leader, your goal is to lead your industry in recruiting and HR eventually. It’s time to realize that you must focus your best practice research exclusively on Amazon. You can learn so much so fast (Note: the previous recruiting leader, Google, has lost its luster since Laszlo left).

If you’re interested in past case studies by Dr. Sullivan 

The initial landing pages for Dr. Sullivan’s previous case studies on Google, Apple, and Facebook can be found on his www.drjohnsullivan.com website by clicking here . You can go directly to the introductory part of his four-part Apple case study by clicking here . The first part of his Google recruiting case study can be found here . Part 1 of his Facebook case study can be found here .

Author’s Note  

• Please share these best practices by sending this case study to your team and network or sharing it on social media. 
• Next, if you don’t already subscribe to Dr. Sullivan’s weekly Talent Newsletter, you can do that here .
• Also, join the well over 11,000 that have followed or connected with Dr. Sullivan’s community on LinkedIn . 

Tags Amazon Case Study Metrics Recruiting Strategy Sourcing

About Dr John Sullivan

The Dumbest Reasons For Rejecting Job Applicants (Questionable rejection factors that hurt hiring results)

How many of your qualified candidates are being rejected for these questionable reasons? Article Descriptors| …

Top 06 Creative Recruitment Strategies To Transform Your Next Recruiting Program

/blog/creative-recruitment-06-essential-strategies-case-studies/ - 09-12-2019

We’re living in the digital era and information is more than abundant, job searchers are inundated with endless data. But that equals intense competition for companies, whose information, if not memorable, is easily lost in the hassle.

The paradigm has shifted, companies no longer hold the power, candidates do . They have infinite choices nowadays and recruiters have to actively search for them, instead of waiting for them to find you.

With the advent of social media and popular platforms like the late Vines, the average attention span has shortened considerably. Regular ads are easily skipped, and companies are faced with a new challenge of capturing the potential candidates’ attention. So if you’re looking for applicants, it’s time to be creative with your recruiting campaigns.

Promote Employee's Experience

Millennials and Gen Z are notoriously idealistic. A good income isn’t their priority anymore, lifestyle quality is.

They pay a lot of attention to the work they do and whether they enjoy it or not. This surely has something to do with philosophies. Candidates at that age are usually contemplating their purposes in life and doing whatever it takes to figure it out. And once they do, they are willing to take measures to fulfill that lifelong mission.

And after they have chosen the field of work that they aspire to do, they will focus on the workplace culture which you need to focus on as well. Happiness is a most sought-after commodity. So one of the best creative recruitment approaches you can use to capture their attention is to showcase your employees’ experience. Show them what it’s like to work for you, and if they’re interested, you’re in.

How do you implement this creative recruitment strategy?

• First things first, hold induction seminars where you establish what it’s like to work in your company.
• Ask your candidates what their values are and what culture they would like to see as an employee.
• Overtly promote that specific details that your applicants love and which makes you stand out from the other recruiters.
• Realize their wishes. Stay true to your promise.

Case in point: Fiverr - a freelance service market - has adapted this strategy and made a recruitment video to tackle the generic concept of such a video. In the clip, the narrator speaks directly to the candidates, giving the ad a personal touch. By mocking the conventional workplace, they emphasize the freedom freelancers have, thus attracting more applicants looking to do freelance work.

Create An Employee's Referral Program

No one knows what’s going on in your business and understands your workplace culture better than your own employees. If there’s someone your potential candidates should consult, it’s your employees. Your employees can offer the best insights for those interested in applying for a position at your company.

Recruit your own people to be your ambassadors. Before letting them roam, equip them with the necessary knowledge, values, visions of your company. Hold briefing sessions on how to communicate with people about your business.

To motivate them, create an intricate rewarding system. You can start with basic incentives like a raise, a promotion, a gift for every certain number of candidates they successfully refer. After that, develop the referral into a whole program.

Here is an outline of how you can incorporate this creative recruitment method:

• Create a referral program, communicate with your employees about the basics of it.
• Equip them with the right mindset, have them learn your company’s values by heart. Remember, Millennials and Gen Z are idealistic.
• Instruct them on how to approach people and start talking about your company. And do tell them who to approach, you might want to be selective.
• Give your employees incentives, preferably commissions. Reward them based on the number of successful referrals.

Take Accenture as an example.

Accenture really turned the table with their referral program by giving the power of referral to their candidates. During the application process, candidates can pick the “Get Referred!” option - by connecting via their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, the Accenture website scans through their acquaintances and comes up with a list of people who work at the company. After that, a candidate can send a referral request to the employee and submit the request with their application.

Build Your Brand's Image On Social Media

Everything is shifting towards social media these days and everyone is using it. This is without a doubt one of the most influential inventions of humankind’s history. It’s a waste of creativity if you are not taking advantage of it.

The Millennials and Gen Z are active netizens. They spend a fair amount of their lives on the Internet, not just socially, but also as a way to search for career opportunities. Moreover, who wouldn’t love to work for a tech savvy employer who is up to date with the latest trends?

That said, social media is a hard to wield sword. You’re going to need to carefully sketch out a plan if you want to utilize it properly. Here are some basic guidelines to start with:

• Build a reputation for your company. Regularly update what is going on in your workplace. This is both a way of showcasing your culture and also a way of making an impression with familiarity.
• Involve your employees/ employers in sharing posts on social media. This is also an implementation of the employee referral program, so you’re killing two birds with one stone.
• Promote your upcoming events. Share them on Facebook, on Twitter, create stories on Instagram and Snapchat.
• Host online Q&A sessions. This does wonder to enhance your credibility and transparency.

And with the help of virality, you can create content like this recruiting video from SodaStream . Take notice of how effectively they promote their culture:

• First, they boldly tread the path almost no corporation has ever taken before - to hilariously mock the overpositism often seen in corporate recruiting videos where everyone can be a rainmaker. In just 1 minutes into the clip, they are able to show humor, honesty and creativity - factors that are strongly resonant with Millennials and Gen Z.
• Second, they chose the right champion - The Mountain from Game of Thrones! Not only he is one of the most recognizable actors from the cast of the most popular show in the world, his personal branding has also been heavily associated with eco-friendly brands.
• Last, they ended the video on a heart-warming note about diversity and inclusion, by showing the real employees who work at Sodastream. By being so down-to-earth and human-centered, Sodastream successfully conveyed their core value to potential candidates in just over 2 minutes!

Leverage Technology

With the advent of a myriad of new inventions, convenience is more accessible than ever. Doing manual work is now considered time consuming and not as effective as can be.

Let’s say you’re representing your company at a campus recruiting event. You would show up with printed sign-in papers and have undergraduates fill in their contact information. After such an event, your team would have to squint at multiple hand-ins just to make out what the prospects have written, then manually enter those data into a computer-based format (and this doesn’t guarantee 100% precision) and again, manually send emails to follow-up with students post-event.

All of that could be done with the help of technology leveraging. At its core, technology leverage is the ability to gain value by automating everything, leading to more efficient time and expense management. Better yet, technology, especially mobile technology can significantly boost candidates’ experience.

Case Study An exemplary case study is National Grid. Previously, when attending campus recruiting events, the team would show up with printed sign-in paper and had prospects note down their contact information. Unfortunately, due to compliance issues and following the Legal Team’s policies, the team couldn’t collect resumes to bring back to the office, meaning all the data-collecting work had to be done right at the events. The manual processing approach and the follow-up after each event was inefficient and frustrating to National Grid Recruiting team. They know they have to find a right recruiting software to help with all manual tasks.

When National Grid adopted a recruiting platform, they immediately saw concrete results:

• Save 50-60 hours of administrative and manual work per semester
• Increase 10% in the number of student applying to National Grid every year since 2017
• Increase the company branding by appearing to the millennials and gen Z in that they, too, are a tech-savy companies

So how do they do it, exactly?

At offline recruitment events, the team utilizes both their smart mobile phones to collect the prospects’ information and iPads to have students manually input their data in case they forget to bring their resumes. This way, the team avoids missing out on any potential candidates. “The students’ reactions to us and themselves using the app have been really positive,” they love seeing a tech-savvy company who is committed to implement cutting edge technology solution into the daily work practices.

Read more about National Grid Case Study

Organize Competitions

This is a really good way to pick who’s best at their field. An obvious perk of this method is that you can save a lot of money spent on head hunting. Just inform the public of a contest going on, and it will attract just the right talents.

Remember that scene in “The social network” where Zuckerberg held a small competition to see who is the first to debug a software while also taking shots periodically, and the winner gets to join the Facebook team? The process is just as simple as that.

One famous example of this method is when the MGM Grand, one of Las Vegas’s biggest casinos, took inspiration from the TV show Iron Chef when looking for a new head chef for one of their Asian restaurants. Contestants are handed a secret ingredient and asked to put together a 4 course meal in under 1 hour.

Create Out-of-the-box Advertisements

You’re looking for a creative recruitment strategy, why not consider making creative ads? If done right, each ad can go viral, promoting your values and workplace culture in a fun way that is sure to make people notice. Now you’re hogging all the attention, well done!

Choose the most creative team, let them roam. Advertising is an art, you can create hidden ads, viral videos, viral photos, and God forbid, memes. Meme videos are part of the Internet culture now, it would be such a shame to pass on this gold mine.

Each of the above creative recruitment strategies comes with an example of a good ad. There are many more to see and to learn from. Be creative, that’s what creative recruiting is about. If you need any inspiration, here are some examples:

If you want your recruiting campaign to succeed, you need to come up with out of the box recruiting strategies. We’re living in a fast paced world where it takes people less than 10 seconds to decide whether they want to read an article or watch a video or not. So be bold, be decisive, be assertive, and most of all, be over the top.

To sum up, when you think of creative recruitment, think about:

• Focus on showcasing your company culture, after all, that’s what your potential candidates care about.
• Put emphasis on the characteristics of the work they are expected to do.
• Actively hunt for candidates but at the same time, make them come to you, be it out of curiosity or of a predetermined goal. You don’t have to take control over them, let them have the variety of choice, you just have to be the best choice for them.
• Make technology an ally. Boost your results with technology leverage.
• And last but not least, take advantage of the power of social media, and the virality it brings about. Attention to small details really helps you reach a massive amount of audience, therefore giving you a myriad of choices, just like that of the candidates.

Case studies

Discover how Pinpoint has helped teams like yours

How Tata Chemicals meet their time to hire target—100% of the time

Before they discovered Pinpoint, Tata Chemicals worked solely with a recruitment partner who used their own ATS to field candidates, obscuring valuable data about their applicant pool. Toward the end of 2023, the HR team decided to look at an in-house applicant tracking system to gain more control over recruitment and their employer brand.

Pasta Evangelists’ recipe for 7-day hiring at high volume

Food and beverage is a famously high-energy industry, from the kinetic buzz of the factory floor to the passionate tasting of the test kitchen. So it’s no surprise that hiring in the industry is similarly fast-paced. Discover how Pasta Evangelists keep their time to hire to just 1 week with Pinpoint.

How Twinings shortened time to hire by 63%

In fast moving consumer goods, speed, reach, and a great candidate experience are essential to attract candidates in remote locations and fill roles for peak seasons. At Twinings, the recruitment team was held back by decentralized systems, manual processes, and a glaring lack of recruitment data—until they found Pinpoint.

How L’Occitane improved their candidate Net Promoter Score by 60%

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River Island's hiring managers needed the new platform to provide direct insight into the process in a user-friendly way. Their talent team was looking for a tool that would infuse the candidate experience with the high level of care that River Island puts into everything they do.

How Franklin Electric's global team shortened time to hire by 55% with Pinpoint

Since switching to Pinpoint, Franklin Electric has accelerated their interview process, reduced admin for their team, and strengthened their employer brand.

Icario is Perfecting Every Step of their Candidate Experience

After five years in her Talent Acquisition role at Icario, Rachel Todd had used her fair share of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). But there was always something missing. Too often, she found herself adjusting recruitment processes to fit the software rather than the other way around.

Article is Growing at Hyperspeed Without Sacrificing Candidate Experience

When Brad Clark joined Article in August 2020 as the Manager of Talent Acquisition, he inherited a team of two people who were also new to the brand. Together, the three of them built out a whole new TA function at a company of 400 employees. “We started from ground zero,” he told us.

How DCA is Recruiting Diverse Creatives with Virtual Portfolios

Optimizing diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a major focus point for design-led architectural firm David Chipperfield Architects, London—and Pinpoint is helping to identify the gaps in their recruitment plan.

How 10KBI Tracks Thousands of Applicants Across Hundreds of Firms

About a year ago, 10KBI (then called 100 Black Interns) was a small company with a big mission: to place Black college students and graduates in front-office internships at 100 investment management firms in the UK.

How OneValley is Improving Diversity in Every Stage of their Candidate Funnel

What does it mean for recruitment when a non-profit organization merges with a mission-driven tech startup? For OneValley, it meant finding an ATS that delivered on diversity.

The New York Public Library is More Modern and Accessible Than Ever

The New York Public Library turns 127 years young this year, and with a legacy spanning over a century they are no stranger to shaking things up every now and then.

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People Analytics and HR-Tech Reading List

Littal Shemer

OCTOBER 11, 2022

It will also introduce machine learning and where it fits within the larger HR Analytics framework” Handbook of Regression Modeling in People Analytics: With Examples in R and Python Keith McNulty (2021). It covers key questions: Where to find data in an organization? How to collect and analyze it?

Employee Experience Design: All HR Needs to Know

SEPTEMBER 28, 2022

In this article, we provide background to the employee experience movement, position a practical methodology for an impactful employee experience design, and demonstrate the framework’s value through two case studies . We applied this framework to two case studies . Case Study 1: The offboarding experience.

Tactics for Effortless High Volume Hiring

JULY 29, 2021

An example of this is seasonal work for Christmas casuals in the retail industry or project resources in the mining industry. Examples of sectors that experience high volume hiring include Retail, Hospitality, Mining, Construction, Healthcare, Agriculture (e.g. fruit picking) and Tourism. HVH Recruitment Team Structure.

How Customer Data Can Inform Your Hiring Strategy

JULY 29, 2019

It’s science,” says Jim D’Amico , global talent acquisition leader at specialty materials company Celanese. Case Study : JetBlue’s Flight Attendant Recruiting Strategy. Think back to the JetBlue example . The insights can be beneficial to the recruiting process in a number of different ways.

Game Theory in HR: Applications and 3 Case Study Examples

OCTOBER 4, 2022

The differences between game theory and simulation modeling Game theory explained The strategic benefits of game theory for HR Game theory case studies Why is game theory not extensively used in operational HR? Let’s unpack 3 case studies to illustrate the benefit of game theory for operational HR. Case study 2: Rewards.

A Literal THESIS on The P&L Impact of Candidate Experience

Antonio Arias-Lopez heads up talent acquisition for Survale client, Tipico. By this point, nearly every talent acquisition leader concerned with candidate experience is familiar with the Virgin Media case study detailing huge potential losses from poor candidate experience.

Crushing the paper ceiling: How skill-based hiring elevates talent

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Let’s dive into why business leaders should consider embracing skill-based hiring as a strategic approach to talent acquisition . This may involve practical exercises, simulations, case studies or behavioral interviews designed to extract real-world examples of skill application.

5 Ways to Revolutionize Recruiting with AI

Linkedin Talent Blog

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Roz Francuz-Harris , vice president of talent acquisition at Zillow , has a simple reason for using AI so much in her work: “I love my family,” she told the audience during her recent Talent Connect talk. “AI Roz also mentioned Pymetrics (now Harver ), citing Unilever as an example of how this tool can help.

Best Applicant Tracking Systems in 2022 | ClearCompany

APRIL 19, 2022

Think of a few things you would consider “the best,” for example , the best restaurants in your city or the best route to take to work. As you’re vetting recruiting software, great ATS providers will be able to offer case studies and customer testimonials that demonstrate the positive impact of their product on various businesses.

Artificial Intelligence for HR (a practical viewpoint!)

DECEMBER 27, 2017

See, I need some examples from vendors and employers to help me fill in a few case studies and would love to feature you in the book if you’re a fit for my requirements. I’d love to feature you in the book whether as a small segment in a chapter, a case study , etc. Yes, a BOOK !

Finding the Perfect Fit: How Finance Recruiters Can Help Hiring Managers and Job Seekers

Professional Alternatives

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

These assessments may include tests, case studies , or interviews to ensure that candidates possess the required skills and can perform effectively in a finance position. These are just a few examples of the diverse job opportunities available in the finance industry.

After ‘AI,’ ‘skills’ is the hottest HR tech word of 2023

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

For example , the share of job advertisements in the U.K. From customer case studies to formal product demonstrations, impromptu meetings and demos in the Expo Hall, attendees will be able to see a wide range of technologies designed to help the organization better understand, align, develop and plan for the skills of their workforces.

Best recruitment marketing blogs of the year by Stories Inc.

DECEMBER 22, 2020

We know readers like you are focused on leading-edge talent communications and culture, and we aimed to address your needs as 2020 unfolded. All in all, we hit “publish” over 100 times this year— including virtual content creation resources , a COVID-19 hub , case studies , downloadables , and original articles.

How to Identify Bottlenecks in Your Recruitment Process

HR Bartender

DECEMBER 9, 2014

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at iCIMS , a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions for growing businesses. Take recruiting for example . For example , do you know who spends the most time with resumes during the hiring process? Congrats to them!

People Analytics Conferences Data-Driven HR Leaders Can’t Miss in 2018

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

What data-driven HR leaders can expect: Presentations and conversations about the expanding role of people analytics in business, case studies from all stages of the analytics journey, and examples of new technology and methodologies to leverage such as Organizational Network Analytics, Natural Language Processing, and more.

A Real Life Example: The Benefits of Recruiting Chatbots

JUNE 24, 2019

Using AI for recruiting has many potential benefits that lead to a hard ROI that talent acquisition teams can measure through decreases in cost per hire, and time to fill. We are now entering a new evolution in this industry that is largely driven by the use of AI to take the load off of individual recruiters.

What is culture content?

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Therefore, talent acquisition , employer branding and recruitment marketers must use employee stories often in their communications efforts. . What are some good examples ? Check out a few of our favorite examples : Best Diversity and Inclusion Videos. case studies . Best Company Culture Videos. Stories Inc.

23 Human Resources Director Interview Questions To Prepare For

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Presentation or case study : You might be asked to present a case study or demonstrate your problem-solving skills in action. Share an example of a time when you implemented strategies or programs to enhance employee retention. Can you share an example of a time when you had to lead HR through a significant change?

Winners of the i4cp 2021 Next Practice Awards Announced (i4cp login required)

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

Ford Motor Company —In response to significant disruption in its European markets, in part driven by a shift in customer behavior, moves towards carbon-neutral transportation, and demand for device integration, the 118-year-old company needed to both increase its agility and workforce capability and align its talent acquisition capability.

The Practical, No-Kidding View of Artificial Intelligence for HR

Employee listening in the Intelligence Age: It’s a new era

OCTOBER 24, 2023

Talent acquisition A large retail company saw that candidate diversity was dropping in its technology group, so the analytics team conducted candidate surveys and studied where the diversity candidates dropped off in the recruiting cycle. For example , if somebody asked, “What are my colleagues paid?”,

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5.21 Case Study: Zendesk Recruitment: A Fictional Example

Case study: recruiting at zendesk.

Over the last few years, Zendesk , the company where Melinda works as an HR manager, has seen plenty of growth. Zendesk builds software designed to improve customer relationships. The company has a strong culture that encourages employees to grow and innovate. At the beginning, Zendesk recruited simply on the basis of the applications they received, rather than actively searching for the right person for the job. The first thing Melinda did when arriving at the company was to develop a job analysis questionnaire, which she had all employees fill out.

The goal was to complete a job analysis for each position that existed at the company. This happened to be at the point where the organization started seeing rapid growth, as a result of increased demand from their client base of small and medium businesses. Luckily, since Melinda followed the industry closely and worked closely with management, part of her strategic outline planned for the hiring of several new positions. Keeping in mind the employment laws and the company’s position on a diverse workforce, Melinda set out to write new job descriptions from the job analysis she had performed. She also used a significant part of her budget to produce a slick recruiting video that emphasized the strong culture of Zendesk.

Video: “ This is Zendesk ” By Zendesk [1:40]

She aggressively pushed this video through Twitter and Instagram. After a three-week period, Melinda had 345 applications for the different positions, a 146% increase from last year. Pleased with the way recruiting had gone, she started reviewing the resumes to continue with the selection process.

• Do you think Melinda’s approach was the best one? Why?  Why not?
• What other social media advertising could the company have included?

“ Chapter 4: Recruitment- Recruiting or the search for talent at Zendesk ” from   Human Resources Management – 2nd Ontario Edition  by Elizabeth Cameron is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Human Resources Management - 3rd Edition Copyright © 2023 by Debra Patterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Recruitment Case Studies Samples For Students

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The present case study is based on the current recruitment practices at George Hotel that are essentially based on employee referrals thus encouraging a family oriented culture in the organization. The case study discusses the critical analysis of the current recruitment methods and provides viable solutions to the problems identified in the current recruitment system. A recruitment plan for the expansion of the hotel unit at a new location has also been provided. - How should the 4 issues identified at the end of the case be addressed? Please be specific and explain your recommendations.

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Internal recruitment would suggest finding trainers inside the company, establishing compensation system for overtime for trainers or employee layoff for the period of trainings. Significant benefit of this option is that supposed trainers already knows operations standards of the company and can provide more in-depth analysis and trainings of higher quality comparing to invited mentors. Also, reallocating current employees helps to save money associated with hiring new members of the factory.

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Newspaper, walk in and recruitment agency appear to be working well as the yield ratio for potentially qualified is above 50 percent for the three sources and the yield ratio for six month survival is above 10 percent. Corporate website and job board seem to be having trouble as they have the lowest yield ratios for all the stages. The main problem is that the company seems to attract the wrong pool of applicants. On average, only 24 percent of the total applicants are potentially qualified.

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Case Study 58. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) report " The New Talent Landscape: Recruiting Difficulty and Skills Shortages ", 68 percent of HR professionals are having trouble recruiting candidates for full-time positions. Organizations Can Use a 3-Strategy Approach to Recruitment.

recruitment costs, workforce planning and retention. The following case studies supplement the main survey report, providing real-life, good-practice examples of how some of the issues raised in the survey have been addressed. 1 Resourcing and talent planning 2021: ... These case studies were conducted and written by Annette Hogarth, research ...

In recruitment, case studies are helpful tools for employers seeking to build, develop, or optimize their recruitment processes. They can be great sources of information and inspiration. ... A good example from both areas is the British-Lithuanian bank, Revolut. Revolut adopted skills-based hiring by using TestGorilla's skills tests and, ...

Case Study: The success story of Company XYZ's head of recruitment, who leveraged networking and industry events to identify and hire exceptional talent. 16. Employer Reviews and Reputation Management

Case studies and management consulting companies . Big 4 accounting firms and strategy consulting houses like McKinsey and Bain consistently use case studies in their recruitment process, for example: PWC. PWC appears to only use case studies in relation to taxation and when hiring recent graduates.

It provides people professionals and their organisations with benchmarking data on important areas such as recruitment costs, workforce planning and retention. This survey was conducted online in April 2022 by YouGov. In total, 1,055 UK-based HR/people professionals responded to the survey. Case studies.

Reengineering the Recruitment Process. The Covid-19 pandemic has upended many traditional business practices. When it comes to recruiting, the crisis has not so much disrupted as accelerated ...

Introduction: Recruitment campaigns play a crucial role in attracting and hiring top talent for organizations. In this case study, we delve into the story of on of our clients remarkable ...

Read case study. Gumtree approached Aspire requesting a couple of temporary salespeople so they could benchmark performance. The talen... Read case study. Founded in 2004, NMPi are an award-winning digital marketing agency with offices in Australia, The Netherlands, Malay... Read case study. Lumina Intelligence is a leading market and consumer ...

Internal promotion-how Chipotle reduced turnover by 64%. Internal promotion is a valuable, yet underutilized, tool to engage employees and managers in the recruiting process, provide career growth, and save on costs associated with bringing in external talent. As I alluded yesterday, the content covered at Hire Minds was astonishing.

Industry Journals. There are a number of professional and academic journals that exist in the HR and talent acquisition industry that you can access with publish case studies and resources. One of my favorites is Wiley's HR Journal which you can access by clicking here. HRPS, which is a now owned by SHRM also offers a robust journal resource.

Amazon Case Study Metrics Recruiting Strategy Sourcing. Dr. John Sullivan is an internationally recognized expert on strategic talent management, human resources, and the future of work. He has authored over 20 books and hundreds of articles on human performance in the workplace.

This case study has been developed to provide resources to promote learning and understanding in the area of recruitment and selection. Purpose This case will help students understand the ...

Case Study An exemplary case study is National Grid. Previously, when attending campus recruiting events, the team would show up with printed sign-in paper and had prospects note down their contact information. ... Each of the above creative recruitment strategies comes with an example of a good ad. There are many more to see and to learn from ...

M a r g, Bandra Reclamation, Mumbai - 400050. ABSTRACT: The Indian retail market is of enormous s ize about US$ 401 billion. But organized retail is not so. huge and it is at only US$ 24.1 ...

In fast moving consumer goods, speed, reach, and a great candidate experience are essential to attract candidates in remote locations and fill roles for peak seasons. At Twinings, the recruitment team was held back by decentralized systems, manual processes, and a glaring lack of recruitment data—until they found Pinpoint. Read case study.

Here are some case study interview examples. You can utilise these samples to gain a better sense of how interviewers may pose case interview questions and what subjects they may address: 1. A hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is a customer of a corporation. Their core consumer base consists primarily of international visitors.

Recruitment Case Study: Southwood School. Setting Industry: UK public sector, education (a mixed comprehensive secondary school). Size: The annual revenue of the organization is more than £1 million, but it is a government-funded, nonprofit organization. Staff Size: 120 employees (80 teaching and 40 non-teaching).

HRExecutive. MARCH 25, 2024. The talent acquisition field has consistently been an early adopter of HR tech, using it "not as a crutch but as a catalyst," according to Mercer researchers. Throughout the chapters, practical examples and case studies from organizations across the globe provide real-world context. "We.

Case Study: Recruiting at Zendesk. Over the last few years, Zendesk, the company where Melinda works as an HR manager, has seen plenty of growth. Zendesk builds software designed to improve customer relationships. The company has a strong culture that encourages employees to grow and innovate.

The present case study is based on the current recruitment practices at George Hotel that are essentially based on employee referrals thus encouraging a family oriented culture in the organization. The case study discusses the critical analysis of the current recruitment methods and provides viable solutions to the problems identified in the ...