The reading room
Working Together: showing your contribution
Explain how you worked with other people to achieve something shared. Make your contribution visible: understanding what others needed, sharing appropriate information, offering support and agreeing how to work together.
By Sift Assist · Reviewed
What does Working Together mean in practice?
Being in a team is the setting, not the evidence. The reader needs to see what you did to help the cooperation work. A smooth collaboration can be a good example; conflict is not a compulsory ingredient.
Where to look for your own example
Use these as prompts to search your experience, not as claims to copy. Choose one specific event you can explain, then check it against the vacancy’s requirements.
- A volunteer who coordinates collections between drivers and a donation team.
- A colleague who helps a new starter and arranges a clearer handover between shifts.
- A member of a study group who agrees tasks around different schedules and brings the work together.
A worked example extract
This fictional extract shows a shared task and the applicant’s contribution to making it work. Complete it with the observed result. It does not require claiming sole credit for the event or describing colleagues as difficult.
Questions that turn your notes into evidence
Answer in ordinary sentences first. A short note with a spelling mistake is easier to develop than a polished claim with no detail. Then use STAR to organise the event: brief context, your responsibility, personal actions and the result.
- What did everyone need to achieve together?
- What did another person or group need that you had not initially considered?
- What information or support did you contribute?
- How did you agree responsibilities and keep people informed?
- What was the shared outcome, and which part did you enable?
Match the evidence to the advertised grade
Start with the relationships you actually managed. Helping your immediate team is different from coordinating several groups with competing schedules. For broader responsibilities, show how you maintained cooperation over time and handled different needs, not simply how many people attended a meeting.
The official guidance has separate grade groups. Use the relevant indicators to check your example; you are not expected to fit every indicator into one answer. The vacancy sets the word count, not the grade name.
What can weaken the answer?
Do not replace every ‘we’ with ‘I’ and accidentally take other people’s credit. Use ‘I’ to explain your contribution and ‘we’ for a shared outcome. Share information appropriately: cooperation does not mean disclosing confidential material to everyone.
Keep your actions distinct from the shared outcome. Explain figures you use and check any AI-developed wording against what happened. The example here is original teaching material, not an official answer or a promise of a sift score.
Your next writing step
Choose one event and answer the five questions above. If you cannot explain an important action or result, investigate that gap before spending time polishing. Read your draft beside the actual requirement, then edit it to the stated limit.
Official sources and how to use this guide
This is independent Sift Assist guidance. Our writing exercises and examples are teaching suggestions, not official assessment questions or guaranteed answers. Follow the vacancy and assessment instructions where they differ.
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