Jesse Caunter
Web Developer

Explain a situation where you have had an ethical decision to make. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made and the consequences of the action you took.

I recall one occasion where a high-school acquaintance of mine was organising a camping trip. I had committed to going because some of my other friends were going, but everyone else pulled out at the last minute. I had an ethical decision to make - bail on the trip like everyone else had, or stay true to my word and go anyway, even though at that point I didn't really want to anymore. I knew how it would make him feel if no one ended up going on the trip he organised, so I ended up going with just him and my girlfriend at the time. We had a lot of fun and I think he appreciated that we still went along. It felt good to make a selfless decision that impacted someone in a positive way.

Describe how your culture has influenced your values and identity.

I was born and raised in Auckland, as an only child, primarily by my mum and grandma. My dad passed away before I was born so I didn't have a strong father-figure growing up. Being raised in a working class family I saw the values of hard work and responsibility. My grandma is kind, selfless, and just gets on with things. She looked after me a lot when my mum was living overseas for a year, and I think she helped instill those values in me. Growing up with a predominantly maternal influence helped foster in me a huge amount of respect for women. I'm a peaceful person, and I think that's also got a lot to do with my upbringing.

Evaluate your strengths and limitations in terms of your learning and career development

In terms of learning and career development, I believe that my intrinsic motivation and love of learning puts me in a good position to succeed off the bat. I have the drive to succeed and when things get tough I'm pretty resilient. I get along well with a diverse range of people, and I believe that my friendliness, integrity and sense of humour, allow me to thrive in most collaborative environments.

The challenges I'm most likely to face will be due to weaknesses in time management, and lack of confidence in some situations including speaking in front of a group. At times I can get caught going too deep in some of the reading materials, or spending too long on a particular task, to the detriment of other tasks.

Identify which of your strengths might help you in your learning journey and how they might intersect with learning obstacles.

Attention to detail is definitely a strength that could help me in my learning journey, however it's a double-edged sword when taken into account alongside a level of perfectionism and subpar time-management skills. I have to be careful not to spend too much time on the smaller details, and use that time more wisely on other key concepts that are more important.

Share an example from your experience of where you were trying to work productively with others, but there was resistance or tension. Discuss the strategies you used at that time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now, and why.

A situation that comes to mind was my previous job assessing loan applications. Occasionally my boss used to complain that I was too slow, however I felt that I was doing all the proper checks, ensuring correct information was submitted, clear logs were left in the system for future reference etc. I repeatedly made clear that I didn't want to compromise my standards, before eventually agreeing to focus more on quicker response times in the hopes of greater client satisfaction. Ultimately I would slip back into my ways and the problem would resurface next time we were busy. We had different viewpoints and values, but at the end of the day he was the one paying me so I should have made more of an effort to compromise.

Reflecting back on this, if I were in the same situation now I'd look to find a compromise instead of being stuck in my ways. I'd use problem-solving skills to break things down into smaller, more manageable steps in order to find a solution. This could have uncovered a more efficient workflow which would have been a win-win for everybody.