Formatting answers and the use of markdown

Answers to work sample questions in Applied are formatted using the markup language “Markdown”. This makes it easier for us to consistently format answers for the hiring team who will be reviewing them.

Currently Markdown is the only style of formatting supported in the Applied platform, this means you may find formatting from other word processors (such as Microsoft Word) will be stripped if you copy your content across.

What does this mean for you as a candidate? Generally answers will be written in plain text, without any formatting, but you can decorate your answers with Markdown syntax to format them for reviewers.

For example if you find that it's easier to express an answer as a bullet pointed list you can prefix each line with ‘-’, ‘*’ or ‘+’ as long as you are consistent with your choice. 

If you do not wish for particular parts of your answer to be formatted and need to use the raw symbols, you can prefix the symbol with a backslash ‘\’. For example if you require an asterisk (‘*’) at the start of a line but do not want it to be treated as a bullet point you can do ‘\*’ to prevent formatting.

A prefixed list of:	Will become:
\* Item 1 \* Item 2 \* Item 3	* Item 1 * Item 2 * Item 3

In addition to transforming text, Markdown can also help you layout your answers with line breaks. In order to have consistent line breaks between paragraphs you will need at least two spaces between them. You can achieve this in two ways:

- You could add at least two spaces to the end of the last line of the first paragraph.

or

- You could have two empty lines between both paragraphs. Empty lines and spaces will not count towards your character limit.

i.e.

Markdown provides an array of formatting options including the ability to italicise and make text bold. You can find a list of more formatting options and the syntax required here: https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax.

When writing your answers,  you can preview them by navigating to your application overview and clicking the “Review your answers” button at the bottom. This will show you your answers formatted based on the Markdown specification and will be how reviewers  see your answers.

You may also review your answers once you have submitted your application by again navigating to your application overview and selecting “Review your answers”.