The Anything-Else Box on an Application Form

Near the end of most application forms there is a box. Is there anything else you’d like us to know? Or Additional information (optional). Or just an unlabelled textarea sitting under the file uploads like an open question.

It causes more dithering than anything else in an application, because it has no stated purpose and it’s optional, which people read as optional but actually mandatory. It usually isn’t. But it is occasionally the most useful field on the form, and the difference is worth ten minutes of your attention.

First, work out which box it is

Two very different fields wear the same clothes.

It’s the letter field. If the form has nowhere else to put a cover letter — no upload slot for one, no second textarea — then this box is the letter, whatever it’s labelled. Write the short body-letter version, the one described in should the cover letter go in the email body, and paste it in.

It’s an extras field. If you have already uploaded a letter, or written one into a field above, this box is not a second chance at it. It’s a note.

You can usually tell in five seconds by scrolling up. Do that before you write anything, because the two boxes take completely different content and putting letter-shaped prose in an extras field is the standard mistake.

Do not paste the letter twice

If you’ve attached a letter and then paste the same text into the extras box, you’ve told the reader something unflattering: that you didn’t look at the form before filling it in. It also means whichever copy they read second is a waste of their time, and they will notice the repetition — duplicated text is the single most visible thing in a stack of applications.

The same applies to pasting your résumé summary, your skills list, or a compressed version of your career. All of it is already in the document you attached. The box is for what isn’t.

What actually belongs in an extras box

One test: a fact that changes how the rest of the application should be read, and has nowhere else to live. If it passes that, it belongs. If it doesn’t, leave the field empty.

Things that usually pass:

Availability that isn’t obvious. A three-month notice period, a start date constrained by something real, a current contract ending on a known date.
Location and timing. You are moving to the city in question in September, and the address on your CV is the old one.
A deliberate omission you’d rather pre-empt. You left a nine-month role off, or your CV covers ten years of a longer career. One neutral sentence stops it reading as a discrepancy later.
The reason you’re applying to something below your last title. Otherwise the reader invents a reason, and the invented one is rarely generous. There’s a longer version of this argument in writing to an employer when you’re overqualified.
A logistical answer to something the form asked clumsily. Forms are often built for one type of candidate and you may not be it — a contractor filling in a field that assumes salaried employment, say.
An adjustment you want for the process. Entirely your call whether to raise it here or later, and there’s no obligation either way.

Things that don’t pass, in roughly descending order of how often they appear:

A paragraph on how excited you are about the opportunity.
Hobbies, offered as personality.
A restatement of why you’re qualified.
Anything about salary, unless the form asked.
A joke. It reads differently on the fifteenth application of the day than it did when you wrote it.
Thank you for considering my application. Harmless, weightless, and slightly sad in a field that could have carried a fact.

It’s a note, not a letter

Two to five sentences. No salutation, no sign-off, no Dear Hiring Manager — you’re inside a form, not sending a message, and greeting a database looks odd.

Three hypothetical examples, all in the register I’d aim for:

I’m currently on a contract that runs to 14 November and would be available from the following week. Happy to discuss earlier if that matters for the role.

My CV lists my current address in Leeds — I’m relocating to Bristol in early September regardless of this application, so there’s no relocation to arrange.

I’ve kept my CV to the last ten years for length. Before 2016 I worked in local government finance, which is where I did most of my grant-reporting work, and I’m happy to send the full history if it’s useful.

Each one is a fact the reader would otherwise have had to guess at or ask about. None of them argues for the candidate. That’s the correct tone for this field: you are removing questions, not making a case.

Empty is a real answer

If nothing passes the test, leave it blank. An empty optional field costs you nothing; nobody has ever been rejected for declining to add information they didn’t have. A padded one costs you a little, because it demonstrates that you’ll write to fill space.

This is the same logic as a posting that says the cover letter is optional, with the answer running the other way. A cover letter has a job to do and you should usually do it. An extras box has no job unless you have something to put in it.

The variant that is actually a question

Sometimes the box isn’t open-ended at all — it’s a specific short-answer question wearing an extras-box costume. Why do you want to work here? What interests you about this role? Tell us about a time you…

Those are not optional and they are not notes. Answer the question asked, in two or three tight paragraphs, as directly as you can. Don’t drift into general enthusiasm, and don’t answer a question they didn’t ask because you had a better story ready.

Practical hazards

Write it elsewhere and paste it in. Browser textareas lose content. Forms time out. This is not the place to compose.

Check what the box did to your line breaks. Some forms collapse them. If yours might, keep it to a single short paragraph so it can’t turn into a wall.

Watch character limits. If there’s a counter, treat the limit as the brief — what to cut when the letter runs long applies, just faster. If there’s no counter, assume something might truncate and put the load-bearing sentence first.

Reread it after submitting, if the form lets you. Half the time the box has silently stripped your formatting and you’ll want to know that before the next application.

The whole thing in one line

Ask what fact would stop the reader guessing. If you have one, write two sentences. If you don’t, leave it empty and move on.