Ok here goes:
I arrived for my 14:30 appointment at 14:15, the session before mine had just come out with four very glum looking people who I didn’t get a chance to speak to. Around 6 people a week take the selection process. The wonderful thing about this selection is that no one is against anyone else, OAT give as many places as are needed, so if everyone is good enough, everyone gets in.
I sat down in reception and got talking to the other candidate, a lovely guy called David from Fife. He was at the other end of the spectrum at 32 but we got on really well.
We were then introduced to the head of selection at OAT, Diana Tothill, she was very good at putting us both at ease talking to us informally before giving us some papers to read on the maths section of the tests.
We then went into the room where the tests would be taken and were shown to our computer work stations.
Test 1
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The first test was devided into six parts:
Part 1: This was a reaction test utalising rudder pedals and a joystick. You had to keep a ball in a red zone which you controlled using the rudder pedals while keeping a needle in a red zone which was controlled by the joystick. I was convinced that I would do awfully on this stage and at the time I was not very happy about my performance but it turns out that I got full marks!
Part 2: The next test was a simple slalom in which you had to control a triangle through the course using the joystick. Once again I didn’t think I’d done too well on this one, but I got an above average score.
Part 3: The maths test…..this was a diasater. I really hadn’t prepared fully enough and ended up get a pretty poor score. Question were mainly aviation related such as percentages of fuel etc.
Part 4: This was the memory test, it was very simple you were given five second to remember an altitude, heading, speed and radio frequency then after the five second you had to write them into a box, basically like reading back readings to ATC. I scored High marks on this one.
Part 5: This was an instruments test. Basically you had three instruments at the top of the screen and then a selection of four aircraft positions at the bottom of the screen. You had to chose the right position based on instruments readings. I got full marks on this.
Park 6: This was the multi-tasking, we had to set an autopilot whilst turning off red lights using the correct buttons. We then had to continually adjust the auto pilot whilst continuing to turn off the rad lights. I got 6 out of 7 on this section.
Test 2
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This was simple 200 question personality test which posed no problems.
Test 3
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This was a technical test based entirely around physics. We were asked 15 multiple choice question, so far in the 10 months that this selection process has been going no one has got full marks and the highest ever mark is 13 out 15. I’ve not done physics in two years and once probably hadn’t prepared correctly for this section. I ended up getting all the aviation question right, but I only socred 6 out of 15. Normally the cut off point is 8, but because of my good results in the first two tests, and the fact that I can work on my physics in the next 9 months, I got invited to stages 2 and 3.
Once we’d finished we stayed and had an informal chat with Diana, at which point she very kindly said that I was the ideal kind of candidate as I had the drive and devotion to the industry despite.
We then went on to have a chat about airlines in general before finally leaving at 17:40.
Last night I really couldn’t sleep I was convinced that I had failed to get in based on my technical tests. But at 11 this morning I got a call from Mike Taylor saying that they want to take me through to the next stage as I seem promising, however I will ahve to work on my maths and physics!!!
😀
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