Well thank you PPrune for your recent information. I have finally been successful in my application to BA and I have an Airbus course starting in a few months. I thought it only fare that I give you my personal view on the selection procedure. I hasten to add these are MY OWN PERSONAL views, you may like them, and you may disagree with them. Either way I am telling it as I found it!
1. Firstly you have to really want this job! I spent 6 months preparing for it, yes I know there are smart people out there who can turn up after a heavy night out and pull it out of the bag, but I am just not one of those types.
How to prepare.
1. Maths…
The tests are reasonably simple. If you know your times tables you are home and dry. I went to a rough school, so spent the last 6 months at FL370 learning them. For the tests you need to do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and the odd Division. Do not spend weeks learning long division, algebra etc etc… You do not need it! One of the questions I remembered was… A truck has 2500 brick on it, if you order 6 trucks how many bricks will ye get???…. Get the picture… Yes they do get harder… Know your times tables and you are home and dry!!
2. Verbal Reasoning…
Well I scraped a ‘C’ at English in GCSE so these were a tad tricky for me. I found myself ripping my hair out trying to come to grips with them and on the day they were awful. I think I did maybe 37 out of 55 ? The only thing I can suggest and believe me I have been everywhere to find someone that would sell me some that fell off the back of an SHL lorry and it is impossible… Use Andrea Shanvicks Book. The tests in there are SHL, It has just been updated and will give you a flavour of what ye are about to hit. Unfortunately none on the day I had were in the book and I found them painfully hard. The ISBN is 1-84528-020-2 I bought it from Amazon and arrived the next day.
3. Lastly
Anyone who is serious about getting there dream job, whether it is BA, Virgin, Cathay, Emirates…… There is only one way to prepare and that is go and visit Penny Austin the Recruitment tutor. I spent a whole day with her and without it I doubt I would have got in. She was just superb, do not turn up if you don’t like criticism, someone delving deep, and getting personal! If you want a job… you have to see her, and was the best money I have ever spent!! Well almost, that weekend in AMS in 98 was very good!! Visit her website
www.pennyaustin.btinternet.co.uk
I also Used a CD that I bought from EBAY It is called THE TIMES PSYCHOMETRIC TESTS VOLUME ONE. Try visiting the
www.times.co.uk to buy a copy. Basically it has hundreds of maths and verbal tests on it. You pick a time limit and it just keeps throwing the questions at you. Some of the maths is a little overboard, and some of the Verbal tests are Harder and Easier that ye will see at BA. But it gets your mind back in the Groove for the wonderful day.
THE DAY
Well I certainly recommend staying at the Jurys in LHR the night before… Why??? Lots of reasons, you can walk to Cranebank in 5 mins, you can walk to Hatton cross station in 5 mins. It is brand new and not grubby like all of the hotels on the bath road. I got an Internet special of £29 Bargain visit
www.jurysdoyle.com you have to pay to park the car, but virtually every other hotel at LHR does to.
Well Palms sweating and ready to go…. I believe the day can go a lot better if you have a nice group. There were 12 of us on my day, we all had type ratings and experience was from ATR72 to 757…. Firstly we were taken into a room and shot….. Only Joking!! We had a lovely friendly BA welcome asking us to relax, ‘’we have loads of Jobs and want to take you all…. ‘‘We just want to find out if you are the right kind of person for BA’’
We were all then given a schedule of what we would be doing for the rest of the day
1.The group exercise.. It went like a dream… Definitely a fine bunch of Ppruners there that day… Our exercise was the Caribbean route problem, someone has covered it before so I don't intend to do it again. It has all been said before what happens but the outcome will depend on your group. We had all average people… I.E. No loud mouths… No hermit crabs, everyone said a bit, then complemented someone else’s view and let someone else chip in a bit. That is what you have to be…. Speak up, then blend into the crowd!! We did so well… we were so Happy with our decisions and planning that we were ready 3 mins early!! All looking at each other blankly we quickly went back and just polished the edges so we did not have to sit in silence.
2. The Interview… Well not as bad as I thought and they made me feel very welcome indeed. 1 pilot and someone from HR, have 25 mins each to chat while the other frantically scribbles everything that you say!!! I think they have key areas to cover. The pilot had a sheet with what looked like Key Competences on it, that he had to cover before he handed you over to the HR grilling. All experience based… I.E. give me an example of Blah.. They have all been done before on Pprune so will not go over again. What I will say is do not just go over the list on Pprune. They can ask the same question a thousand different ways.. So do not expect to have all the answers in your head of what you can say. I had written maybe a hundred questions and answers and I got caught on the day having to pull something out of my wooly brain. What I would say to BA is they did not leave me stewing… they helped me along with the question. For example… If they said give me an example of a time when Blah happened… and you sit quietly waiting for the ground to swallow you up… They said to me ‘’well in the context of’’ Phew know what ye are trying to get at now!! Why did ye not just say that in the first place!!
3.Tests … Covered before and above
4. Pilot Aptitude Tests….. Most have been covered before! I tried speaking to the company that designed the software to see if I could visit for a play… Or pay to be tested privately!! Needless to say they did not want to know! You will come out feeling as thought you have been pulled through a block of flats at warp factor nine! I had trouble remembering my own mane after the session. The test I found really tricky and I know I did bad because I only got 1-10 on 2 of the tests… it was the Radar screen. I thought I had lost it because I found it awful.. If you want to prepare get a sheet of A4 paper draw 5 rings going from 10-50 miles and the cardinal points on it. Then write out loads of instructions on your PC, print them and put in a bag.. Like NORTH 20. Then pull one our remember it, put it aside, do this 3 more times … Now put your finger on the piece of paper and tell me where the runway should be?? I said to myself that evening that it would have been my downfall if I did not get in, and devised how I would solve it for next time!! Luckily I don’t have to !! You are probably thinking this looks all a bit like hassle… But if you are a bit of a Muppet like me and want your dream job…. Someone is not gonna come knocking on the door and hand it to you! If you don’t work for it… there will always be someone else who has put more effort in and will get it!
Sim
Mainly been covered before. Practice getting your scan back. I would recommend you hire a basic NAV trainer like a Seneca sim with all clockwork instruments. The problem I found with flying an EFIS aircraft with a glass telly, firstly you have trained yourself to get all your brain to get most of its info from this and you loose your scan. If you have the scan back you can unload your brain from flying the aircraft and get on with the lovely CRM and situation you are about to be thrown into!!
Basically it changes everyday… Our trainer said forget what you read on PPRUNE! I don’t even know what you are going to be doing yet… So Pprune won’t help ye today. The trainer was superb… really friendly… very helpful and just wanted to see how we acted in a scenario flying with someone you have never met before. It really does depend on who your partner was. I had a captain who flew the same aircraft as me but for a different airline! We got on superbly and both got in. Apart from trying to get your scan back, reading the previous posts on the sim and being good at Working with someone new, I don’t know what to suggest!
Forgot to say…. There were 2 words missing from the BAC 1-11 sales brochure published in the 1960’s, they were… Comfort and Ergonomic… A great aircraft though it was, the 1-11 was fitted with neither!!
Hope This helps Chaps… and of course Chapesses!!
Remember
1. Learn times tables
2. Get Andrea Shanvicks Book
3. Vists Penny Austin
4. Get Times CD
5. Hire a Basic sim trainer to get your IFR scan back and unload that Brain!
The BA selection though Hard and Tough, they make you feel very welcome an relaxed and once you turn up for the testing, they genuinely want you to succeed!