Hey
Firstly I have passed through all the process in the recruiting stage, to where I am waiting for an offer to join. I’m expecting this to happen within the next month. So I haven’t been in the services but I have had very recent access to the recruiting process.
Most of this is pretty general but enough that you should get an idea. A lot of this stuff is written in the other thread anyway.
To answer your questions directly. Yes you will have to do a written essay, you get about 10 minutes. It isn’t an outrageous guess as to what the topic is about. Your medical you have no control over so don’t worry about it. Your psych testing you have no control over so don’t worry about it.
For the defence interview you should prepare by knowing what is going on with the ADF at the moment. Example, what aircraft, where they fly from, are any deployed overseas, any current events etc. If you are as keen as what you say you are, you should know all this stuff anyway. I didn’t actually get asked any of these sort of questions, but I know some people that have.
Tamworth, I’m not sure what you are doing to prepare for the flying side of things, however certainly get some hours. Also one or two hours of aerobatics probably won’t hurt but you don’t need to be getting all Redbull air-race. I had 5hours on C152 and 2hours in a Pitts and felt that it was enough.
Here is the point that the guys above were trying to make. At this stage you will undergo a lot of constructive criticism about how you flew. If you don’t take kindly to that criticism (e.g. improve your grammar/English as above) and don’t take this criticism on board you might as well not waste your time because they will can you. The instructors are reasonably short but are very fair. You don’t get a lot of positive feedback. If they don’t criticise something you have probably done it reasonably well. Try to think of and ask pertinent questions to help yourself improve. Remember you only get one chance from here.
For the Selection Board (at Tamworth after the flying) you will definitely want to prepare. Not just in your RAAF knowledge, but also what you know and think about yourself. There is a days worth of group activities, and then the board proper. For the board they are going to put you under pressure to see how you react to it. I just treated the board as a debate. They will try and point out a perceived weakness; you need to try to counter that somehow. Once again though, everyone had a different board, as the board members adjust to the situation/your answers. The guy who got the kickass for the board, walked out thinking he had failed.
Like the guys above have written - attitude is important. When I went to flight screening (which is the first stage where I felt that I was directly competing against people) I believed that I wanted to get into the RAAF more than any of the other 8 people on the program. Note that I didn’t think that I was better than everyone else - I had the least flying hours of all the people there for example. I just thought that I wanted it more and was determined to show that. Our bunch on FSP was a cool bunch of people who wanted to help each other more than compete, so try to get that attitude happening if you can, as you can all practise and share information together.
Also I would say that you don’t sound super confident in what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you found the aptitude testing and the break stressful I would be worried. It isn’t necessarily easy but what is there to worry about? You can’t affect it while you are sitting waiting in the room. Better to put in 100% first time around, and then be done with it. Leave nothing to chance by preparing better than the other blokes.
Oh yeah and you can always use MS Word to check your posts before you submit them. Spell Check is your friend.
p.s. this turned out way longer than I thought it would!