test failure
After a second unsuccessful attempt at the initial selection tests, I have just received my rejection email from NATS following my recent attendance in London on the 8th December 06. While trying to remain positive about the situation and draw from the experience I am finding it increasingly difficult not to take a rather cynical view on the process. I can accept that the aim is to arrive at a pool of individuals statistically more likely to succeed as controllers due to the high costs of training but this must be balanced against the shortage of controllers and the highly suitable candidates (for which I make no assumption I am among) that the NATS computers surely eliminate from the process at a very early and perhaps premature stage. In my own case I do not accept that interpreting a series of cubes on paper is an accurate measure of my spatial reasoning ability. I know people who have no hand eye coordination, are unable to prioritise, cannot manoeuvre any sort of vehicle and are perplexed by even the simplest of numerical problems – I am not one of these people. For fear of being shot down for drawing a very poor analogy I enjoy solving practical problems, work with numbers all day at work and can reverse a car with a trailer up a hill and round a corner! I further don’t accept that the personality questionnaire accurately reflects my character after I have had to pigeon hole myself into one of the available responses and labelled myself a certain type of person. NATS might as well give prospective candidates a play station game to practice and see how good they can get at it on the test day. Whatever may have been deduced from my performance at the tests I can solve problems, have a flexible approach, am reasonably numerical, am an effective communicator and am spatially aware. I am also motivated towards a career in aviation, willing to travel UK wide and more than willing to work in the pay cut while training. If indeed I do not possess the aptitude to do the job then of course I need to know this but let not such a large proportion of the decision be made by these tests. All I want is the chance to communicate my enthusiasm for the job to a person at an interview before the line gets drawn for another 12 months. Why can’t the HR team get working a bit harder and actually do a greater proportion of screening face to face even if only for the more borderline cases?