ATCO Recruitment shortages

[ATCNetwork]

After posting the IFATCA video last month I saw a comment about how we need to be recruiting more ATCO's to obviously reduce the shortage. Not a big surprise post of information from the poster but I wondered where this is going wrong.

ATC is a highly attractive industry to work in even though it has it's problems, and most important of all it is not short of applicants.

But the industry is still short of 3,000 controllers worldwide. (estimate from IFATCA).

One comment in the Q&A after the conference finished from the 'journo' from Flight International was why this has in his 20-30 years in the industry always been a problem.

But I am not sure it is as simple as that.

I was told not so long ago when I trained, and was "terminated" (14 years ago) that if I trained in the last 6 years I would have had most definitely made it to the 'on the job phase' after the first 18 months initial training.

When i asked why it seemed to be a political answer from above but out of the instructors hands.

It is no surprise to me now that top management are deciding how many Ab Initios will go through to the final stages but the financial reasoning from this is shooting themslves in the foot.

Especially now we are in the modern age where controllers may decided to go to back office jobs or leave the industry altogether we have to keep recruitment at a maximum whatever the financial implications.

The financial implications of not doing this will be worse every year with the increase in traffic. More and more controllers will leave, be unhappy with the work-load, be sick, be unhappy. More thought should be going into the Human Resource part of this problem aswell as the technical/system part.

This problem is more prevelent in some parts of the world than others. I'm sure we have all heard the stories of different pass rates for Ab-Initios in different countries. And I strongly believe we whould learn from eachother through organisations like IFATCA but with some back-up from some research into the reasons why there is a difference.

A last thought. Should we be sharing more information about candidates that didn't make the grade (just) with centres where the traffic load is a lot lower . i.e give them a second chance and not throw away that 12-18 month investment by gambling on anotherb Ab Initio . I from personal experience knew many that went on to have a succesful careers in other less busy places i.e towers, ACC's APP etc. but it was on their own initiative.