Hi Jenny – you’ve received some sound and authoritative advice. If you are bothered by the current affairs part of the interview, here are some tips.
- Listen to the Today Programme on Radio 4 in the mornings. Your interviewers listen to it on their way to work and many use it as their primary source for current affairs.
- Go to your local library and look up back copies of a broadsheet newspaper for the last 12 months. Choose 6 overseas topics and 6 UK topics that you find interesting, and study them in more depth. The topics should be ‘serious’ and not ‘trivial.
- The questions you will be asked will go something like this:
- Q. What interest, if any, do you have in current affairs?
- Q. How do you keep yourself up to date?
- A. I read X newspaper (don’t say the Sunday Sport)/listen to Y programme on the radio/watch Z programme(s) on the box.
- Q. Cast you mind back over the last 12 months and tell me a half dozen topics which hit the headlines overseas.
- A. Reel off your 6 topics, putting your favourite 3 in the middle somewhere.
- Qs. You’ll get a series of questions on 2 or 3 of the topics you mentioned.
- Q. Cast you mind back over the last 12 months and tell me a half dozen topics which hit the headlines in the UK.
- Qs. You’ll get a series of questions on 2 or 3 of the topics you mentioned. To get maximum marks you should demonstrate depth of knowledge, come up with topics that cover the whole of the last 12 months rather than those that are current in the news today, discuss ‘serious’ topics (e.g. Diana Ross’ behaviour at Heathrow is “tabloid”, the constitutional implications of the West Lothian question post the implementation of Scottish Devolution is ‘serious’) and be prepared to express your own (reasoned) opinions.
This may all seem a little over the top. To be fair, current affairs are only one part of a comprehensive interview, which is only one part of the whole selection process. However, it is one that you can do something about.
The best of luck Jenny. You have had some first class advice from the contributors above. My own advice is based on 22 years in the RAF as a pilot, including a tour as a selection officer. Go for it!