No I’m not so generous I just firmly believe that the more you put into things the more you get back out and that this applies to PPRuNe. If everyone contributed everything that they could then this would be the very best forum+ on the entire internet.
To go through the thread from this point on…
GPS – any language test should be weighted in allowance of candidates who are not first language English. I think that many selection programmes ask about this at the application stage and thus an allowance can be made during aptitude test scoring. If there is no weighting then the tester may take the view that English language skills are ‘in themself’ critical to the job. This is unlikely though. If you are concerned about your second language skills putting you at a disadvantage then speak up. Nobody in their right mind will enforce an arbitrary pass mark in the face of such a self evidently just argument. I would discourage your idea that the tests are biased. Only a very small number of people applying to UK airlines are non-English first language persons. To allow for every variance of ethnic origin, non-conventional upbringing, regionallity and so forth is an unreasonable expectation. As with so much in life – including cockpit ergonomics – things are optimised for the median 95 percent to the exclusion of those at the edges.
The tests are designed so that ‘character-adoption’ by those tested is likely to fail by giving a high lie scale score. I doubt you can ever ‘know the profile the airline wants’ with any degree of accuracy as it is a closely guarded secret. Besides – the tests measure such generic traits that you are highly unlikely to correctly deduce what many questions are actually about. There is nothing sinister about psychological tests being kept well guarded – they are valuable intellectual property and as such most be kept confidential. It takes thousands of man hours and pounds to build and validate these tests. Many very intelligent people are involved and they have to be paid. Also in the hands of a layman the results can be easily misread. Being of a personal nature people are liable to be upset by them and as such deserve to be defended in the same way that you cannot read your medical notes or your student records during flying training. Powerful instruments, as these tests undoubtedly are, should only ever be placed in trained hands.
The ‘emotive intelligence’ you speak of is not suitable for test by psychometric means. That is far more appropriately done by interview. I believe that is the practice in most selection procedures anyway. As for your claim that ‘psych profile is becoming antiquated’ I refute this. The profiles are becoming ever more sophisticated. The advent of computers and their associated mathematics has led to whole factors of improvement in the validity of testing. Indeed the cutting edge of statistical mathematics in the last 20 years has certainly been in the field of psychometric testing. You are unlikely to be ‘knocked out’ on the basis of the psychometric assessment alone. Perhaps combined with aptitude tests you might be knocked out but few reputable testing agencies will exclude you on the basis of the psychological profile alone.
Propellerhead – thank you for that constructive and accurate contribution.
GPS – now I am sure you are a rather splendid fellow and I hope that one day we can meet up for a pint or ten but you seem to be being a little unfair. Pilots don’t have personal enmity for psychologists and most will acknowledge that valid, meritocratic and empirically defensible selection procedures are the way forward (in fact a strong belief in the concept of meritocracy is an unusually strong trait in the average pilot profile as it happens). The fact that psychometrics are ‘correct or valid in any way’ is absolutely provable in the same way that I can prove iron to be ferrous or light to be composed of photons. Actually that is the whole point of Psychology. It is the EMPIRICAL study of the human mind. People often confuse it with the rather more wishy washy science of Sociology. You are the person who has brought race and origin into this debate and not Ric. Also the medium through which we communicate is liable to misinterpretation – I think this has occurred where you criticise Ric for his tone and general bearing. I am giving you the full benefit of the doubt regards your post and it might serve you well to do the same with others. I have a feeling that were we all propped at the same bar then we’d be getting along just fine and not pulling each others hair like big girls! So you are flying a shiny big jet are you? Well done – tell us all what its really like, we’d interested to know you know.
Right. I didn’t wish to provoke an argument but there you go – we are slaves to the medium I guess. One thing I would like to add to my original post is the advice that you should focus on developing your interview skills to the same degree that you try to develop your aptitude test skills. It is comparatively easy to get some books and some advice and generally work towards being able to pass the aptitude phase of selection. Doing this will help you progress to the next stage – interview. Now I and many others have given fine advice about the interview stage with various companies. Having read that do not discount the idea of trying to improve your basic baseline competence at interview. In just the same way that doing puzzles and maths helps you with the aptitude tests so will simulated interviews help you with your interview. Its no good just thinking about typical questions and thinking up suitable answers. You really need to ask someone to take the trouble to interview you. It only works properly if you get dressed in the clothes you will actually wear and you give the interviewer a set of questions that you can expect from the airlines. It helps if you can get a middle aged person to do the interview and if possible someone who has actual authority over you as this helps create the right level of apprehension in you. In my case I got my Mums boss, a bank manager, to interview me with some questions I had prepared beforehand. Being experienced he had the right manner and also threw in some maverick questions which was good. He also made me genuinely nervous and had some ‘gravitas’. You might find friends parents, old school teachers or people at work suitable people to ask for help. Its only when you do this kind of thing that you find that you are prone to tapping your foot annoyingly or saying ‘basically’ before every sentence when under interview pressure. It’s very useful to do but requires a bit more effort than simply revising your maths. The interview is just as pass/fail as the aptitude tests and thus the effort is well justified.
Anyhows, once more my bed is calling after a hard days flying I am completely knackered. Lets all pull together over here on Wannabes – one for all and all for one etc. WWW