Tesla40 RE: Personality Questionaire
Hi Tesla,
This has been discussed before, but to go over it briefly:
As NATS say, there are no specific right or wrong answers, you will not fail based upon how you answer any individual question and its not like you get a score which is either a pass or a fail. These tests are a lot more complicated than that!
I know someone who is trained in conducting these kind of personality tests and have had some interesting insight into how they work. Believe it or not, based upon your answers to as little as 50-100 of these kind of questions these tests are actually extremely accurate at profiling what kind of a person you are, even down to your behaviours and habits relating to issues which apparently have no direct connection to any of the questions you may have been asked during the profiling process. I have had numerous of these tests conducted on myself and, on the occassions where I have had access to the results, have always found them to be extremely accurate and have never felt the results failed to be a precise reflection of the kind of person I consider myself to be.
Exactly how NATS use these tests is not known, but presumably through their considerable experience recruiting, training and employing ATCOs for more or less as long as the profession has existed they now have enough data to be able to identify certain personality types which may not necessarily be suitable for the role or may suggest that an individual is significantly unlikely to be successful at training (and thus a waste of everybody's time and money).
As Whitelighter has said, the worst thing to do is try and second guess what NATS might be looking for. Any attempt at dishonesty is often quite clear to the assessors as this undoubtedly also leads to inconsistency and I would imagine this would be as good a basis as any on which to "fail" a candidate. Be honest and be yourself - if your personality is suitable you'll be fine, if it is unsuitable then it is in everybody's best interests (including your own) that this is identified sooner rather than later.
It is worth remembering that no-one has a pre-ordained right to be an ATCO - it is a serious job with serious responsibilities and the simple fact is that some types of people would not be suitable for it, either because they may not be suitably competent or responsible or because they would not be able to cope with the demands of the role. That's not intended to demeen or criticise such people or be all high and mighty - they probably have other strengths in areas where I would consider myself wholely incompetent - its just being realistic.