CTC Stage 3
Hello all. Well I got to stage 3, but unfortunately I didn't survive to get to stage 4 - So, let me give you the low-down on my experiences on that day.
Will first of all I'll say that the CTC staff are some of the nicest people you will meet and that they genuinely want you to do well throughout their recruitment process. They have a very well managed training organisation, and by meeting the staff, it soon becomes quite clear why CTC is so highly regarded within the business.
Anyway, approximately half (8/16) who were at my stage 2 on Sat 14th were at the stage 3 the wednesday after. The stage 4 sim check was to be a day or so after for those who were to be successful.
The stage 3 consisted of another briefing, basically giving the format of the day. The 8 of us were split in to two groups of 4 for two group excercises - one was a verbal reasoning type- you are on a a boat that is sinking, there are x objects available but you can only take so many, which do you choose. This is almost identical to the group ex someone I know did with aer lingus, except they were stranded at the north pole in a broken down car instead.
The second is a construction excercise where you build a bridge to support a glass of water at the bridge's midpoint. Pretty standard stuff really.
Then you have lunch, before an approximately 1-hour long interview with two of the CTC staff, undoubtedly one or both will be directors of CTC-McAlpine or one of the other CTC companies. My interview was pretty old-school - the questions that stick in my mind are "tell me about what your parents do"... "do you think drugs should be legalised?"... "what do you think of racism" ... "what do your friends say your strengths and weaknesses are" ... "why should we offer you this job" ... "examples of team working" ... " proudest achievement" ... "when you've had to overcome obstacles" etc.
I was also asked a bit of moderately technical stuff which to be fair I should of known but had a bit of brain-fade. They asked what is the cruising speed in knots of a 757 at 30k ft, how does the ASI work, what would be your priorities if all of a sudden, one of the engines fell off!, what would you do if you were a FO and the captain decided to land the a/c when the weather was below minima and so on.
Of the other people who I chatted to who had been interviewed by some of the others, they had had a range of questions about easyjet & jmc, what they would do about leaving their g/f at home, their motivation to do the job, some didn't face any technical q's at all, etc.
At 10-30 the next morning, I had a call from Mary telling me I was unsuccessful, and she kindly took me through the points where I had not performed as they had expected.
Another poster questioned whether it is worth the 160 quid - ok it is very unusual to request payment from the potential recruit for any graduate job and I do not fully understand why the aviation industry feel the need to do it (except of course because they can) but would suggest you do actually get value for money and can gain an awful lot of information about yourself from the recruitment process and learn from industry insiders as to the state of all of the airlines at the moment, it's all priceless stuff.
I would be interested to hear how the other 16 on my stage 2 got on, esp Carb and diggler. I think carb wasn't at my stage 3 as there was an attempt (albeit lighthearted) by one of the CTC staff to "out" him - he didn't reveal himself but I guess Carb could be poker-faced. Anyway, I hope all that were at my assessment got through as they were a great bunch of people. I'm sure they would do well working with any airline.
Hope this helps,
BBD.