Hey guys,
As this thread has been so helpful I thought I'd post my assessment experience.
Online tests: Do some practice beforehand as time is tight, and once your scores in your practice are reasonable then have a go, I got through these fine, I've known guys who haven't and J2 have let them have another go.
Telephone interview : 10 minute phone call basically wanting to know your reasons for applying, no biggie.
Group ex : 2 possible exercises depending on the amount of people who are there, 5 minutes to read through things in silence, then 15 minutes as a group. Really not hard, I have quite a bit of experience with group exercises, those who don't, there is no real trick to them. Main things, make sure someone keeps time, don't dominate, keep an eye on the time and work through things slowly, taking it in turns to speak. You just want to all agree on a solution to a simple problem.
Interview : I did no prep for this, a few posts on here say it's a 20 minute relaxed chat, mine was relaxed but it lasted for an hour, so a little bit more involved than I was expecting. Know a bit about jet2 and how they make money, who their main rivals are, know about your own company. They will want to know occasions where you've influenced others, they have a scenario based question also, in my one we lined up on the runway and we get an engine low oil pressure light and the captain just wants to apply take off thrust to see if it goes away, airport has no engineering etc, what would you do? My answer was that basically I wouldn't want to risk having to reject a take-off or even attempt a take-off if I have that sort of warning light, so would like to taxi off the runway and try and sort out the problem, once off the runway perform the QRH checklist, check the maintenance log to see if the aircraft has a history of it and how they resolved it, speak to company engineering over the phone etc and try to resolve the problem. Then mention that you'd be thinking about airport closure times, flight duty limitations, talking to passengers and the crew etc. Anyone with airline experience will have no problems with this. They tell you about their 70% contract and 100% contract and ask whether you'd be interested in doing the 70% contract, I said if I was offered the 70% contract then I wouldn't be joining, as I was taking a pay cut for the job anyway.
Sim : Did the check in a 737. I found the way the sim was run to be a little bit strange, but maybe I'm just out of the game with it. It was run with 2 j2 captains, one as your PM, I assumed this would be a good thing as I'd have a very on the ball PM, but this wasn't really the case, I expected to be operating using full Jet2 SOPs, but whilst they send you a few of their SOPs what they seem to want you to do is use a hybrid of their SOPs and your own, and they wanted me to brief the PM on every single thing I wanted him to say.. even to the point of calling something like 'Positive rate' after take-off. And they basically said if I didn't brief him to say something then he simply wouldn't say it. Whilst this doesn't sound too bad, they also seem to have the attitude of wanting to get going, so during the brief I didn't feel it appropriate to sit there for 5 minutes briefing the PM on every single call, so I ended up with a very quiet PM! So this actually really threw me..
It has been said before that the sim test is less of check of your flying ability and more of a procedural test, I really found this to be the case.. The profile was a raw data sid out of manchester intially to 5000ft then upto FL70, clean up, accelerate from 210kts to 250kts, then to 300kts, then decelerate back to 250kts, then steep turns at 250kts left and right. Once those are complete, brief the approach, descent down to 3500ft, they want you to slow down to 210kts in the descent, the instructor acting as ATC gets on at you if you aren't slowing down quick enough, I was just above the flaps 1 speed limitation so once I was at that I took more flap, I think they want to see if you'll bust the flap speed, the approach is a raw data ILS to a missed approach then following the go around it's a single engine ILS with FD's to land. I would probably recommend doing a practice sim if you aren't familiar with the 737, as they seemed to expect a little bit of prior knowledge, that said, it's a sim check and not a type rating so don't expect it to be graded like one.
Got a call the next day to say I'd passed the sim then a few days after that got a call offering me the job on my first choice base. I found the way they ran everything to be very professional, as they are heavily recruiting at the moment it's quite clear that they are overworked in recruitment, it does seem to be a pretty good place to work, considering you aren't paying for the type rating (well, old fashioned bond) and accommodation is provided during the rating, as far as I can tell the 100% contract seems quite competitive. It's not BA, but if I compared it to the likes of Thomson where for a non type rated guy I'd be paying out of my salary for 3 years and starting on a PPY contract and expecting a 10+ year wait for command, it beats it in my opinion. Not to mention I live near the base they've given me so it gives me the chance of a great family life.
Hope this helps.