WSOp recruitment freeze?

[Hazbean92]

Is there a current recruitment freeze for WSOp's within the RAF, and how competitive are places looking for the near future?

[minigundiplomat]

I believe there is a recruitment freeze in place until 2012 [happy to be corrected but that is the last advice I recall].

Competition is always intense, even before jobs started getting thin on the ground and recruitment frozen. Still - you never know.

[getsometimein]

I saw the recruitment team in the mess the other week...

I think they are still recruiting rotary crewmen, but nothing else.

EW wont be recruited till 2014/2015

[Biggus]

I thought the whole point of moving to the WSOp trade was to do away with the separate specialisations of LM, AEOp, etc. Although streamed to a certain role out of basic training I thought they were supposed to be (with additional training) interchangable, so a WSOp could in theory do one tour as EW and then move on to rotary crewman...



They should be recruiting WSOps if they need them, not rotary crewman! However, these baby WSOps will be streamed during training (or chopped) for WSOp roles for which there is a demand, which might only be rotary crewman for now....


Or have the wheels come off the WSOp concept with the demise of the MRA4? Or am I mistaken in terms of the concept of the WSOp trade...?

[getsometimein]

I think you are right in one sense...

The idea was to have all the trades together so that they could post people to Kinloss who didn't want to go...

However, I think what is happening is that people are being told what divisions are currently recruiting and as such those that want to go EW are not going to apply in case they get forced to go rotary/fw...

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

Biggus,

Theory of what you say is spot on but think of the cost.

I do however wonder if there will be many industrial tribunals as many in the kipper fleet are simply being thrown out onto the streets whilst there are a members of the ALM fraternity who would go tomorrow if only they satisfied the redundancy criteria.

[letsgoandfly]

I fail to see how they can continue to recruit, albeit in vastly reduced numbers, for the WSOp cadre whilst making large numbers of WSOps redundant - I know we now are specialised but my peers and I have done the generic course and can be re-trained with the benefit of bringing our ops experience, airmanship and CRM gained on MR2 and MRA4 to our new platforms.

We may cost more per year than an abbo but what price on the skills we've already got? Makes me sick to be waiting for redundancy tranche 2 whilst they're still looking for baby WSOps.

[ChristianR354]

'EW wont be recruited till 2014/2015'

Is this because thats when the Rivet Joint is supposed to be coming into service?

[davejb]

Letsgoandfly,
I agree with you totally, there's no natural justice in chucking people out while simultaneously recruiting for the same job. Unfortunately I strongly suspect you'll discover the armed forces have exemptions from employment law that were put in place to allow the business of defence to be carried out sensibly. Exemptions that are now likely to be misused (in spirit, if not in law) to allow the RAF to do what it feels like. You've got my sympathy (genuinely), but all good siggies know exactly where THAT word sits in the dictionary, don't we?

Personally if I were one of the keen types posting here hoping to discover that recruitment is going to continue I'd now go dowse my head in a bucket of water, then give myself a good slap.

[camelspyyder]

AFAIK we are not recruiting WSOp at all.

Current No of WSOP on ITC = zero

Current No of WSOP on Generic course = zero

Future forecast god knows??? We have loads (too many) of holding students pre ITC and pre/post streaming and the only open stream is being reduced in size.

Whats to be expected in TRANCHE 2 BTW? more WSOP EW/ACO to go I expect?

[ap23]

A few months on, has the recruitment freeze situation become any clearer?

I've recently been trying to arrange work experience and generally find out more about the WSOp trade and I can't help but think from my research that the role is going to be/has been subject to huge change? For instance, one person I spoke to said words to the effect of 'you don't want to come here at the moment morale is not too great' :confused:. Or do they just not want work experience people?!

[tmobile]

particularly one that requires you to put your life on the line.

Isn't that what you do when you sign up? Surely the RAF is in the business of going to war?

Sorry if this is damning, but if you read thread after thread on here you will see that uk armed forces are not a great lot to be involved with at the moment.

This place is just like the military pages of the Daily Mail. whinge whinge whinge, moan moan moan. If you want to join don't be put off by what you read on these pages, it's your life to decide what you want to do with it.

[ap23]

Luckily, I'm not after the thanks of politicians.

I'll bother for the near future at the very least and especially for aptitude tests tomorrow :)