PPRuNe Forums - NATS interview process

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Applying for ATCO

HammerThrower

I left school after my A-Levels at 18 and was pretty sure I wanted to be an ATCO. I didn't go Uni because I knew I'd come out with at least 15K debt and wasn't really set on any of the courses available to be honest. I got a job when I left school and have been in the same job for two and half years and am now a manager. I applied for NATS over a year ago and failed at Stage 3 - reapplied this year and passed.

I believe the main thing that has helped me pass Stage 3 this time around was confidence in doing group exercises and have I gained life experiences to be able to answer the compentency questions during the interview. I gained this through working where I do, managing a team where you gain real life experience.

Some of the questions at Stage 3 are like 'Give us an example when you have dealt with a difficult situation or difficult person' or 'Give us an example when you have been successful/unsuccessful'

I feel you gain these experiences better in jobs rather than at Uni, I''m not trying to put you off Uni but I've seen some guys come through and struggle to answer these questions because at Uni they haven't been in these type of situations.

I agree with mixmastermike - gain some life experience, get a good job, save some money and enjoy your youth! :ok:

S

Got my Stage 1 coming up tomorrow @ Prestwick, looking forward to getting through there and getting the tests done. Done about as much studying as I'll be able to do, however with the spare time that I have left on my hands I will just read over the ATC booklet we need to know. Cheers for the help guys:ok: Good luck to anyone else who has tests soon.

N.B - Anybody else getting tested @ Prestwick tomorrow?

Cheers, Gaz:ok:

Can anyone give me NATS HR phone number please? I had it before but that was a few months ago. I have a feeling I got it on the website but it's down.

Hi,
Just wondering how long your eligible for a course date after completing stage 3/medical. For instance you had to see out a contract before you could leave your former job.

Thanks in advance

From what I hear, unless you are at or passed stage 3 by now you are unlikely to start this year. The courses are filling up fast as only area courses are available , approach/aerodrome courses are currently on hold. So I would bank on at least 6 to 9 months.

Ignore that just re-read what you asked, I believe you can defer at least one course if you need to finish a contract if it is fixed term. I know they are not keen on continual postponments unless for a good reason. I'm sure they will be accomodating.

Hope that helps

JIMMY780 -

Yes that's the info I was looking for. I'm still a serving royal marine at the moment I said on my initial aplication I would be available in feb but with recent changes in operational needs it may be nearer June but as you say I'm sure if I explained at stage three they would consider my issues. If not I suppose I'd get a expiration date.

Thanks jimmy

Hi guys,

I've just finished reading through all (well alot) of this thread and found loads of it very informative so I thank you all for that.

My questions are to do with the stage 3 tests. I've read alot that you should go prepared but what exactly does this entail? I know that a visit to a NATS center is a must but what types of questions should I expect? Also how long will the actual interview last?

Any info at all on the stage 3 tests would be very much appreciated.

Cheers
GavDarv

Are you at stage 3 then ???

Stage 3 consists of a quick group test, takes anout 30 mins in all. You then have an interview with 2 members of HR, this takes approx 1 and1/2 hours to 2 hours, depending on how much you talk. They will ask you a systematic set of questions (approx 60 in all ) 5 to 10 questions on each of the criteria mentioned on their website. The questions are like :- Tell me a situation where you worked well in a group ?? Then you will have leading questions on the back of this e.g What was your role in the group ?? What was the outcome ?? Where you successful ??. They way i believe you should prepare is think of 2 situations for each of the criteria and make bullett points about what happened in that situation. I believe there is nothing stopping you taking notes in, you normally are allowed notes in interviews.
I did stage 3 last year , so my memory may not recall exactly, hopefully someone who has done stage 3 more recently can correct me. I have stage 3 again on 26th May, if you haven't got to stage 3 yet i can report after this.
Good luck

Mixmastermike - thanks 12 months should be ample for me also.

Thanks again !

Yeah I've got my stage 3 on the 27th.

Thats some great advice there mate I'll take it all on board. Sounds like its quite an intense interview.

All the best for your interview on the 26th :ok:

Sat my stage one tests at Prestwick on Friday, think I done alright (hope so too) :ok:

The ATC and SDT questions were pretty straightforward to be honest. But I now know what people mean when they say the cubes are pretty daunting. First 20 are pretty easy.. but the next 30 questions are pretty .. well lets just say > :ugh:

However, 14 days or so to wait now to see if I'm through to stage 2 .. good luck to anyone else who was sitting tests and anyone who has tests coming up :ok:

Gaz

Hi,
I sat my stage 1 test at Prestwick on Friday 9 April 2010, and haven't heard anything as yet.

Thats been 3 weeks now, can any of the members who previously got beyond this stage tell me if they experienced the same time frame for a response?

Has anyone who attended on this day heard from HR yet?

Thank you

hi all,

lots of posts here were about "What can I do to prepare for the stage2 tests" and similar things. Well, playing this little game won't kick you directly to the aero/area course, but you can see what kind of tests are waiting for you on the big day.
And it's fun!

Here's the link.

Thanks for the lik. It is indeed fun. Can those that have been to S2 say how does this test compare to the real thing?

Hey OnEsTeP,

Can you help? :ugh:

I have my stage 1 on friday and I'm still struggling with this cube issue. Can you give me a step by step guide as to how you worked it out please?

Thanks in advance

Another cube struggler. Do you get scrap paper for this part of this test?:{

Yes, you get scrap paper.

the correct question goes more like: do they get all the scrap paper that they have given you in the first place?...and yes they do.

Anyone knows what is the online test before stage 1? Are they similar to the questions we are going to take in stage 1?

Many thanks:confused:

Stage 3 in Bournemouth

Hi Everybody !

I've just "discovered" this forum and I have to say it's great.

I have gone through the NATS selection process and I have already passed Stage 1 and 2. I have been invited to the Stage 3 and I'm attending it next week in Bournemouth, the 12th.

So, if anyone else goes there the same day we may change some opinions here before we face the team exercise :). I think it would be a good idea to know a bit each other.

Well, I haven't got much time for reading the whole threads, but, for those that are preparing for the Stage 1 and 2, I was recommended a software pretty good. You can find information in SkyTest® - Trainingssoftware für: DLR-Test (Lufthansa, AUA, DFS), Swiss, Air Berlin, FEAST (Eurocontrol), Austro Control, Skyguide

You can practice a lot of things that are very similar to what you are going to find there, specially on the Stage 2. Some of them differs in the way you "play" but it can help you to train some of the skills they want you to have (collission avoidance, relative direction, strip management...). I hope it helps.

I bought it for just 50 euros and I think it worth it (at least, it seems it has helped me to pass the Stage 2).

However, I was not very happy when I ended my test at NATS because they are very tough. Even being trained you find some difficulties doing them, so practice, practice and practice. :ok:

If you have any question, I may be able to answer as I have it yet fresh in my mind.
See ya !! and good luck to those who face new tests soon.

ahilollevas, do you feel you could have passed without that software?

killua

Well, I'm not quite sure. I want to think YES but it really helped me to get an idea of what I was going to face there so, I got some of the exercises down before attending the assesment.

I think I have good skills but it's an advantage to practice a bit. You need some time the first time to get into habit, and if you have already trained, you just need to apply your knowledge in the tests so, it's something you have to think about, depending on how do you feel in this kind of challenges.

If you are good, you'll probably pass as many others have done. If you hesitate or have any doubts, this software can surely help you to improve your skills.

cheers !!

Thanks for the answer. I won't buy it because I think I have good skills. One more question. How many time do we get to practice the tests?

I considered this software before I went for my stage two, but I couldn't afford it and thought it kind of defeated the point of doing the tests, so I went without it and I'm glad I did as I know I passed on my own skills and didn't have the material to prep before I went down. It's a bit like being given the paper to an exam before you sit it, the people marking it may think you are great but in reality you have only been doing what you needed to do to pass. I'd have been worried if I got this that I was going to struggle in college as there is no software you can buy to help you pass the exams once you get there.

However that is only my point of view, and I'm sure a lot of people will have differing opinions to this.

Lemony, you are competly right. A few months ago I too considered buying it, and haven't for the same reasons. I would compare it to studying mathematics vs memorizing the solutions of the problems that you know will come in the test.

EDIT: lol, we compared it to the same thing

And for people who are wanting to know when college dates are going to be, I had my stage 3 in march and I have been given a Jan start date so I have 9months to go. If people have to work their notice then I wouldn't worry too much as they said people often defer to the next course if they can't make their one due to working notices, they just let others due to start in the next intake know and allow them to move forward. Which is hopefully what will happen with me (not that I want someone else to be pushed back, but you know what I mean)

I passed my s1. On to s2 now. The following question goes to the Knight Templars that swore to secrecy and within about 5000+ posts nobody have given real info regarding s2. yes yes, I have heard, there is no way to improve, but who is to say about myself if I can improve by practice or not? who can prove that the learning curve does not apply here? When posters ask help about s2, they dont ask for your opinion if we can improve through practice or not. we have gone through it a million times. we are not interested in your personal opinion. If we did, we would have asked it. What we are interested in, is what the test includes. If you have swore to secrecy, merely dont reply. To those that will add something that will actually help for the stage 2 takers, thanks in advance.

lowlevelowl

Have you had your medical yet? I called up as soon as I received it and was given a choice of course, from what I could gather I was the first to be allocated to January. I have chosen aero :hmm:, which is your preference?

Lemony

There is more than enough info on the stage 2 tests on here, if you are really desperate then check out the sky test which gives you lots of prep which you can pay for, or look it up on WIKI. The purpose of the tests is too see how well you can cope doing unfamiliar tasks under pressure and how fast you can learn new rules. Everybody improves with practice and it is unfair to have some people who have practices and others who have never seen anything before (which is the way it should be)

Area, aero???? Can you tell me which one is tower, approach and en-route?

I was a bit torn, and I still am. But the thought of sitting in either the control tower or area on a lovely sunny day decided it for me I think.
If you want a start date then call up Nikki she will give it to you there and then over the phone. I don't think she had even had a copy of my medical by then either.

Lemony

Let me state it better. There are some links left and right with flash games and appreciate the posters. But I dont get that, there thousands of posts about s1 on how to prepare, where to prepare, what to take into account, numerous links and the list goes on. If NATS will try get familiar individuals to tasks/excersises they would have done it in all 3 stages. Having chosen only S2 just doesnt make sense. The assumption that I should not get prepared so as to be fair with my competition does not sound right for reasoning (personal opinion of course). If other people would like to join S2 with the clear disadvantage of not knowing what is about to come, Im ok with that. But I would like to be ahead of the curve,not cheat,but prepared. Therefore, excluding the paying options, can someone give me and those that support my premise, links as how to improve?

Aero - tower and depending on airport approach
Area - en-route, and London airports approach

Orangoat

In that sense there is nothing you can do to prepare. Things which can help increase your reaction times, your memory and your logic bare good things to do. There is nothing you can find on-line for free which will give you anything similar, so those links which can help you practice those skills are a good bet. Oh and learning a compass and your lefts and rights from different angles (Ie something in relation to another object, where is it in relation to them, left/right, and they aren't always in the same position, ie facing backwards or forwards)

Hi lemony and Killua.

Your opinion is very interesting but I don't agree with you at all.
My point of view is that people are more or less trained to do this kind of exercises depending of his own experience in life.

When you say, for example, that you have good skills... good skills compared with what?, There may be people out there with good skills that, maybe, have never played a videogame (for example) and that could be a BIG problem, you know?

Your time responses, your ability to move the mouse's cursor, ... and other many things are directly related to what you have made along your entire life, and that does nothing to do with your ability to be a good or bad ATC. It's just a matter of practice.

In my case, I think I have good skills, and I have always been very good at videogames either, so, in some way, even if I hadn't practice with this software, probably I would have practice (without knowing) more than others in the past.

So, it's not memorizing the results, becouse you don't really pass if you are not up to it, even if you practice. The thing is that you can, in some way, assure that you are not going to make many mistakes due to your nervous or whatever (you know what you are facing to and you can focus in the tests). The software itself doesn't make your more clever, but it helps you to keep a higher level of success in YOUR highest level (and that, again, could be not enouth to fulfill the NATS criteria). :ugh:

Anyway, this is just my point of view and I respect yours, and by the way, I earn nothing with that software because I'm not involved in their development... haha so I don't mind wether it seems to you it is wonderful or a !!!!. :}
Thanks for your comments. They are always welcome. :ok:

For those that are wondering about the kind of tests you are facing in Stage 2, I will summarize a bit what I met there:

- Listening
An exercise with different parts where a person speaks in english and you have to select within a multiple choices answers. For natives it is (I think) quite easy. Not so for foreigners. The most difficult part of this exercise was (from my point of view) when the voice says some differents numbers, quite long, and you have to remember and select the correct one (the possibilities are very similar, so pay attention).

- Cubes
Again, 3D cubes like the ones in Stage 1, but in the computer. You have to choose the correct representation of the cube that match with the draw given.

- Planning Ability
You are presented a kind of map, with poitns representing airports, runways, aircrafts, and you are given some instructions. You have to follow the rules and answer something. For example "what aircraft lands first?" and things like that.

- Relative direction
You are presented an arrow and a ball. Then, below, ther is a word, saying "Right" or "Left". If the ball is at the right of the arrow and the word says right, that's correct, so you have to click on "YES", if not, you have to click on "NO". The ball and arrow are changing of position and heading all the time. The main problem here is the time response. You have 1 second or so to click YES or NO. I think this is the easier of all... but... again, it's my point of view.
There is a second part of this test. If the arrow is (I think is was) white, then you have to interpret all in the opposite way (I mean, an arrow with a ball at right and the word "RIGHT" beneath would be "NO", and with the word "LEFT" would be "YES").

- Learning and applying rules
You find different shapes (circles, squares, triangles...) and in the bottom of the screen you have different possibilities and you have to sort them due to some rules (by color, by shape... ). It changes very quickly and you have to pay attention to some special rules that appears in the top of the screen like:
sort this as a square, sort all green triangles as circles...
and things like that.
It also appears numbers, and you have to sort them due to other rules, like:
sort 134-200 blue numbers as 350-500, sort numbers with 5 number as 0-58...
The rules just apply while they are presented in the screen (I mean, you don't have to memorize them).

- Collission avoidance
This is one of the most difficult (If not the most). In the screen you can see different numbers representing aircrafts. Each one is moving in one direction and you have to calculate if their heading are in conflict due to the position and speed. If you think that anyone is, you have to remove it using the number keypad (just push the number of the aircraft and it is removed). The problem is that in the bottom of the screen, at the same time, appears a lot of mathematical calculations, quite difficult some of them, and you have no time to think of them, because the operation hides after 1 second or so. As the time pass by, more and more aircrafts are presented in the screen and the operations hides quicker. To answer the questions, you have to choose within 4 different possibilities (push A,B,C or D) in the special keyboard they give you.

- Strip management display
Very difficult too but it's very well explained in the exercise.
You are presented different flight strips and you have to sort them into the correct checkpoint, remove the old ones, update flight levels and arrive time...
Check for local and opposites conflicts... just a mess !! :sad:

Some of them are done twice (one in a browser connected to Eurocontrol webpage) with the mouse, and again with a special keyboard in a local program of NATS. If my memory doesn't fail to me, we did twice "relative direction", "learning and applying rules".

I may forget anything. Just ask.
See you and good luck !!

Lemony

Lets accept this approach. Lets assume you did not practice for s2. But did you practice for s1 and s3? Of course you did. I can not accept that as a valid arguement, having prepared for s1 and s3 and suggesting that I shouldnt prepare for s2. Yes, mental agility I suppose is a priority in this field, but does that apply only for s2? Mental agility was not important for s1 and s3? In your first interview (excluding NATS) did you go prepared? Did you read about the company that you were applying? Or you wanted to see how fast you can think and impress the HR personnel? I dont suppose so. Statistically speaking, if there is a way to go through the figures, you will observe a high correlation with those that want to be prepared in tasks and their mental agility. Individuals that are used to prepare before every task, are the ones that "yield" better results that those that dont. Those that are desperately seeking for tests related in s2 (likemyself) are those that have (statistically) better chances to go through s2. Of course there are a friend of a friend of a friend that did not prepare for s2 and still passed, and someone else that did prepare and did not pass. These guys are on the 5% of the probability matrix. Since I am going for the 95% and the certainty, I am seeking for ways to improve. Being prepared s2, will further increase my ability to think faster when pressure is present, and there is noone that can deny that.

Mental agility is mostly tested in stage two, I tried to prepare for it myself but couldn't find anything and used the links given in this forum. NATS has specifically designed the tests to be unfamiliar to people taking them so that in theory everyone is in the same boat for this stage. And I did give you a bit if an insider tip in the last post if you didn't notice??

Stage one - I prepped by reading the pre-learning material they had given us. Didn't do much else apart from that.

Stage two- looked at the links for games on this forum

Stage three - looked up competency based interviews.

I did try looking for more info on the second two stages, but there isn't much out there apart from what has already been discussed, so it would be better to focus on practising what you already know will be on there.

Preperation does not make passing a certainty, it will help but there are never any guarantees. Good luck

What a bunch of moaning old women you are!! The best piece of advice I can give anyone doing ANY stage of the NATS interviews is take this forum with a big pinch of salt!

Well, that was a relevant reply. Spot on, and right to the point. Lemony, you said mental agility is tested in s2. So the cubes and the diagramming that you have about half minute for each what is it if not mental agility? Did you plan, act, test, evaluate and confirm? S1 is the definition of mental agility the utter definition otherwise it would have no time restriction or time allowance would have been doubled. Did you know that your I.Q. is varies during the day? Did you know that if you test it at tomorrow and 6am it would be different that the day after tomorrow at 7am? I.Q. builts up through mental agility practices and therefore pointers than those ahilollevas for that stage was a huge help. I also saw your post about the arrows, but it wasn't as clear as ahilollevas description.

As I also clearly stated, some may think you dont need preparation for s2, some think you do. I am not here to argue about that, I am navigating this forum to find direct and solid answers that will assist me. If we all get to be atc we might hang around at our brakes and discuss that for once again. But right about now, arguements of such is less than helpful.

Help please. Got stage 1 coming up but can't get through to HR. Is the age restriction (max 36?) still applicable. I'm an ex airline pilot but 39 would this make any difference I wonder.

I know there was a legal case which Nats lost but I don't know if the policy has changed. Anyone clarify pls cos HR aint talking.