I saw those posts too. Hopefully we're lucky enough to receive that call in the next couple of days ourselves.

I have assessment center this week, good luck to the others that will be going or have gone already.

I stayed 10 minutes away and was warned not to take the M80 just in case, took a twisty back way that ended up faster and was 40 minutes early. Wasn't even the first one there.

I've made it through and been offered a role!

The people who said it's better to not know before the assessment day are right, but you probably won't be disadvantaged knowing a little so maybe dig around a little :p

Is it safe to say that if you don't make it to a panel interview or far enough into the day to retake the online tests that you're pretty much out of the race? skyb1ue and Skuppy23 congrats on making it through! good luck on the course.

Hey guys,
I have an assessment day this Monday. Would anyone be willing to tell me what the order of proceedings in the day is going to be?
And how long until they get back to us regarding the outcome... Took 3 months to find out a result after I sat the online test (don't know if that's a good thing or not)...

Any info would be appreciated!

Hi, guys, does anyone know when the assessment centre will be happening after the online assessment? How long did it take for the previous assessment centre to start after the online assessment?
Cheers

You should receive an email inviting you to attend a particular session, though they will likely also try to call you. If you get an email just make sure to advise them that you won't be able to answer calls.

Anyone received any call or emails?
 

Hey has anyone received an email or phone calls after the online assessment?

Anyone gotten the response from after the assessment? Last one I got was the automatic one saying it might be after new years before they got in contact. That was about 12 weeks ago now, though...

EDIT: Finally got a response.

Given that stuff all planes are flying now, I imagine ATC training may go into hibernation again. It's hard to be trained when there's no traffic to play with.

Recruitment is open again, positive news in difficult times

I'm early 30's with a wife and young child. Have been running a business which has been hammered by the current health situation and thinking about a career switch. Am I crazy to try and go down this path at my age? Wondering if anyone has insight into how mature-aged trainees tend to go, assuming they can make it into the training course.

There's nothing stopping you. However, make sure you go in with eyes wide open:
-The Academy stage of training will probably last longer than you expect, and longer than what you are told at the beginning of the course. Can your family budget afford the fairly-poor training wage for 18 months or more?
-You will need extremely understanding and supportive family - for the best chance at success, you need to dedicate virtually everything to your goal while you are training: home study, getting enough rest, no holidays (outside the standard shutdown periods) while you're at the college.
-You will probably learn at a slower rate than your younger course mates. There's very little consolidation time built in to the course. Expect to need to do extra sim exercises, in your own time, to consolidate your learning.
-Historically those over 30 at the beginning of training do have a lower success rate at the end. That doesn't mean it's impossible - not at all - but other lifestyle factors (responsibilities like a wife and kids or a mortgage, for example!) do tend to pile on the pressure for people in your situation. While you're training, the more of those external factors that you can quarantine yourself from, the better - but that's not always compatible with family life.
It's a great job if you do get there, though. Good luck.

Agree with everything said above. If you scroll back far enough in this thread there are a few first hand accounts of training as an older person. Generally, the older the trainee the lower the chance of success. The phrase I heard many times at the college was "we've never had anyone over 40 pass the course." I knew several people in their early 30s who have recently graduated; turned 30 myself whilst training and I don't think I had any more of a difficult time than the younger people. There were four parents with young children at the college with me. Two graduated; all mentioned family life as a complicating factor in terms of finances as well as having to sacrifice time with them.

That's not quite correct, there have been a few; certainly you can count them on one hand in the last decade or so though.

Oh yeah, definitely just a catchphrase they use. I was trained by someone who started when they were 40 - still one of the best ATCs I know.

Hi! I’m glad you asked this question, as I’m in a similar boat as far as career changes are concerned. Just make sure you hit the minimum qualifications, ie finished year 12 or a degree within 10 years :)

Offer for 21st September
 

I have recieved an offer for ATC trainee starting on the 21st of September, anyone else got the same offer?

Hi all, seems to me that this thread is dying but I’ll post anyway. I just applied for the most recent intake (June 2020) and I completed my online aptitude test last night. I did alright - not bad enough to say I failed but not good enough to definitively say I passed. Anyway, I was just wondering:

1. Would age affect my application? Obviously there is nothing written about age (avoid those discrimination lawsuits lol) but I’m 18 and I’m worried I won’t be taken seriously. This is my dream job. I’ve been researching air traffic control for years and my parents work in aviation. I even read all 198 pages of this forum haha. But yeah it would really suck if they thought I wasn’t serious because I’m young :(

2. Would COVID affect the recruitment process? From what I’ve gathered, they only do the assessment centre in Melbourne now and Victoria is having a bit of a surge in cases at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole state went into lockdown.

Your age itself, no (you meet the minimum requirement and it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of age). However, you may also get what I got when I first applied for ATC, straight out of uni (so a couple of years older than you are now): the feedback after my interview was basically to go away and grow up a little, then come back in a few years.
So I went away and worked in the 'real world' for a bit, took on a job that allowed me to demonstrate responsibility, and three years later was successful.

Having said that, that was my experience, yours may differ. Give it a go, and try not to get too disheartened if it ends in tears the first time.

Oh wow okay. I’ve had three jobs (one in a supervisor position) - would that help with demonstration of responsibility?

Have there been many successful 18 year olds or not so much?

Yep there’s a few I can think of that started at 18/19/20 and had no issues.

Not a terrible place to be at age 24 on ATC 6 pay level while mates have just started looking for graduate positions with a huge HECS debt.

Just for clarification, there's no training done in Sydney is there? Meaning you'd have to relocate to Melbourne for a year or so?

Did anyone in the PPRuNe world apply for the latest round of ATC Trainee before it closed?

Training is done in Melbourne for a bit over a year

Correct and they don't pay any relocation or assistance with rentals etc. In addition, very, very few trainees get assigned back to Sydney. The majority of trainees will be allocated Brisbane or Melbourne Centre. Good luck.

Yeah just completed the online tests couple days ago, yet to do the occupational qs, How about you?

Yup. Did you?

I sure did, I've done the OPQ just waiting now. :) Keeping my expectations in check, but pretty excited for a new challenge!

Just curious if any of the other guys doing online testing atm received any information for the 'Third Suite' of testing that was due to come out today (19/07/21)?

Email today about the third stage of testing. Does anyone know if this is a recent addition to the procedure?
I haven't seen anything in this forum about something after the aptitude and OPQ tests and before a phone interview.

Will be interesting to see what it entails when they release the info in a few days.

Yeah didnt get any info, just that they'd they'd get back soon. Hopefully doesn't mean that we're out.

Has anyone heard anything back yet?

Nothing yet. Email last week said something mid this week. Hopefully something tomorrow or Friday. It seems from what I can read on this forum that the third stage of testing may be a new addition so they might be still sorting out some stuff.

Third stage of testing done, now the waiting game.

Any opinions from those that completed it? Personally I found the radar sim tests to be the most challenging, especially the ones with multitasking the maths equations.

Fingers crossed for good news.

I can’t say I’m all that confident with those tests! The multitasking maths/radar ones were a bit much, after a few rounds I started ignoring the maths questions because they were too distracting.

Good luck! Hopefully it won’t be a massive wait before we hear something.