Shortlisted for an airline scheme: what now

First of all, huge congratulations for getting short‑listed, that is a huge achievement in itself!

Firstly, check the actions to complete right now. Usually it starts with an aptitude test and a behavioural questionnaire. The rest after that is only if you get short‑listed and if it comes to that you can join one of the free webinars!

The key to the questionnaire is not to lie or over‑exaggerate because they tend to ask the same questions many times over. So if you lie, you will forget how you answered that question the first time they asked it, and then the results will look very strange because some will be strongly for whilst other answers say strongly against the same thing!

The questions are generally on a sliding scale too. Let's say something like:

I dislike working in a team … I am not creative

You often have to pick how you lean. Sometimes the statements don't make sense or don't ‘fit’ together so it can be hard to tell. If that's the case it might make them easier to compare if you put both statements into a positive sense.

How to do that? So here in my example, they're both negative. In my head I might quickly invert them into the opposites so that they're not negatives anymore. Such as:

I like working alone … I like following set procedures.

Perhaps, for me I agree with both of these statements equally. Except, usually you can't select a middle option, you have to pick which one you agree with more. If say, I prefer working alone slightly more than I like following procedures I'd go slightly to the left. If I much prefer working alone, I'd go further left and if I really hated following procedures, I'd select the furthest option to the left.

That's the easiest way to describe the behavioural questionnaire.

For the aptitude tests, there are a range of different tests, which you can often easily practice a little bit on some free sites. Additionally, you can also practice each test before you do it for real. Make sure you do the practice tests a few times until you feel really comfortable with what the exercise is, what they are asking you to do in the time allowed and how the difficulty will progress.

In general there are a range of different exercises from maths, to sorting shapes and colours and multi‑tasking. Don't ever guess the answers and don't make your answers up. They're designed in a way to put the pressure on and to make you feel pressured. The trick is to go at your own pace and to try to get every one right. It's better to be slower and get them all right than be a bit faster and only get 50% right!