If any of the people who applied for the YO18 intake and passed had any advise for passing/AIB, I'd hugely appreciate it (and I'm sure other aspiring YO's would too). Was prior leadership experience a large factor, or more how you performed during AIB? Thank you!
Yeah I'm terrified of the command tasks for some reason. I feel like I will majorly overthink it and bugger it up! Any ideas how to adequately prepare for this?
Prior leadership featured heavily in the SIFT and POC interviews, but the AIB interview is much more personal. They’ll ask you probing, introspective questions about your motivation, personal qualities and background so you need to think hard about these. Superficial, mundane answers to questions like ‘what’s your biggest achivement’ and ‘when have you shown moral courage’ will mean you’ll score poorly. Bear in mind that they pretty much never ask you any questions about navy knowledge or current affairs anymore. You can’t prepare for them. The day before they’ll show you all the techniques you need to know and you’ll get to practice them. The techniques are very specific and they’re extremely strict on them, hence why there’s no point trying to practice now. Also, you get zero marks for completing the task, it’s all about how you communicate and lead the team. The bloke who had the highest AIB score ever didn’t complete his PLT.
Just to add to the comment by @pofwales24 You've clearly identified that 'overthinking' tasks can cause problems, often by creating inertia. Buggering up a task may well be inevitable anyway. Arguably, many command tasks are created to identify basic traits such as the ability of candidates to project personality—and even more importantly, one's voice—rather than assessing nascent strategic thinking.
