My RFA Recruitment Experience
A thread 🧵

1/ BACKGROUND
I’m a healthy 57 yr old, with previous RAF HMC&E maritime service back in the new romantic 80s

I've just exited my own SIGINT company after 30 yrs, and handed this over to a colleague

We specialised in UK/NATO/RoW Government-only grade, niche SIGINT & processing technology; predominantly LEO/GEO satellites. I’m not a hallowed graduate, as I was commissioned into the RAF when I was 19, without going to Uni

I’m therefore predominantly self-taught, A Level educated, with the odd third-party cse here and there

I initially thought about the RN, and particularly the Submarine Service, as I am perfectly suited to sitting quietly for extended periods without internet, seeking needles in haystacks

The RN though, is wise to chancers like me – noting that I was born in 1966, and, probably under-weight😎

The RFA though, as MoD employer, has no age discrimination policies. So, I thought I’d give it a crack, not particularly expecting to get very far, and expecting to fail at every step of the journey

/
2/ INITIAL CONTACT
I completed the RFA online enquiry form on 5th July 23, which asked me if I had previous military experience. I answered that I had, which sent me to the Rejoiners Team

Two days later they e-mailed me suggesting I apply through the RN Recruitment Portal (Capita? I don't know), where the RFA Team would deal with my enquiry. This was taking me in a loop back to where I started, so I emailed the RFA team directly on the provided group e-mail box

Three weeks passed, and I sent a polite chaser which elicited a response that my Recruiter was on leave. Eventually, it was determined that I had to answer ‘no’ to the 'previous service' question in order to progress

This added over a month of delay to the process, and a few other communication challenges meant that we eventually got on track on the 21st Sep, after I received a very friendly call from Mary

After this, the Portal seemed to be slowly abandoned, and everything reverted to personalised email/telephone calls, and was substantially better for doing so

I never crawled past 10% on my Portal 'progress dial', which was a piece of pointless junk tbh

/