Apprentice Water Regulations Officer

[Ric2013]

Hi.

I am currently in the process of being interviewed for the above position with the local water board. It sounds like a well-paid, secure, job, but I am aware that you really have to like the job you do otherwise you end up leaving and are neither well-paid nor secure so I don't want to make a bad decision.

I wonder if anyone here has any experience of working for a water undertaker, or has had much experience with Water Regulations Officers? Just after as much information, personal or anecdotal, that will help me see if I am the kind of person that will do this job happily.

Happy to hear ANY thoughts you might have.

 

[sammathias]

Go to a old school, request to put a double check valve on absolutely every appliance possible. Job done and repeat.

 

[Ric2013]

That bad?

 

[ShaunCorbs]

well you go round commercial buildings inspecting, if there safe and comply with regulations eg no hoses left on and coiled in skins etc

 

[sammathias]

I'm sure there's more too it but down here I work for the local council and that's all the waterboard seem to be doing recently. Ballache when the schools are over 100 years old and there is pipework everywhere. Oh and trying to find a byelaw 30 kit for a tank over 1000 litres. If that's what the kits called. Secure job for you tho

 

[Ric2013]

Well, I didn't get it.

But all I can say, is that the recruitment process works well because I noticed the people from the water board were not like me at all. I would never have fitted in.

 

[Vee]

What happened in the interview?

 

[Ric2013]

Well, I had 5 days' notice of the second interview, and fortunately I was free that day, because there was no option of any other date in their minds! This was after application online, online exams, and traditional sit-down interview...

The second interview (75 miles away at my expense: ouch!) consisted of lots of team exercises: making a rollercoaster for a golf ball from guttering, deciding how to allocate people on 4 lifeboats based on their survival skills, vulnerability, and the useful (but not transferable) objects they carried, and doing a jigsaw puzzle as a team largely without verbal communication.

Finally, assembling a model made from 4 sheets of Perspex with studs, nuts, and spacers by yourself while an examiner watches you and doesn't even smile when, having finished the model perfectly, you notice you missed out 1 washer, establish eye contact with the examiner, flash a huge grin, and proceed to find where the washer was supposed to be so you can fit it. Apparently a sense of humour is not allowed at the water board. Their loss.

Very weird, stilted conversation with the examiners during tea breaks. They would chat, but it felt very artificial indeed. I don't know if they were single, married, gay, or what, as they would literally answer questions without volunteering much information at all, so it never really felt like I knew them as people in any small way.

I think what they want is someone who will do what they are told without asking too many questions and wants a secure, public sector role (while promoting the branding of the privatised water board) without much hope of career progression, and who will never get bored. Quite frankly, 5 hours in that hotel was enough for me!

In any case, a firm that takes 5 days to reply to an email requesting an interview location for the first interview and then tries to cancel the interview on the grounds that I had not replied to the email within 10 hours (my apologies for having a job!) is probably not a very good firm to work for if you are of independent mind.

My mother's comment was 'I'm glad you didn't get that job: I thought you'd be bored'

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Lol