Applied Online via SEEK and was selected as one of about 60 interviewees of over 2000 applicants. They have a lot of applicants because the ad emphasises high pay rates without the prerequisite of experience or qualifications. The first hurdle of the 'Assessment Centre' day was a typing test, in which we had to retype some text within a short time frame and with few errors, I found this relatively easy and I am not a typist by any means. I noticed some middle aged candidates struggled with this due to nerves. Next we had to listen to a series of call excerpts and demonstrate our ability to hear and recall key bits of information on a booklet of questions. The booklet has irrelevant activities like find-a-words in between listening to the different calls. This is designed to break your concentration and has no bearing on your results, so don't dedicate time and energy to them! This is fairly essential to your success, so ensure you write legibly. After this there was a group activity in which we had to decided who would be saved from a fictional emergency situation. The point of this activity was for them to observe how we got along with other people and if we would gel well in a team, as ESTA operates in small teams and is important that you are supportive of each other. Therefore don't worry too much about the outcome of the activity, just make sure you appear to be getting on with everyone in your group. I was successful from the Assessment Centre and came in for an interview with the HR manager and two senior operational staff members. It was fairly formal and a bit intimidating but I made a point of memorising what I had written on my application so that it would be easy to expand on what they would be using as a reference for their questions. This was a good move. They want to see that you are confident and able to deal with pressure, as the job can be pretty stressful. Worth noting that I left 3 weeks into the training period due to difficulty in reading the maps and lack of aptitude with listening and typing at the same time. This job is really something that you are either good at or you are not, and the training is designed to weed out those people respectively. Getting through to the training, you are told that they want everyone to pass, but the reality is that they are still in the process of whittling you down. We were told later that only about 50% of trainees make it to three months, which is the initial probation period. Theory and technical training last for 4 weeks, then two weeks of supervised call taking on the phones, then boom you are on your own. Exam hurdles in the theory training are a 90% pass rate that you can only fail once. They delayed my start time by three months from the time I was accepted into training, so it was disappointing to have been made to wait around for such a long time only to leave three weeks in. A great job if you have what it takes, but be aware that you are still in an elimination process once you begin training. Good luck if you are a candidate!