the work environment, in the call centres at least, is only as stressful as you allow it to be. i have worked for centrelink call for about 4.5 years (and as Mel mentioned, am on mat leave now) and prior to that, worked for one of the big Telco's. the expectations are high in regard to privacy and accuracy but the job itself isn't that stressful. i can count on one hand the number of times i've been abused in 4.5 years at C'link - i would need two hands a day (minimum) for the Telco! there is a high turnover of staff as it's a job that isn't for everyone (lots to remember, a fairly complex system to navigate) but once you learn the job, it isn't scary at all! i promise!

in the contact centres, the stress levels of staff are significantly higher - basically because the "queue" of people waiting is a physical queue that you can see while in the call network, they're just a number on the phones. some people in the contact centres do feel it's appropriate to take out their frustrations on staff, and make threats, but there are protocols in place for dealing with these individuals. i have many friends who have gotten bored in the call network and chosen to move to our local contact centres for the challenge.

interview wise, the types of questions you'll be asked on the phone will be situation/action/outcome based. basically, you'll be asked a question, asked to describe a situation in which you had to deal with X scenario, HOW you dealt with it, and what the outcome was. this may be along the lines of a "difficult customer", a "team of work colleagues" or similar. don't be afraid to take a moment to think it through, and make sure you answer with detail. so, having worked at the bank in the past (and by the sounds of it, copped some nasty customers!), a difficult customer might be someone that has called in regard to what they believe to be excessive fees - how did you handle the situation, what resolution did you offer, and what was the ultimate outcome (customer was still upset, but accepted the terms of their account that they were charged x per month or whatever) - the team scenario may be a question in regard to how have you dealth with a non team player work wise. i'm guessing you were probably a member of a team. in that case, if person X wasn't supportive of the team and you intervened, how did you do it, what did you say, what was the outcome (may have simply been that you noticed behaviours that weren't conducive to team environment and encouraged them to change that aspect, or mentioned it to team leader to follow up etc).

if you get past the phone interview - the group interview is pretty straight forward. they will get you to do some sort of team activity (for us, it was building with lego!) - basically what they are looking for is how you work as a member of a team - do you let someone else take the league, do you lead. what they are looking for are team players. in our situation, we had on person building, two looking at a model and directing the builder what pieces to put where. one of our "team" started out by saying "we'll do it this way" - the othr two of us said "how do we do this to work together" - person 1 wasn't seen again, the other two of us started together a couple of weeks later.

we then had basic skills assessment on the computers (typing, grammar, maths - very basic), a mock phone call (to see how we interacted with people on the phones and translated that to the mock program on the computer.

we didn't have a one on one interview at ours but i think it was structured very differently due to the fact it was a fairly new centre and doing mass recruiting. we were given the questions they'd ask and given the opportunity to answer in writing. i believe more recently there has been a one on one interview for each position.

if you get past this point, you may be offered a position at which point you'll be sent for a medical and eye examination and then your official job offer extended once you've passed these

hope that helps - good luck!

BG