ameren lineman evaluations question

[lineman21]

I recently saw on this forum questions about guys going to St. Louis to do there lineman evaluations for Ameren. What did this consist of for five days and did any of you that went to the evaluations get hired?Also were any of you already experenced with pole climbing or could someone that has applied with no experence make it through the evaluations? Do they show you what you need to make it through? Just curious , thanks

[MikeS]

I went to the one back in mid Dec. All I can say is good luck. They seem to rush things quite a bit (tring to get you pushed through quickly). What sucked about when I was there was it was snowing / sleeting the whole week and the journeyman teaching the group had something in their contract saying that they did not have to go out if it was raining / snowing/ etc. so we did not get much time out one the poles. The first day we watched a 10 min. video about climbing, then they fitted you for the gear and sent you out to the poles. Within the first hour or hour and a half they expected you to be at the top of the 30' poles. They did not give to many tips, pointers or any type of direction about climbing either, it was kinda like figgure it out for yourself. In fact it was not until day 3 that one of them noticed that I had a piece of gear on wrong. All in all though I had the time of my life there. It is such a cool feeling being at the top of a pole, throwing your arms back and just looking around. Although I did not make it to the last day, I am not giving up the dream. I have been working on the things I had problems with and am going to try to get into ALBAT.