I did a thing

You know, there are ways to weed people out that are actually relevant.

During my interview (which I was successful in) I got the distinct impression that these irrelevant factors were really a personality test.

They ask a scenario based question and you tell them you’re going to be calm cool and collected. OK, let’s test that by pretending his poor high school grades might cost him this job. Let’s get in his face about it just a little bit and see if he gets uptight, defensive, etc. Let’s be just a little condescending and aggressive in our questioning of his shortcomings and past failures to see if we can get him to become emotional. If he can keep his cool during the most important interview of his career, he can probably keep his cool when some minor emergency occurs or when dealing with difficult coworkers.

It really felt like they cared about the actual answer very little. They were really observing how I answered things.

I think as pilots we are so literal so much of the time that we sometimes forget to pick up on the subtext of what is actually being said.
 
During my interview (which I was successful in) I got the distinct impression that these irrelevant factors were really a personality test.

They ask a scenario based question and you tell them you’re going to be calm cool and collected. OK, let’s test that by pretending his poor high school grades might cost him this job. Let’s get in his face about it just a little bit and see if he gets uptight, defensive, etc. Let’s be just a little condescending and aggressive in our questioning of his shortcomings and past failures to see if we can get him to become emotional. If he can keep his cool during the most important interview of his career, he can probably keep his cool when some minor emergency occurs or when dealing with difficult coworkers.

It really felt like they cared about the actual answer very little. They were really observing how I answered things.

I think as pilots we are so literal so much of the time that we sometimes forget to pick up on the subtext of what is actually being said.

That's even worse. By a wide, wide margin.
 
What I meant is, all other things being equal, they'd probably choose the candidate with the better college grades.

All other things are never equal. They're ignoring relevant items to focus on irrelevant items.

Here's an idea: throw the candidates in a sim and actually see how they frickin' fly and handle emergencies. At least Southwest still does a "chair flying" scenario so they can see how a candidate handles an abnormal. All of these HR BS and mind games is not conducive to putting good aviators in cockpits.
 
That's even worse. By a wide, wide margin.

Why?

Don’t get me wrong, I dont enjoy the aviation interview culture but I took 2 personality tests and sat down with a shrink which tells me they care about personality a lot. I can’t think of another way to test somebodies emotional maturity in an HR interview than to prod them a bit.
 
Why?

Don’t get me wrong, I dont enjoy the aviation interview culture but I took 2 personality tests and sat down with a shrink which tells me they care about personality a lot. I can’t think of another way to test somebodies emotional maturity in an HR interview than to prod them a bit.

Personality tests are fine (provided they are backed by science). Intentionally trying to piss someone off in an interview environment is indicative of a problem with the interviewer's personality, not the interviewee's.
 
Personality tests are fine (provided they are backed by science). Intentionally trying to piss someone off in an interview environment is indicative of a problem with the interviewer's personality, not the interviewee's.

Seems to be a culture thing. Everyone else had the same experience regardless of which interview team they got. 2 good cops 1 bad cop. I’d imagine they go through some sort of training that tells them to do that.

I wish it was different myself. Aviation is challenging enough and I would do things a little differently if I were in charge. My entire interview would be a normal HR process then I’d hang out with the applicants for the day to get a feel for them.

I don’t think sims are necessary because I haven’t heard of mainline having issues with guys failing training.
 
Seems to be a culture thing. Everyone else had the same experience regardless of which interview team they got. 2 good cops 1 bad cop. I’d imagine they go through some sort of training that tells them to do that.

I wish it was different myself. Aviation is challenging enough and I would do things a little differently if I were in charge. My entire interview would be a normal HR process then I’d hang out with the applicants for the day to get a feel for them.

I don’t think sims are necessary because I haven’t heard of mainline having issues with guys failing training.

If you as a company are the only place using aggression and mind games in the hiring process, it may be time to step back and reevaluate what you’re doing.

Seriously, no other major/legacy airline is doing that, and such tactics would be laughed at in the engineering world and any other corporate environment I’ve heard about.
 
If you as a company are the only place using aggression and mind games in the hiring process, it may be time to step back and reevaluate what you’re doing.

Seriously, no other major/legacy airline is doing that, and such tactics would be laughed at in the engineering world and any other corporate environment I’ve heard about.

Eh, I think you might be over-reading into my post. Maybe it’s how I typed it. It wasn’t like being attacked, it was just some very direct questioning about blemishes on my resume and then zero reaction when I gave them the answers. They appeared to be observing my reaction to the questioning more than my actual answers.

They definitely have a reputation, however I feel like my HR interview was nowhere near the “living nightmare” stories I’ve heard from others. It’s possible they are changing, I know there’s been some lineup changes in the past few years. I also know they are hiring a lot this coming year and that can definitely change the interview process.
 
Personality tests are fine (provided they are backed by science). Intentionally trying to piss someone off in an interview environment is indicative of a problem with the interviewer's personality, not the interviewee's.

SNL did a “sketch” or skit on stress interviews their first year.
 
Probably just more of an enhanced carrot to assist with staffiing. But looks like the Delta NASA interview days as a DGI are over.

 
Last edited:
Probably just more of an enhanced carrot to assist with staffiing. But looks like the Delta Nasa interview days as a DGI are over.

Its a start and itll help their pass rates, but unless the give every man woman and child a shot at the interview now so they know where they stand it aint gonna do much. They did it for the ssp, theyll do it for the dgi.
 
It’s a good improvement. We don’t really struggle on the JKT test as whole. We are failing on the HR portion. But getting rid of the test that people spend 80% of prep time on is huge so people are now able to focus their studies on the HR section.
 
Back
Top