Thank you for sharing yet another "CC Grievance". I'm not going to dance around the elephant in the room with this but you, as a person who has literally purchased every aviation job he's had, unsurprisingly, finds actual interview process… distasteful. I'm not shocked.
In the real world, there's a certain level of auditioning to go through. My company needs north of 1200 pilots this year. There are many multiples of people that exceed competitive minimums for those 1200 spots and you want to find the best candidates and I'm sorry, you're just not going to write a check to get the job here.
"The Process" is 1000x easier than it was in the 1990's. Company-sponsored social media outreach where you can ask direct questions to pilot selection, risk-free. Free job fairs where the company will pick you up at the airport, feed you, talk to you about your qualifications, shake hands with the CEO and drive you BACK to the airport, free of charge and requiring no hotel, the company medical is gone, it's a one day process where you know you'll have a CJO that day instead of waiting a week, paid uniforms and paid hotel accommodations.
That's too onerous for you, Cherokee? Go sit in the corner and think about how silly you sound.
(good grief, it's like there's some weird sexual perversion when you beg for public beat-downs, but we don't kink-shame here)
Look, I don't mean to be the ass you already assume me to be. I agree with your overall topic analysis. Still, per your own argument, what the heck does "dining on some Panang Duck and Mango and Sticky Rice" have to do with the "topic" other than to invidiously distinguish yourself as someone who's "made it"? BTW, I'm glad you have “made it”; You strike me a as good and decent and caring person. I'm glad and grateful for all you have done.
But you being you -and all the good you’ve done- doesn’t grossly or structurally change the insanity of pilot hiring. Or the insanity of modern, Western, Neo-post-Keynesian consumer economics.
Our current economic model does NOT particularly care about competence or experience... or righting ancient wrongs in any domain, not just aviation. Companies give lip service and basic compliance to legally-mandated requirements. Sometimes, they even give lip service to those mandated requirements for what they perceive to be marketing advantages. The real -fundamental- problem is that in the absence of either that legal requirement or marketing benefit… they would -based simply on moral and philosophical principles give ZERO attention to those issues. “Workers” (aka, “employees”, “associates”, “blessed fellow travelers”, “Neo-feudal-vassals”) are a dime a dozen. And companies -stupidly, but really- typically don’t give a rat’s ass about anything other than filling the empty position. In the airline industry, we call that a seat.
In our economic model -even in our current demographics- owners realize that there are far more folks that want jobs than them what want ‘em. Therefore, apparently… no one really gives a rat’s ass about hiring good or competent practitioners. Sure, sure, the HR departments (Ugh!) hire lots of early-20-somethings to do initial “interviews”. Those “interviews” are comprised mostly of the HR “employee” orally reading a list of questions that were already answered -usually in duplicate- by the applicant on the written application that allowed the applicant to “advance” to the interview stage.
Hiring has devolved to a state in which liability avoidance is the number one priority. The second priority may actually be competence at the job for which one is applying. Still, if a highly skilled applicant has ever -on the record- demonstrated the temerity to tell a boss that an operation is illegal per the operation’s (the boss’s) OpSpecs, that applicant -per PRD- instantly becomes anathema to the entire industry, regardless of the incompetence or corruption of that applicant’s former boss and the righteous, protective nature of the applicant.
Additionally, what the hell are we (not just airlines, but commerce writ large) doing here? What are we actually testing for with all these jumping hoops and chutes and ladders demanding our applicants to slide and climb through?
What’s with all the artificially created barriers to entry??
I mean, how many 20-year-practicing doctors could - next Wednesday- score a good enough MCAT score to even get admitted to Med School today? How many 20-year, 9000-hour captains could -on the spot- pass an ATP written exam today?
My point is, if highly functioning practitioners can no longer pass the test that allowed them entry into the system that now allows them to make big bucks doing their jobs, what relevance do those tests have to doing those jobs?
Learning is different than cramming for a test. Knowledge is information and wisdom one carries around in one’s noggin. If information and wisdom are not internalized and available for recall, those “possessions” were never actually learned (and
"learned" is ella-close to "
earned"). If not learned and not readily available for practical application to a job, on that job, then -by practical definition- they are NOT required to accomplish that job. If a successful practitioner no longer has mental access to originally-required knowledge in his noggin -at his beck and call- and yet is still capable of doing his job, then why did he have to cram all that superfluity in the first place? Obviously, that “knowledge” is NOT knowledge. Why? Because it’s no longer known. It is demonstrably not required to actually practice whatever the practice is.
So all that “learning” was just a cram session- a Kabuki dance. It was just a hoop one was required to leap through for no particular reason. If a successful practitioner does NOT need real time access to certain information and knowledge -at his beck and call- to successfully complete his job… then that knowledge is obviously irrelevant to the actual practice of his job as he is being rewarded for practicing it.
Cherokee can be even worse than am I at times. Yet, he does occasionally make good points. Disregarding the "thread shift" event (I started on this thread and have no awareness of the originating thread), he does -with some winnowing- seem to be making a cogent point here.
Yes, you are correct that "The Process" is 1000x easier than it was in the 1990's". That is almost (but not quite) entirely a function of supply and demand. Back in the 90s, there were far more really qualified pilots than there are now.
Now? The airlines have a problem. That problem is largely of their own making. Therefore, now, they are reacting. Reacting by giving away free rides and espresso and bloated pay rates to try to make up for their own failures. And, yeah, that’s at least partly because now we face one of the most overstuffed, molly-coddled and entitled new-hire generations the world has ever experienced. It’s also partly due to economic changes. It's also partly due to an industry whose basic pilot development structure remains pretty securely bass-akwards. But it’s mostly because overstuffed, over-paid, self-satisfied executives fell asleep at their helms.
It’s a shame that Airlines did such a terrible job of making their beds; such a terrible job of forecasting what was an easily recognizable problem. One well known Major circa 2013 had -in it’s entire pilot cohort- only about 15 pilots under the age of 40. A few years later, they were decrying the horror of “the pilot shortage” and scrambling to fill seats.
That “horror” was almost entirely of that airline’s own mismanagement. It had very little to do with demographics. It had to do with a company whose management ignored reality and failed to plan ahead. It was current-profit fixation-based total loss of situational awareness to a situation that should have been obvious and easily avoided.
