New FedEx Internal Recommendations Process For Pilot Applicants

Hacker15e

Hacker15e

Who am I? Where are my pants?
FedEx released its new policy on recommendations for pilot applicants today.

Some of you may be familiar with how Purple used to do things 6-9 years ago, where each applicant needed to have a "sponsor" inside the company to even get looked at for an interview. For reasons well beyond the scope of this discussion, that process went away sometime around 2013, and when hiring at FX began again in 2015 the entire internal recommendation process had been essentially eliminated.

When I say eliminated, I mean not only was no "sponsor" required, but hundreds of pilots were hired in 2015, 2016, and 2017 with no internal recommendations whatsoever.

But...things have changed again, and here's what was announced today (from an FCIF released to the pilot workforce):
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The new process will be referred to as a “Personal Endorsement” or “PE.” As part of this process:
  • Current FedEx crew members can serve as a PE to support an internal or external pilot candidate once every 10 years. PEs will be tracked and the limits will be applied by Flight Recruitment.
  • Probationary pilots become eligible to make a PE after completing their probationary year.
  • A PE will not guarantee an applicant will be invited to undergo the selection steps of the hiring process. Candidates who have a PE must still meet the qualifications and experience requirements which place them in the zone of consideration for hiring.
  • Although a candidate may have multiple PEs, a FedEx crew member may still only serve as a PE once every 10 years.
  • The most effective and reliable PEs will be based on a crew member’s first-hand knowledge of a candidate’s aviation skills, work experience, and fit with our FedEx culture.
Previously, a pilot could submit an unlimited number of candidate recommendations for individuals with whom they may or may not have had first-hand experience. The result was that the impact of a recommendation was less than what we would all hope for. By limiting the number of PEs that a pilot may exercise, we hope to dramatically increase the significance and quality of a given PE. With that same goal in mind, we will also only be accepting PEs from pilots who have no discipline on file for the five years prior to the date of the PE.

As part of the transition process, all existing recommendations will be purged from this system as of February 28, 2017, and pilots who wish to enter a PE may do so beginning March 01, 2017, on the PilotCredentials.com website. If you had an existing recommendation for a candidate and you wish to serve as a PE for that same candidate, you will need to complete the process at the site referenced above.

Conversely, if you choose not to serve as a PE for a candidate you previously recommended, you need not do anything and the lack of a PE for that candidate will not be held against him or her. In other words, we will be working with a clean slate as of March 01 2017. If the candidate for whom you serve as PE either fails to successfully complete the selection process or rejects a FedEx job offer, this PE still counts towards the limit.
 
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Given that they can only give one once every ten years, it looks like it's safe to assume it won't be mandatory for applicants to have a PE?

What if all the FedEx pilots write a PE in year one?
 
Lawman said:
It's so weird to see the "good ol'boy" network actually put in a written SOP.
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It goes back and forth with a lot of airlines.

We want more control of the process to get guys invited, but then it's abused.

We take pilots out of the process, but then, THAT gets abused.

Always seeking some sort of balance at my shop and it's coming.
 
Derg said:
It goes back and forth with a lot of airlines.

We want more control of the process to get guys invited, but then it's abused.

We take pilots out of the process, but then, THAT gets abused.

Always seeking some sort of balance at my shop and it's coming.
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It would seem like a min/max quota of who can be entered into the pool by each means would be the easiest approach to fix that.

The Army Warrant program has a similar issue of wanting prior enlisted soldiers who show experience and understanding from day 1 but also wanting "new blood."

Solution is both pools are desired but neither one can exclusively fill the total crop yield that year of selectees.
 
Lawman said:
It would seem like a min/max quota of who can be entered into the pool by each means would be the easiest approach to fix that.

The Army Warrant program has a similar issue of wanting prior enlisted soldiers who show experience and understanding from day 1 but also wanting "new blood."

Solution is both pools are desired but neither one can exclusively fill the total crop yield that year of selectees.
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There are "various methods" of recc's, versus off the street, versus "X" that my shop has but it's all getting revamped.
 
MikeFavinger said:
Given that they can only give one once every ten years, it looks like it's safe to assume it won't be mandatory for applicants to have a PE?

What if all the FedEx pilots write a PE in year one?
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There are 4500 pilots at FX, and they're hiring about 500 per year....so that's not likely to be a problem for a while.
 
Lawman said:
It's so weird to see the "good ol'boy" network actually put in a written SOP.
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A company I worked for had a section of the employee manual titled 'Nepotism' that went in to great detail on how family members were supposed to work together, etc. Basically encouraged at company headquarters, vorboten at the bases where people actually did work. Utah company, of course.
 
NickH said:
A company I worked for had a section of the employee manual titled 'Nepotism' that went in to great detail on how family members were supposed to work together, etc. Basically encouraged at company headquarters, vorboten at the bases where people actually did work. Utah company, of course.
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Sounds about right.

My family out in Utah talks about owning their own business and some of the unofficial hoops they have to jump through (councils of elders, etc). Some straight up feudalism crap.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
killbilly said:
@Hacker15e - for some reason I thought you were at JetBlue. Why did I think that?
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What makes you think I'm not?

:)

I certainly would have loved to work there, but sadly no...never called me for an interview, despite the generous and herculean efforts of the JC'ers who are jB pilots and tried to assist me.
 
I get the idea of placing the "ownership" of a candidate on the endorsing party. Seems practical to me. What I don't get is one every ten years. That seems to be a very limiting time frame. Assuming an average 30 year career, that's only 3 endorsements. Especially since your endorsement is wasted if they don't even interview the candidate. If I had a kid that was even considering the airlines, I'd be saving one for him or her. Even one every five years seems limiting. I think one every two or three is reasonable.

Having said that, t's there process and they can conduct it any way they see fit.
 
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I like the idea of recommendations meaning something. I thought the days of "I have 15 LORS..." were a bit ridiculous.

I think "hey, this guy would be a good fit for our company" should carry heavy weight, so a recommendation should be more than "I was on his jumpseat once." But at the same time you need to keep a line of fresh blood coming in to make things a little more diverse.

That said, for those of us that would like to go there we pretty much need our best friend to get hired first, otherwise we basically have no shot. That kind of stings.
 
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