PilotOnTheRise said:
I have applied for a customer service position with Continental Express and American Eagle over at the Baton Rouge Metro. Airport. For those who work in customer service for an airline, what is the interview like? What kind of questions do they ask?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Have answers to the typical "who are you" questions, like what you did in school, what you want to do for a career, why are you interested in working for our company. (Don't say "to fly for free.") That said, my experience with ground-ops job chasing seems to be that you won't get called for an interview or if you do and have no experience, they're so desperate for employees they take one look and you and skip all the questions.
Okay, I should rephrase. I sent in an app to NWA for a CSR spot at DCA back in, oh, '99. A few months later, I got a post card stating that "your background does not meet our hiring needs at this time..." When I interviewed at ACA, I was surfing around and found that they were hiring. At the time, they had a toll-free number that you called which was a touch-tone prescreen. They asked a lot of work-style yes/no questions that you answered by pushing "1 for yes or 2 for no" and timed you on responses. They asked stuff like "do you like working outside" and "can you work in a streesful or fast paced envirnoment" and others that related them to a ramp-type job. After I hung up, I fully expected not to hear from them again. Lo and behold, they called me the next day

The face to face interview was rather insulting but they hired me anyway because they were so d*mn desperate

At my current job, my resume got me in and the interview was no big deal. Typical "who are you questions" from the HR folk and the line manager figured by my resume that I could do the job. Remember, your presentation can or is as important as your content. I mean that both on paper and in person.
So I probably didn't help you very much, but if/when I jump to another airline job, I won't sweat it. I have enough experience where I'm pretty much guaranteed an interview for any ground ops job, and will just draw from my experience during an interview.
Now, BTR is an outstation for the carriers you mentioned. You will do everything, maybe not in the same day. You will check people in, check their bags, book reservations, deal with upgrades, missed connections, and whatever it is people do when they check in. You will park the arriving aircraft that makes up the outbound flight, hook up a GPU, download the passengers, unload carry on bags, unload checked bags and deliver them to the claim belt. You will load the next set of bags, board the flight, deal with their oversize carryons, and do some bookkeeping for the bags you loaded. The door will close, you will disconnect the GPU, start the aircraft, and marshall it out. You will then deal with pax whose bags didn't make it on the flight. You will open a mishandled baggage file in the computer, see if there's any tracking info on the bag, and set up a delivery profile. You will incessently be calling the upline hub asking about the status of your inbound aircraft, as it makes up your outbound flight. You're calling because you have a bunch of pissed off people that you can't do anything for, save from rebooking them on another carrier. (At an outstation, make friends with the other airline employees. You'll make each other's lives better, and there are some travel perks that are specific to the station and not something the other company employees have) Oh, you're also dealing with small packages/small cargo shipments. You will most likely not do lavatory and water service at an outstation, you will not fuel aircraft, but you may, on a jet, have to work a piece of an equipment called an "airstart" if the APU on the aircraft is broken. You may or may not have to push the aircraft back. Sometimes you will have to deal with weight and balance restrictions requiring you to offload pax/bags.
This defers from the hub, where most employees "specialize". Certain people know everything about bags, others know everything about checking people, but you know EVERYTHING because you're an outstation employee (I"m not being sarcastic. I had a lot of respect for our hub CSR's who did TDY at outstations because they learned all of the job functions.)
Sorry for the long windedness, but the key to succeeding at an interview is being prepared. Know the job description (which I just gave you!), show some enthusiasm, smile, know something about the company. Stay away from taboo subjects, and discuss the "positive future" and how you can contribute.
Hope this helps.