Captain with alcohol on his breath?....yawn.
Nav light out on tail of aircraft on Christmas Eve, would you cancel the trip?...come on.
Why do you want to work for XYZ?...thats a stupid question with an irrelevant, yet obvious, answer.
Yadda yadda yadda, they're the same old tired-ass questions that have been asked for decades.
"They just want to see how you'd handle a pressure situation." Thats bullsh!t. They want to see how you answer stupid questions in an interview.
It seems these people don't seem to be as concerned with hiring quality employees and capable pilots more than they are hiring people that are good at airline interviewing. It's a game. I'm now in a position to hire pilots and I never resort to that cookie-cutter idiocy. I care about what a pilot is worth, how he/she is going to be to fly with, and what he's going to be like to live with on a long trip, if he/she is intelligent, decent person or a social cripple...not how well he/she answers bullsh!t questions or if his shirt is tailored or how well their attention was divided (to exact percentages) between me or the HR rep. We discuss their resume (padding is easy to spot). We discuss FLYING, which is what the job is about. We discuss work history and get to know what their work ethic is (or isn't). We examine their systems comprehension more than their ability to memorize. If I say for them to "relax and be themselves" I freakin' mean it. I don't lie to them and tell them I don't want to hear canned answers, then secretly desire to hear just that (like the airlines do).
Drunk captains? What kind of people are you people hiring in the first place? Captain insists on flying an illegal bird because its Christmas Eve? Adios MF, it aint worth our ticket. I don't ask how they should handle it, if I hire them, I TELL them how they will handle it, and they always do handle it exactly that way. Talk is cheap, so what an applicant says in an interview isn't exactly what they would do, anyway. You can find out more about a person by just talking to them than by making them jump through their a$$hole. I want to hire a good pilot and a good employee, not someone that knows how to do a monkey trick in an interview correctly.
Back in '97 I interviewed with some kid at CoEx. The guy had pimples, ya'll. Never once looked up from pretending to scribble notes during the interview. Skywest's brain surgeon posed "you're taxiing out, and just as you are cleared into position, all the panel lights on your side go out. The captain has a hot date at your destination and doesn't want to be late, he's called for the line-up checklist, and tells you to ignore the malfunction...." I told them that I would call tower and tell them we needed to clear the runway to reconfigure. "nope, can't do that" I just did. "OK, you clear the runway, and your captain is hot and insists on going back." I ran through the typical things we all say about possible further elec problems, trying to reason with captain etc., bring up the MEL "MEL is in back and you cant reach it." I say I'd call maintenance and report the squawk over the company frequency. "Radio is out." Then how did I call the tower? This went on and on and escalated, them obviously trying to make it an impossible situation. I proposed everything short of shutting down the engines which would have freaked the pax out (they said the captain was physically blocking the fuel levers anyway). It was stupid. THey asked if I would write the captain up, and I said that yes indeed, after all that, I probably would, but not without talking to a superior first for guidance, because I wanted to make sure I did it right and fairly. He said "would you be worried about that captain not liking you anymore?" I said, maybe but not enough to stop me from requesting not to get him again. That while I certainly didn't want to make any enemies, I also had my career to think about. He exploded out of his chair and yelled "ENEMIES???" like I had just called his wife a slut or something. It was very, very bizarre. I ended up turning them down because I couldn't afford the job (6 weeks of training with living expenses on your nickel with only a $600 stipend). I was a full grown adult with a debt load and didn't live with my mom and dad, as did apparently all the other guys in my interview pool.
Thank God I don't work for them. I wouldn't trade what I'm doing now for anything. I think the airlines are bypassing some really good people, and potentially hiring some bad ones, by using their current templates. How a person performs in an "airline" interview has no bearing whatsoever on how good a pilot and employee they will be. Dang, I used to be real hungry for a job, but "which parent would you kill?" Never heard that one before. Thats some sick shizzle.
Nav light out on tail of aircraft on Christmas Eve, would you cancel the trip?...come on.
Why do you want to work for XYZ?...thats a stupid question with an irrelevant, yet obvious, answer.
Yadda yadda yadda, they're the same old tired-ass questions that have been asked for decades.
"They just want to see how you'd handle a pressure situation." Thats bullsh!t. They want to see how you answer stupid questions in an interview.
It seems these people don't seem to be as concerned with hiring quality employees and capable pilots more than they are hiring people that are good at airline interviewing. It's a game. I'm now in a position to hire pilots and I never resort to that cookie-cutter idiocy. I care about what a pilot is worth, how he/she is going to be to fly with, and what he's going to be like to live with on a long trip, if he/she is intelligent, decent person or a social cripple...not how well he/she answers bullsh!t questions or if his shirt is tailored or how well their attention was divided (to exact percentages) between me or the HR rep. We discuss their resume (padding is easy to spot). We discuss FLYING, which is what the job is about. We discuss work history and get to know what their work ethic is (or isn't). We examine their systems comprehension more than their ability to memorize. If I say for them to "relax and be themselves" I freakin' mean it. I don't lie to them and tell them I don't want to hear canned answers, then secretly desire to hear just that (like the airlines do).
Drunk captains? What kind of people are you people hiring in the first place? Captain insists on flying an illegal bird because its Christmas Eve? Adios MF, it aint worth our ticket. I don't ask how they should handle it, if I hire them, I TELL them how they will handle it, and they always do handle it exactly that way. Talk is cheap, so what an applicant says in an interview isn't exactly what they would do, anyway. You can find out more about a person by just talking to them than by making them jump through their a$$hole. I want to hire a good pilot and a good employee, not someone that knows how to do a monkey trick in an interview correctly.
Back in '97 I interviewed with some kid at CoEx. The guy had pimples, ya'll. Never once looked up from pretending to scribble notes during the interview. Skywest's brain surgeon posed "you're taxiing out, and just as you are cleared into position, all the panel lights on your side go out. The captain has a hot date at your destination and doesn't want to be late, he's called for the line-up checklist, and tells you to ignore the malfunction...." I told them that I would call tower and tell them we needed to clear the runway to reconfigure. "nope, can't do that" I just did. "OK, you clear the runway, and your captain is hot and insists on going back." I ran through the typical things we all say about possible further elec problems, trying to reason with captain etc., bring up the MEL "MEL is in back and you cant reach it." I say I'd call maintenance and report the squawk over the company frequency. "Radio is out." Then how did I call the tower? This went on and on and escalated, them obviously trying to make it an impossible situation. I proposed everything short of shutting down the engines which would have freaked the pax out (they said the captain was physically blocking the fuel levers anyway). It was stupid. THey asked if I would write the captain up, and I said that yes indeed, after all that, I probably would, but not without talking to a superior first for guidance, because I wanted to make sure I did it right and fairly. He said "would you be worried about that captain not liking you anymore?" I said, maybe but not enough to stop me from requesting not to get him again. That while I certainly didn't want to make any enemies, I also had my career to think about. He exploded out of his chair and yelled "ENEMIES???" like I had just called his wife a slut or something. It was very, very bizarre. I ended up turning them down because I couldn't afford the job (6 weeks of training with living expenses on your nickel with only a $600 stipend). I was a full grown adult with a debt load and didn't live with my mom and dad, as did apparently all the other guys in my interview pool.
Thank God I don't work for them. I wouldn't trade what I'm doing now for anything. I think the airlines are bypassing some really good people, and potentially hiring some bad ones, by using their current templates. How a person performs in an "airline" interview has no bearing whatsoever on how good a pilot and employee they will be. Dang, I used to be real hungry for a job, but "which parent would you kill?" Never heard that one before. Thats some sick shizzle.
