Originally Posted by
Palmtree Pilot
No, but this practice has become common place in this industry. Only very few companies that I have applied to in the last year have an automatic response to on-line applications. It's a shame what the HR departments have turned the hiring practices into for aviation.
Keep ya in the dark and base hiring on personality and psych test and BS HR questions instead of your experience, record and knowledge.
On the other hand, Atlas has hired an excellent group of pilots in the last couple of years. In my class, the average qualifications were 6000+ TT and three types and 75% had heavy/overwater time. The fact that they do not require a logbook check or sim eval points to the fact that, at this level, pilots should be able to produce a logbook full of flights and fly a simple sim profile (with, no doubt, the benefit of the complete gouge).
Apparently, Atlas has decided to trust the applicants to be honest with the logbooks and allow the resume review to weed out any obvious fraudulent wannabes. The emphasis here seems to be on WHO they hire rather than WHAT they hire. I have been impressed with the amount of responsibility and independence they give to the pilots here. This is important to them because, even though they give you high tech PCD's to provide worldwide support, there are times (for instance) when you are deadheading solo on the far side of the world when you have to be able to think on your feet and deliver yourself to the next stop on time.
So, while they DO keep you in the dark as far as up to date info on where you are in the process (after all they have a very lean HR dept that concentrates only on putting the best applicants pilots into classes), the Atlas process works. From my perspective, they have done an outstanding job of weeding out the whiners and jerks and have hired some smart and great folks you enjoy spending time with whether on a layover or locked into the cockpit with on a 16 hour leg.
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BTW: I think two of those personality traits they look for are patience and resourcefulness - things that served me well during the application and interview process...