Originally Posted by
baseball
I never agreed with the removal of the sim ride.
1. It makes it an HR focused process and not a flight ops focused process.
2. It removes the pilot evaluator from the process at a very critical time. We want to have confidence in the applicant's ability to get into and out of the training program.
3. We really want to know how the applicant flies.
I guess you can say. More flight ops, and less HR.
If you think that's bad, take a quick look at what adds points to the application process. We have basically turned the application process into an extortion scheme. The job fair process forces applicants to spend $500-1000 for about 15 minutes of face time. Join an organization you wouldn't have, reserve a space, pay to get in, probably pay to get there and pay to stay a night, work it around your schedule and hope that the line isn't too long to see a recruiter. It is nothing short of extortion IMHO.
On the sim, not sure I agree. When I interviewed (94) we were using the Frasca. What a waste of time and resources. It evaluated nothing frankly. It most certainly didn't evaluate flying skills, decision making or CRM. How is sticking a potential new hire into a sim for an airplane they have probably never flown judging anything? We earn our keep with our decision making. That can much more easily and accurately be judged with scenario based discussions. The flying, is, or at least should be the easy part. The hard part of our job is the head work. I am not fundamentally against a sim ride in any way, but it needs to be structured to evaluate something valuable. The Frasca didn't do that, and based on what I've heard from buddies the newer sim ride was more of the same. Honestly, most of us that are flying glass cockpit airplanes and have been for years probably couldn't pass the ride that we were requiring of our new hires when the ride was part of the process.
Scott