Originally Posted by Chuck D

You can sit around lamenting some sort of algorithm making the decisions and the human factor removed but it's not accurate. I've only been at UAL for a few years so the hiring process is fresh in my mind and I have several friends who have had the good fortune of making the leap since then as well. Here's what I can tell you.

Everyone I know has has some sort of face to face interaction with people from UAL at some point. That is key from the perspectives of: 1) United getting to know you beyond a bunch of 1s and 0s, 2) a chance for you to establish that, beyond your 5ish-15k flight hours and great-on-paper appearance you have a fair chance of interacting well with both our customers and co-workers, and 3) you're expressing a basic level of interest in working for United by going above and beyond simply dropping $50 to Airlineapps and a data dump into the program.

Second, do an honest to goodness self-assessment of your present hireability and what flaws you have (we all have them) and what you can do to fix them. Most of us who have been here for a modest amount of time have talked with many of our interested friends. Some are dialed in, know the process, have fantastic resumes and interact extremely well with others, plus are making the effort and continuing to better themselves. For them, it's a matter of time, getting the call, and then making it through the hiring process unless somewhere else calls first. It's "when, not if", but still a little luck and a lot of prep involved.

There are also a fair number who have either fundamental or fixable "issues". Off the top of my head I can personally think of a few friends with 1) seriously bad online app w/ multiple grammar issues, contradictions or even bad excuses for checkride failures, 2) 1000 hours of TSIC and no degree, not much on the resume, and yet an expectation of a job, 3) 50+, not really making any efforts and still expecting a call, and blaming your lack of progress on "quota people" or 20-somethings who you fail to acknowledge in most cases are actually relentlessly working their butts off to get the job and have a solid background 4) hirable but not interested in making a sincere effort to prep for the interview... resulting in really tough odds of getting the job after the call, 5) just plain bitter, which is usually easy to pick up on, or 6) a plain old questionable background that sets off red flags due to lots of failures, DUIs, strange job changes that suggest firing, etc.

Other than #5, these are all fixable, but again, you've got to be honest with yourself and don't expect overnight results if you make some changes. The job is there to earn, but "earn" is the key word. You may get lucky and earn the job at 3000 hours and a recent upgrade with the efforts you're making (no company wants exclusively a cadre of 50y.o. guys who are out the door in 15 years even if they were Yeager or Sully in a former life), but when you realize that amongst the people UAL (and the other majors to be sure) hires are retired military O-6s who ran squadrons and have significant combat time, and civilian side pilots with demonstrated leadership and experience and drive, if you're plugging away at bare minimum, you might want to reassess.

Sorry for length... the TLDR on this is: Keep working at it - your efforts matter. It's not just an algorithm and they really do care. Oh, and don't put all your eggs in one basket.