Originally Posted by Albief15

Ann Rhodes was at SWA for years in hiring, and was HR. She was later at Jetblue....as was Dean Melonas...also a former FA at AA....or was at least an inflight instructor. Most recently at FedEx, we had an HR guy for years leave (many actually thought he was a pilot) and his replacement came from Legal.

Pilots hiring pilots? YGTBSM. You guys may (or may not) have *****ed about Charlie Venema, Bill Kennedy, and their predecessors but the fact that pilots were involved in the process was an aberration, not a norm. You actually had it good and probably didn't realize it.

Corporations tailor their departments to A) manage risks and B) manage costs. The risk these days seems to be bad press, lawsuits, and social media gaffs more than bent metal, so HR and Legal will likely carry the battle for a while. That's a reflection--a good one--on how much more we take safety for granted these days. Nobody is terrified of us crashing--but they are concerned about bad PR and lawsuits. Pilots have gotten pretty good at their craft, and the system is remarkably safe. Thus--we don't think about blood and guts and sheet metal as the main concern anymore. The cost of carrying a well paid HR person in a corner office, or even a lawyer, is also likely less than the care and feeding of a WB captain. When our top earners make 300-400k a year, its easy enough to replace them with a person who might have only 80% of the job knowledge for 40-50% of the pay. They can contract out to get the 20% difference they need when they want more pilot specific input or info.

The key to success--either as a candidate for the job or as pilot wanting to influence the recruiting process--is communication. We (as pilots) are simply going to have to accept we will have HR, Inflight, Legal, and others intermixed in any process as we try to add pilots to our team. From an interview prep perspective--its why we have said for years its not always your pilot skills that get you hired (or not). From an organization perspective, the take away is if you want to help steer the hiring process, you have to develop a relationship with these others along the way, and explain why the traits you value should be the ones that they value as well. Otherwise--well--HR is just got going to hand you some folks and say "make this work...." Its up to us to explain why sometimes the stuff they like doesn't help us very much, and the stuff they don't is sometimes valuable.