Originally Posted by
ecam
Okay. Say you're hiring for a legacy carrier, and you have 6000 applications on file. They all exceed the hiring minimums, and 99% have the same or nearly the same qualifications on paper. You can hire 500. Do you interview all 6000, then go from there? How do you decide who gets interviewed.
Hiring for a small 135/121 carrier isn't the same. They have to use something to set applicants apart. Your argument that women and minorities/special interest groups are getting hired with less qualifications is BS and self serving. The only evidence you've presented is anecdotal. I have friends involved with hiring or recruiting at nearly every major airline. The numbers don't lie.
Customers and shareholders are demanding equality across the board, in all industries. Welcome to the world being run by millennials. Even an aging Boomer like myself can grasp that. so if everyone has the same qualifications, it behooves the airlines to hire some seriously underrepresented people. If you want to call that discrimination, fine, but it's hard to say a 95% majority is suffering from it.
I would decide who gets interviewed simply based on experience/background.
Currently, I think algorithms are used which assign points to various things-before any human ever sees an app. All that ethnic/gender stuff is worth points-and the value of that is probably vastly different depending on airline. I would delete that point system and any redact any way for the algorithm to imply such things from names.
I mentioned a while back I knew of a couple of women who were hired at XXXX back in the day with only temporary commercial certs. 250 hours-and not even a FE license. Both had gotten calls for an interview from airline XXXX without even applying. That airline was actually going down the list of new comm pilots and offering interviews to anyone who seemed like a female. Some had comm certs for other purposes, and had no intention of working for any airline-some just wanted to instruct part time or crop dust, etc..... There are plenty of fine women pilots out there, but I don't think anyone is ready for the kind of flying we do at that experience level.
Your last paragraph is off the mark. Customers and shareholders demand (and deserve) safety and competence. The fun stuff about what people look like should be entirely irrelevant.
Percentages shouldn't matter. If they do, how about I get a sweet gig in the NBA? I suck at basketball-but hey.... There's a % for you-and how about slapping me some majic equality??. Need more people looking like me there, don't we now?? (Why shouldn't their owners/fans demand and expect equality??) Could it be that it's no fun to watch people who suck try and play basketball??
I'd submit that our line of work is much more intolerant of ineptitude or incompetence. Consequences of a screw up are much worse than having to watch boring people who suck try and play a game poorly. Safety is what should matter in aviation. Hiring the best person for the job should be the goal. Other factors should be irrelevant.