I recently interviewed at XO and wanted to share my opinion. It’s a bit more dissenting then the experience others are giving but I’ll preamble my post by saying I’m not looking for another “stepping stone” vs. looking for a place to retire from. I’m fortunate to be in a position of being able to be very picky about my next employer and am looking for a good fit in both directions.
The experience, "procedural order of the day" speaking, was the same as all the recent gouges out so nothing new there. I'll just review specifics.
Overall, the worse thing to say about it was I was given the impression that they were looking for non-critical thinking corporate drone types and they had no idea how to go about that exactly. It was like they were all given script from terribly written dialogue they were not used to seeing and hadn’t rehearsed and felt like they had to act it out anyway. I got the distinct impression that's coming in from the Vistajet side and is being systematically interjected into their corporate matrix so to speak. I felt they were coming off a bit too big for their britches, they knew it and didn’t like having to be that way. There were also a lot of unanswered questions regarding the company's future. Fleet plan, merger with Vistajet etc. etc. type questions were literally met with a shoulder shrug and a sarcastic smile which was far from confidence inspiring. The lead pilot running the interview session stated verbatim he was looking to leave. I mean who does that in an interview? That really got my attention.
One positive thing was that I was impressed they were as organized at their FXE Facility as they were considering how recent they had moved. I did, however, feel it spoke volumes that only 10% of their support staff chose to stay with XO Jet and make the move to Florida from California. While a trans-con relocation certainly would cost a company at least half their people, maybe even three quarters, I think only 10 % taking the relocation package, a number which was given by one of the interviewers when asked in the group question time, is quite low and quite telling. I would think a really good company would have had more loyalty then that, at least 25 to 30% would have moved. I have no idea what’s typical there so I may be way off.
I will comment on the cog screen. It was absurdly unnecessary. I felt it was not particularly challenging, just trying, annoying and a waste of time. They claimed the results would accurately predict how well you'd do in their training program. Then they explained that the baseline for the test was accomplished by having all current pilots take it then compare the results to their training performance. The data, of course, is totally unscientific and predicts broad generalizations at best. I do not know how much weight the test results have in a hire/no-hire decision. On that point, my impression was (overall) that the most weighted portion of the day was the HR panel interview. However, I do not know that for certain and am merely speculating based on my experience and impression.
The pilots conducting the pilot panel were nice enough, but the questions asked on a couple of approach plates were categorically unrealistic. They were full of “speculative" scenarios that would have never played out in real-world flying and the lead gent was flat out incorrect on telling me one of my answers was wrong. That's fine by itself because even check airman make mistakes and even if I was incorrect, it’s impossible for all of us to be 100% correct on that sort of thing 100% of the time. I just didn’t care for the demeanor in which he presented it. There was an arrogance to it that just left a bad taste in my mouth. I confirmed his error with multiple sources after I got home. I spoke with colleagues a hell of a lot smarter than me, looked up the regs and checked the AIM just to make sure I didn't need to work on my own level of knowledge and found I was right. I have to wonder if he was trying to goad me into giving a wrong answer after I had already given the correct one just to see if I'd crack under pressure. If that was the case I absolutely loath that mentality. As a former trainer myself such a thing speaks to a philosophy of "negative training" possibly being a pervasive tone in their training department culture. That's a big assumption on my behalf but one that's not without merit. Perhaps a current XO employee can comment to that regard. In any event, asking scenario-based questions is always a good thing, but when you ask them as an interviewer you may wanna make sure your own answer is correct first, unless, as I said, it was an intentional deception to gauge a stress reaction.
I really got the sense that the XO Jet that current pilots rave positive about on social media was dying a steady and slow death and everyone was in denial over it. I felt there was a lot of anxiety among the employees I interacted with about the future with VistaJet now owning 49% of the company. They were trying a little too hard to convince us that they themselves were convinced of the future being a good one. It felt like South Florida a day or two before a major hurricane strike, like there was something ominous and foreboding looming over the horizon. There was no real sincere and palatable enthusiasm, just a lot of waxing optimistic for optimism’s sake. That’s always a common theme when your company nearly gets bought out, however in this case, it was really quite rampant.
I’ve worked for another company nearly half owned by a European entity and the way they like to do things in Europe just doesn’t translate well here in the U.S. Yet they seem oblivious to this fact and wind up struggling against themselves over it. I really feel strongly that the “negative” vibe I got was all VistaJet’s doing. That they have come in with a wrecking ball and want to rebuild what was a good and employee loved operation into a company that puts the needs of their employees so far down the list of priorities it’s barely on the list at all.
For the sake of the pilots currently there or headed to class I hope I'm quite wrong. No doubt XO Jet on the XO Aviation side is presently a good gig for the right person. However, it's not a fit for me and I was turned off substantially by the experience. While I was excited to meet the folks at XO Jet I walked away from my in-person interview feeling less than enthusiastic over the opportunity. If I'm given an offer I'll respectfully decline.