I’ll grant you there is an element of character in those examples, but my point was they are not guaranteed indicators. With all due respect, it’s not that hard to not get kicked out of the military. I’ve know former military guys that were individuals of the highest caliber and I’ve known some that were, well, not. Ditto that with higher education. Yes, it can demonstrate focus & determination. But in this country especially, it can be just as much an indicator of economic status- applicant A may stand out over applicant B merely because he had $100K to spend on an academic pursuit unrelated to his career goals that applicant B did not. To be clear, I’m ok with giving hiring points to these groups, but in either case, you are not necessarily choosing a better pilot.

You see, being a good pilot is not a quantifiable attribute like height where we can just rank people objectively from 1-15,000 & pick the top 200 every month. (What I like to call the fallacy of the “most qualified candidate”.) What hiring departments end up doing, then, is using probability indicators to make their best guesses. Some indicators are better than others (how well does your ability to tell a good TMAAT story really predict your ability to lead a team or make a command decision? Hogan, anyone?) & some choices definitely display the weakness of the process; but the reality is we’ve never been able to hire only the best & we never will. It takes humility to accept that you were not the best or the most qualified applicant. You were merely good enough & someone took a chance on you; and your quality as an airline pilot has had at least as much to do with the decisions you’ve made after that moment as the ones that led up to it.

From there, the question becomes is there any inherent value in diversity? Some will honestly answer no to this question & if I’m being fair, I can’t objectively say they’re wrong. Personally, I look at it like the DiSC training we do. We don’t want an airline of all one personality type or the other because we’d be compounding our common weak spots & missing out on the strengths each group has to offer. I think there’s value in having a team with more diverse backgrounds & viewpoints as long as the team members learn to capitalize on that diversity & listen to & learn from each other. (This thread suggests we have a long way to go.)

That’s why I’m okay with making efforts (within the limits of good training & evaluation standards) to increase the diversity of our flight decks. There is no objectively best choice so we select from among our most promising options the team that has the highest potential for success.