Originally Posted by
swedespeed
My first aviation interview was with a European major coming out of flight school. After passing a rather intense day of psych evaluation I waited for over a year to do the face to face interview and sim ride. Things felt a bit so so and I was not surprised to receive a standard "thanks but no thanks" letter.
My dad recommended me to not accept such a non descriptive NO and I called one of the CP's. I was surprised to how friendly he was taking his time to dig out my file and look into it. Turned out I had passed the criteria for the FO part and I had all the qualities and experiences they were looking for, but I was just below the future captain criteria due to lack of leader ship skills. Coming out of flight school with very little experience it kind of surprised me to be rejecteed due to this since it would be at least 10 years before I would ever see the left seat.
A friend of mine interviewed with the same airline and brought up his lack of leadership skills himself, but that he was working on it. He was offered the job.
Lesson to be learned: Don't be afraid of bringing up your own flaws, as long as you let them know you are aware of them and trying to correct them.
This was 2001 and my friend was never called to class and they haven't hired a single guy since, so looking back I'm not sorry for not making it.
SS
Everything happens for a reason... I really believe that. Sounds like it's a good thing you didn't get that job!
Some good feedback from that employer - keep in mind that it was from a European employer and they have different laws than we do. Here in the US we are a lot more "sue happy" than other countries so employers protect themselves by not disclosing anything.
You do bring up a very good point - don't be afraid of your own weaknesses. Everybody's got them and many interviewers will ask you point blank "what are your weaknesses?" Hit it head-on - how do you strive to overcome those weaknesses?
Thanks swedespeed - great post!