I should have prefaced my previous statement with the fact that I had paid completed interview prep sessions five (yes, five) times previously. I had seven interviews in seven years, some successful, some not, leading up to my second chance with Delta.

In short, I felt like I had a decent idea of what the experience was going to be. After literally years of formal and informal prep, I think I had a pretty good base of knowledge to draw from. Do what fits you.

Pay the money, do the prep, and don't leave anything to chance. Have your intro down cold when you walk in the door, because that's the only thing you know they'll ask (95% of the time). I did ECIC, RST, and Checked & Set for the app review. Yeah I shelled out a lot of money, but I got the CJO and I guarantee I wouldn't have been successful on my own. They didn't give me the answers, they taught me how to frame my answers. RST has ride reports almost daily, and it's a great place to connect through facebook with other people who are prepping.

Do the prep. It’s worth it. I did Cage consulting. Did a couple of mock interviews over FaceTime. Several questions they asked were asked in my actual interview. It made the interview so much more comfortable than it could have been. Probably would have been ok without, but would have been kicking myself for not spending the money if I had to wait 6-12 months to try again. You want to get the job offer on the first try!

And what would they ascertain from doing that? The vast majority of previous employers either wouldn't be able to speak for very much (outside of massive reliability issues or glaring abnormalities which would surface anyway in most cases) or they simply wouldn't because they'd have no reason to (and plenty of reasons not to).

Hours, training records, DOT tests, eligible for rehire, etc. That's about it and that doesn't tell you very much in most cases.

And while you can't always tell if someone will end up in "the 1%" in an interview, you generally can at least tell if there's something off about them. No system is perfect but don't expect them to start picking people out of a phone book anytime soon.