when did this start?
 

All the majors seem to do similar assessments prior to interviews. I’m just curious, when did this start, and why?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I just imagine ~30 years ago, you applied (via paper application?) and you were selected for an interview based on your aviation experience. Not on whether you can answer some psychological assessment or arrange blocks in a certain order.
And that the in-person interview dealt with aviation, and not strange questions about what you’d do in some unrealistic scenario you’re given.
Just curious.

I can’t confirm all the scenarios they give have happened, but a lot of them have. just maybe not with the exact details of the question in the interview.

This has been a complaint of mine for a long time. I knew a guy hired at Delta in the 90s who didn't even have a logbook present, just years of pay stubs from ASA. I know this is a total oversimplification, but HR crept in to the hiring process and here we are. I know some fine aviators/people who got culled early in the process, but HR isn't necessarily looking for fine aviators/people. They're looking for someone who is a pilot and also certain other things that match a list of bullet points provided by a consulting firm.

It's not just aviation.

When I was the regional chief engineer for an oilfield services company (think somewhere between base chief pilot and RD at Delta) HR would try to inject themselves into EVERY hiring decision.

I'd have a job posting.
HARD REQUIRMENTS
Engineering Degree (Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Petroleum or Mining)
Eligible to take the EIT exam (think of the degree as the ATP, and EIT eligibility being having the 1000 hours to be Captain upgrade eligible)
US or basically NATO citizen (we did a fair amount of DoD work, be it on pipelines crossing facilites or on military facilities)
Drivers license. CDL Eligible (we needed at a minimum class C CDL with HAZMAT because we hauled radionuclides)

Preferred:
PE (Professional Engineer, it's the next step past EIT)
Bunch of technical stuff you won't understand

HR would try to shove candidates who are "outside the box" but "volunteered at the homeless shelter" that had either no degree at all, or not one of the degrees that are eligible to get their PE License eventually, NO DRIVERS LICENSE (either never had, or revoked), and then they'd try to get H1Bs from decidedly unfriendly places because they are cheap.

And that's before we get to quotas.

IF they sent me someone who was "underrepresented" in oilfield engineering (anyone not a male of euro, latin american or asian descent) I would have to write a THREE page justification why I didn't like them.

One day I had a ton of real work to do.

Actual background they sent me for a pipeline engineer (need Mechanical or Chemical BS at a minimum)

24 year old woman
Art history degree from some random state school in CA
No license (admitted it was because she can't pass the test)

I copy/pasted
"CANDIDATE DOES NOT POSESS A SINGLE ONE OF THE HARD REQUIREMENTS FOR THE JOB" enough times to fill 3 pages.

If a Filipino man had ALL the requirements and most of the preferred ones a one line email "Doesn't seem like a good fit" would suffice.

If he had a PE (the holy grail) maybe I'd get questioned.

Definitely not just airlines. This is a whole topic for a separate conversation, but one I think about more than I should especially as the owner of a couple small businesses in a regulated field. It is the job of every desk to make itself more relevant in order to justify its own existence and subsequent growth. The more desks we create, the more cumbersome everything becomes. Dealing with even local govs anymore is a gauntlet of minor bureaucrats that each hold the key to the next door, sometimes in a way that creates a feedback loop. A framework in which only the very well funded, in the form of money or unrealistic amounts of free time, can enter with any hope of success.

HR is one of these kinds of desks. </thread drift>

~30 years ago, or even 15 at some places, you had to prep for and fly a sim profile. And that's after you could find someone to walk you resume in. It was also easier to get blackballed then, too.

Maybe they changed what attributes they're looking for (20/20 vision is no longer required), or are trying to save money, or both.

With the rumor of delta hiring 2400 pilots this year. What are the chances of regional FO’s with 1000 TSIC getting pulled?

Between 73-77%

Probably depends on the rest of the resume, meet & greet events, volunteer work, etc.

The pool of available pilots has grown substantially, especially with the number of Spirit pilots jumping ship, so it will be significantly more challenging for someone with those stats than it was in 2022-2023, IMO.

oh, 'bout tree fitty