Buford

I met with seven different airlines on Wednesday. The thing that struck me most was how incredibly different each recruiter was from each other. Had one of the legacy guys speak past me with what seemed like a mostly canned response that I'm pretty sure every other applicant got. Others were bouncy and upbeat. One girl from a legacy was very friendly but seemed to know nothing about the recruiting process of her own airline. My conversation with one of the big freight haulers seemed to me to be the most professional and relevant of the bunch. I learned that who you talk to- and who reviews your resume- is probably a bigger decider of future success than what is actually on the resume. It shouldn't be that way, but that's most certainly the way it is.....

I suppose the next six months will indicate whether OBAP was worth it or not, but I suspect I won't be attending another event.

Maingear

I'd tend to agree with that. I met with the same UA person that I met with at NGPA and there was just no connection, just like at NGPA. She seemed like she was just going through the motions. I met with DL and AA and they were both fantastic, with AA being slightly better. It seems very hit or miss depending on who you talk to.

Personally, I'd rather talk with pilots than HR people. We have more in common and they seem easier to get along with.

Dustycrophoppin

Curious, did Delta offer any insight into their hiring numbers for this winter or next year?

DrunkIrishman

Me too. I'll just watch all the data analytics PhD's keep picking pilots because they really seem to know what makes a quality airline pilot:

-Management experience - I completely disagree with this one.
-Training Department experience - I completely agree with this one.
-Flighter pilots - I've never understood why fighter pilots are chosen over tanker pilots considering the airline job is almost exactly that. No disrespect to our fighter boys and girls.
-Multiple Checkride failures - apparently they don't matter, which I whole heartedly disagree.
-DUI's - this category doesn't seem to affect the scoring matrix as much as I would've thought.

And my favorite:

-PIC turbine (or PIC at all for that matter) Apparently it is irrelevant, unless you are a Captain now and have been struggling to get a job for a while. Then they tell you to get a check airman job even though they still won't hire you.

On a separate but related note, I have enjoyed the people involved in the organizations putting on the fairs and for that I have no regrets attending and contributing to them.

Best of luck to the rest of you.

Hacker15e

Because airmanship is not task-specific.

Karloffstall

Was Virgin America or JetBlue there?

NotMrNiceGuy

I think that's the point he was making. It would appear that AA actually prioritizes fighters over tankers based on the application. Not sure about the others. Maybe HR is assuming fighters are chosen first generally based off performance during training. Other than that, I don't get the preference.

N927EV

They both were there. The only carrier I didn't see was spirit.

Qotsaautopilot

Spirit likes job fairs where they are the big fish in a small pond. They know any in they get from OBAP and the like will be trying to get hired elsewhere everyday. Why pay money when you can just hire those with questionable backgrounds and the socially incompetent. I'm in socially incompetent bucket

Hacker15e

Actually, that's the opposite of the point.

The point is, the acute skill (the "tankers do generally what the airlines do") is relatively easy to learn or adapt to. The fact that fighter guys don't do that as their primary mission set is pretty irrelevant, because instrument flying from point A to point B is an easy type of flying to learn. There's not substantial added value in that so far as the training department is concerned.

The airmanship -- the mental work, judgment, decisionmaking, SA, etc -- is what it takes time and experience to get. Airmanship is completely portable from aircraft to aircraft, from mission set to mission set. And, like it or not, tactical pilots build a different type of airmanship than tanker/transport guys. It isn't magic, or because they're better pilots, but it is due to the differences between the mission sets. That airmanship, once developed, applies to all the different types of flying.

So, when airlines hire fighter dudes it isn't because they value the ability to fly formation and drop bombs. It is because they value the kind of airmanship they bring to working at the airlines.