I wish I could say I enjoyed my experience

Home I wish I could say I enjoyed my experience

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, , CJO Offered, Delta Ride Reports, 0
Which Airline did you interview with? Delta
How many days between invite, interview, and listed availability? 2 months from invite to interview
Did you include volunteer work in your application?
Did you receive a job offer? 12 months reapply
If you did not receive the CJO why do you think you weren’t chosen to continue in the process? HR failure
What is your experience? 121
Total Flight Time 3,000-4,000
Total Turbine PIC Time
TPIC 121 hours 1000-2000
TPIC Military hours 0
TPIC 91/135 0
General Overview of Experience I wish I could say I enjoyed my experience. I’ve had a ton of buddies from my airline interview with Delta and they all had very positive experiences which made me that much more excited for my interview. Barry Holmes does a good job helping with nerves and letting you know how the day will pan out. I interviewed on profit sharing day and our group was fortunate enough to have lunch catered in. Half of the interview group will do HR first and then the other half will do testing first. Be prepared for a lot of down time between HR, lunch and testing.
How long did you have your application in before you received an invite? 6-12 months
Did you attend a job fair? Yes
Did you do anything special that triggered the interview invitation? Not that I know of. I attended the Delta expo back in October and in November I got a fix it email. I fixed my app and replied to the email and got an invite in Dec.
How many internal recs did you have? 0
How long was it from the time of your invite to the actual interview? 8 weeks
Did you have any issues with logbooks, application or paperwork? Nope. Nothing was mentioned about paperwork. I did get a compliment from the active pilot on my HR panel saying my logbooks were exquisite.
How did you prepare for the JKT/COG portion of the interview? The day that I received the email for an invitation to interview I purchased RST. I was familiar with the Cog, JKT and personality test as I’ve taken the same tests at 2 other regional airlines. I really wanted to practice the Cog portion and get familiar with it again. I also had a lot of Delta gouges I received from a friend with a lot of good information on what to study based off the PDF Delta sends you in the initial invite. RST was extremely helpful and I can’t thank Tito enough for the hard work he’s put into that website. I had a few question on the actual JKT that were identical to those on the practice tests.
Technical Test Questions No particular questions. If you come from a 121 background the test is really a non issue I thought. I can see, however, if you come from a military background how the test can be difficult. I had several military guys in my interview group who commented on how difficult they thought the test was.
What was the hardest technical question or content you experienced during the job knowledge test? None that stood out
Cog Test RST does a very good job on preparing you for this. The actual Cog test is much slower than RST so take your time and you’ll be fine.
Cog Math Questions I had a total of 4. One reverse percentage and the other 3 were pretty easy.
HR Questions Unfortunately, I was not welcomed with a friendly panel. They seemed like great people but the atmosphere that was created the second I stepped into the room was very cold, rushed, disinterested and not inviting. It seemed like the decision had been made to not hire me before I walked through the door. I had one HR guy, a retired 777 CA and the ATL 717 chief pilot. The HR guy has a printed out copy of your most current app and the other two have your app on their Microsoft Surfaces. The HR guy has you initial a few things on your app and then he explained how the HR portion was going to go. He said he’d introduce himself first and have the other two introduce themselves when he was done. All three were very short with their introductions and very straight faced with little to no emotion. Not sure if this is an HR tactic or not but I wasn’t expecting their intro’s to be that short. Afterwords I was asked to tell them about myself in 5 minutes and include high school. I was then asked by the retired 777 CA what the hardest part about instructing was. I was a CFI for a company that had contracts with Chinese carriers. I talked about the challenges with the language barrier and how some of my students didn’t want to be there and how I motivated them to continue to fly. That was the only question I was asked pertaining to my application. They jumped right into TMAAT questions with no WWYD questions. Tell me how you got into aviation? Tell me about a company policy you don’t agree with and what did you do about it? What responsibility does Delta have to you? Tell me about a time your crew was stressed and what did you as the CA do about it? Tell me about a time you were told to go fly and didn’t? I tried to have a conversation with pilots talking about aviation but it seemed as if they were all very disinterested in what I had to say. When I gave my answer about how I got into aviation all three HR personnel looked at me like I was crazy. The retired 777 CA asked me if I had any aviation background in my family and seemed very surprised that I didn’t. I’m a first generation aviator on both sides of my family with no military background. They didn’t like that answer. After they were done asking me these questions they closed their binders, said that’s all for today and reminded me that my suit coat was hanging on the door and to not forget it when I closed the door behind me. They didn’t reach out to shake my hand, thank me, or ask me if I had any questions for them which I thought was bizarre. I had a few question prepared to ask them and asked if I could ask them all one question. I asked what the best part of their career had been so far at Delta? The retired CA and 717 chief pilot respond with the same answer and the HR person ignored me. I thanked them for their time, shook their hands and walked out. At the Delta Expo in Oct I wrote down some suggestions that were given to help with a successful HR interview by Delta themselves. 1. Firm handshake 2. Be yourself, relax and smile 3. Ok to remove jacket and drink water that’s on the table 4. Be confident but not cocky 5. Forget the canned answers 6. Be ready for the follow up questions 7. Eye contact – it’s important 8. Thank the interview team and ask for the job. I did all these with a lot of practice including HR prep. I hope someone preparing for their Delta interview can use my experience to learn from. I’m not sure why I got the specific panel that I did but it’s something that I will learn and grow from. I wish nothing but the best for those who continue to interview with Delta!
How long prior to the interview did you prepare for the HR portion of the interview? 3 weeks
Which HR Prep service did you use and did it help? I used Cage Marshall and was very happy with their service. They really help you with your own answers and how to mold them to sound professional.
Any additional information you would like to add.
Is there anything you wish you could have done different to prepare you for this process? More focus on HR as this seems to make or break the interview. As soon as I got the invite I started writing down experiences from the past. I had first officers and FA’s I was flying with ask me HR questions for practice and get their feedback on what was good and what I could’ve done better. About 3 weeks before my interview I slowed down on RST and focused a lot of day on HR prep. I knew this was the reason for a lot of failures so I wanted to be as prepared as I possibly could. Maybe I over prepared so my answers sounded canned but non of the questions my HR panel asked me were asked during HR prep with Cage Marshall or by anybody else I had ask me questions.
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