Preparation Matters

A Delta Hiring Team staff member came out at exactly 6:45AM to great us. They took roll at that point. To reiterate, you absolutely do not want to show up late. She split our group into two. I was in the second group, and we just waited in the lobby until the admin came back. We were taken into a conference room where we were told to separate our paperwork into the two “stacks.” The admin did not go over what should be in each stack, so you need to have your paperwork already sorted before you show up in accordance with the interview email and be ready to go. They go over some basic ground rules in the conference room, collect your paperwork, look at your negative COVID test result (I had mine on my phone. They looked at the picture and the date stamp associated with it) and then escort you into the Delta Pilot Hiring Lounge. On the way from the conference room to the lounge, we placed any bags, additional items, and our cell phones in a large storage room. That was the last time I had access to my cell phone for the rest of the day. Then we went to the lounge. Here is where most of your awkward and tense waiting will happen throughout the day.

At 7:30AM, another staff member came out with the Director of Pilot Hiring. Here they welcomed us all. They laid out expectations for the day. We were all reassured that Delta wouldn’t have invited us there if our application hadn’t already passed. So regardless of what “negative” things you may have on there, it has already passed their internal qualifications. They said to try and relax and treat everything as informal as you could. While I appreciate these words, we were all stressed throughout the entire day and at no point did I or anyone else act, interact or display any level of informality. Remember you are being interviewed actively and sub-consciously observed by the entire hiring staff throughout the entire day. So never let your guard down.

We all got split into 3 different groups at this point. There was a group that interviewed at 8 and took the MMPI at 10. Another group took the MMPI at 8 and interviewed at 10. Another group had down time from 8-10, had their MMPI at 10 and interviewed at 1230. I took the MMPI at 8. This test is exactly as you see on RST or anywhere else. About a handful of the 21 of us had to retake the MMPI at the end of the day due to “inconclusive results.” In my opinion, the trick is you need to admit that you are human. You are afraid of something (fire, water, snakes, etc.), you make mistakes sometimes, but not severe, and your results need to be consistent throughout. There are about 20 questions of the 550+ that ask you if you have thought about suicide recently. So, a lot of repeated questions that are worded differently. I would assume if you started not answering honestly, it would be difficult to remember to have the same responses throughout that test. So best bet is to be truly honest about your answers. It sounds like the people who had to retake the MMPI later in the day were too positive and/or too confident. But who knows what Delta’s metric is there? Of note as well, everyone who had to retake the MMPI also got the PARB email at the end of the day. So, who knows? When I finished the MMPI, I was done by about 9:15AM and there was otherwise no feedback at that point on how I did.

After the MMPI, those of us in that group went to go wait out in the lounge until our 10AM interviews. There are several interview panels. I believe the number is around 4-5 (but it could be upwards of 8 to be honest…I don’t really know). My panel was running behind and didn’t call my name until about 10:30AM. The panel was made up of 2 pilots (mine were both Captains) and an HR individual. I’ll talk more about the interview below. My interview was over at 11:30AM. Normally, you’re done by 11:00 (NLT) with lunch between 11:00-11:45AM. For lunch, you go over to the cafeteria and have your choice of many different types of foods including Chick-Fil-A. They instruct you to be back in the lounge by 11:45AM.

Here is the not-so-fun part. When everyone gets back, you all just wait around in the lounge. The Delta Pilot Hiring office had people going back and forth between offices. I believe they are processing/getting paperwork ready for those who are going to get CJOs. That being said, we were all just waiting around to see if we were going to get our name called and when the wonderful blue folders were going to show up. YOU DO NOT WANT TO HAVE YOUR NAME CALLED. If your name is called that means you will not be getting a CJO that day. Every time someone walked around the corner, it put everyone in a nervous state for sure. That being said, they did call one person’s name who they had questions with about their logbooks. He eventually came back, but he obviously freaked out about it. This whole process took a while. They called 3 names in about 10-minute intervals and the Director finally came out at 12:30PM with all our CJOs in hand. That was an awesome moment, let me tell yah. The only weird part was the group that had their interviews at 12:30PM were all waiting there as well, obviously not getting CJOs at that point since they had yet to interview. We all kind of felt bad for them. The afternoon wave got their CJOs around 2:00PM while the rest of us were getting our fingerprints, urinalysis and psych interviews done. 18/21 got CJOs.

Once we got our CJOs, we were all asked to head to the conference room. Here we had to fill out a bunch of paperwork for background checks. They also went over the expectations for the rest of the day which included the fact we still needed to do the urinalysis, fingerprinting, and psych interview. After the conference room, we all went back to the lounge to wait our turn for those three things. They tried to get these items done in order of the people who had the earliest flights home that day.

We were all a little nervous about the psych interview. If you’ve done any interview prep, you know the psych interview is part of the interview as a whole. So don’t let your guard down. You won’t get your CJO retracted because of the MMPI or psych interview, but your performance could result in getting referred to the Pilot Application Review Board (PARB). You won’t know how you did with these until after you’ve already left and are on your way home.

The order in which you did the psych interview, urinalysis, and fingerprinting was all in a random order. Psych interviews were done over a video teleconference call on a computer. They had three psychologists that conducted the interviews. When it was your turn you would get your name called, go into a small office with a computer and wait to get connected. Depending on which psychologists you got and how long your responses were, these interviews lasted from 10-30 minutes. Everyone was pretty nervous about the psych interviews as well. As you know, this is part of the interview and you must keep your guard up (repeated with intention), but for me this was a really easy-going Q&A. The psychologist asked me several TMAAT questions, both aviation and non-aviation related, where ultimately your goal is to bring some of those “desirable traits” into the conversation to highlight your ability to manage stress, complex situations, solve problems and demonstrate effective leadership. The psychologist was incredibly nice and asked pertinent questions that were fairly non-threatening. However, I guess that’s what they’re good at. So again, don’t let your guard down. I can see how it could be easy to do that.
I didn’t have an early departure that day, so I was one of the last people in my interviewee class to get urinalysis and fingerprints and by the time I left, it was around 4:45PM. Some people were done by 3:00PM and I think the last person out of there was around 5:00PM.

Once you are done with the psych interview, the urinalysis, and the fingerprinting, you were excused to head to the airport or wherever you were going. I gathered my blue CJO folder, my phone and belongings and walked out the door. To say I was tired at the end of that day is an understatement. I’ve flown a lot of combat sorties in my life, and this was some of the most exhausted feelings I’ve ever had simply because of the constant state of “on-guard” you are and the stress of doing everything well. But it’s basically a $10 million job interview. So, I guess that all makes sense. Most of us got an email around 6:00PM EST that said whether you passed the Psych eval or got sent to the PARB. And that was the last piece of communication you got for the day.

Hopefully all that helps with expectation management and good luck to everyone else interviewing!

This interview was the most formal part of the day. I got my name called by the HR rep who took me to where the 2 pilots were. They all introduced themselves once I got in the room. We shook hands and then the HR rep went over some ground rules, presented the water in front of me to drink if I wanted, gave me a piece of paper and pen, and then had me sign my application. Then the HR rep asked me to introduce myself. This was the one thing I practiced more than anything and that went fine. About 5 minutes and done. It didn’t seem like there was a time limit or that they were getting bored or whatever. But they stared at me directly in my face while I was talking and I already started feeling that nervous tension just based off of their body language. Not many smiles despite the fact that I had a fairly light-hearted intro and tried to humanize myself by talking about my family a little bit. Again, it immediately did not feel informal. After that they went through in turns and each asked me 3 questions. These were started with something from my application and then based on my responses were basically some of their standard hiring questions that you have all practiced before. After that initial round, they then asked me about 3-4 questions per person based on whatever they wanted to ask. These were more “off-the-cuff” based on what they wanted me to answer. For me, with a military background, most of these were related to transferability of my military experience to the airline world. Most of these I had practiced, but there were a couple that I had not seen before. My gameplan was to utilize one of the 8-10 stories I had in my hip pocket to cover their questions. Also, I only got asked one WWYD question. It was fairly simple. These questions were the ones I was most nervous about due to my lack of airline experience. So, I was happy to have only gotten one. At the end of the day, I got asked about 20 questions and the interview took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. I don’t think that is the norm. Some people’s interview panels only took about 45 minutes (as per the gouge I had). I would say most people’s interviews were just under an hour. I believe that is the timeline they are instructed to stick to.

Overall, this interview was incredibly formal. It never was a 2-way conversation where they seemed interested in my stories or what I was talking about. It seemed like they were trying to find something bad based on the responses I gave. I felt incredibly defensive based off of that. I just tried to smile a whole bunch and stick to the prep I had done. I tried to turn everything into a positive and expressed an unyielding desire to learn and grow. After that interview was done, there really wasn’t any smiling from them or anything that made me feel good leaving that room. To be honest, I felt like I totally bombed it and that there was no chance I was going to get the CJO. However, I got the CJO, so in my opinion, the training and prep that you do prior to the interview works. Stick to your gameplan, your stories and make sure you have ways to communicate those traits that you think you have and that they want to hear from you. While I don’t think my experience is the norm, you must be prepared for anything. Good luck!