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Which Airline did you interview with? United
How many days between invite, interview, and listed availability? Invite to Interview = 8 weeks. Interview to avail date = 9 months
Did you receive a job offer? Yes
If you did not receive the CJO why do you think you weren’t chosen to continue in the process? N/A
What is your experience? Military
Total Flight Time 4,000-5,000
Total Turbine PIC Time >2,000
General Overview of Experience Professional and welcoming! Everyone was very friendly and trying to put you at ease. Highly recommend flying out at least one day prior to interview, stay at Double Tree across from the training center, and get your shoes shined by Mr. Pak…he gives a great pep talk and puts a nice shine on the shoes too! If you scroll to the Additional Info section at the bottom of this report, I have included an expanded writeup.
How long did you have your application in before you received an invite? 12 months +
Did you attend a job fair? No
Did you do anything special that triggered the interview invitation? Two things: 1) emailed hiring department 9 months out IAW an email I got from them back in 2015, and 2) phone call with UAL East Coast Director of the United 4 Veterans program.
How many internal recs did you have? 5+
How long was it from the time of your invite to the actual interview? 4 weeks
Did you have any issues with logbooks, application or paperwork? No
How did you prepare for the JKT/COG portion of the interview? N/A for United
Technical Test Questions 1) Know the Pilot Applicant Tech Skills Assessment Study Guide Cold! (Think Boldface for you Military folks)
2) For the Climb Via / Descend Via questions I studied this: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/afs/afs400/afs470/pbn/media/Climb_Descend_Via_FAQ.pdf
3) For studying Jepp SID/STARS/Approach Plates/Symbology I studied this: http://ww1.jeppesen.com/documents/aviation/business/ifr-paper-services/glossary-legends.pdf
What was the hardest technical question or content you experienced during the job knowledge test? I thought all the SID/STAR/Approach questions were fairly straight forward.
Cog Test N/A
Cog Math Questions N/A
HR Questions Like the last 69 trip reports have mentioned, the first question is always the “tell us about how you got interested in flying / walk us through your resume” and the last one is “why United”, with five Tell Me About A Time (TMAAT) questions in the middle. I never really cared what the TMAAT questions were specifically, rather I just focused on which subject they were really trying to get me to discuss. Having said that, my five TMAAT questions involved: 1) great customer service, 2) seeing someone break SOP, 3) stressful flight, 4) conflict with peer, 5) leadership trait I liked and how I used it.
How long prior to the interview did you prepare for the HR portion of the interview? 8 weeks
Which HR Prep service did you use and did it help? Yes it helped. I have used both ECIC and Cage Marshall. With ECIC I did an all-day in-person seminar and phone top off. Cage Marshall was a 1 on 1 facetime call about 3 weeks prior to interview, then an in-person top off day prior to my interview out in Denver. Both are fairly similar for the HR part. With Cage I only paid for the HR interview prep (which included a resume turn in paperwork review), so I can’t speak to their Tech Skills Prep service. ECIC didn’t talk much of the tech skills during the all day seminar, but my phone top off consultant is a current UAL FO and we talked about everything from paperwork presentation, to the HR and TSA portions. I think the biggest thing that gives ECIC the edge is the ability to go to as many in-person seminars as you can get to, as well as the phone top offs prior to each interview, which to my knowledge, Cage does not offer. You can’t go wrong with either one.
Any additional information you would like to add. Timeline:
– 2011: App first published
– 2012-2016: App updated once per year
– 1 Sep 2016: updated app monthly 1 year out from availability date
– 7 Jan 17: “Welcome to Selection Process” from United@AirlineApps.com
– 7 Jan 17: “United Airlines Job Fit Invitation” email received
– 10 Jan 17: “United Airlines Pilot Interview Invitation” email received
– 10 Jan 17: “Interview Confirmation for position of UAL First Officer Pilot Interview” email
o First available date for interview was 8 March (approx. 8 weeks)
o This email contains the Welcome Packet as was as the Tech Skills Assessment (TSA) Study Guide
– 11 Jan 17: sent email with my travel request IAW welcome packet instructions
– 11 Jan 17: received travel itinerary email and confirmation number
– 8 Mar 17: Interview out at DENTK
– 16 Mar 17: Conditional Job Offer via phone callI showed up 1 hour prior (welcome pack says 30 minutes) and checked in with security. The map that is included in the welcome pack is South up (military guys cringe here). You will see a luggage rack at the security check-in desk, but that’s for folks doing sims, etc, take your luggage with you to trailer 5. When you enter trailer 5 you are immediately greeted by Doris and AmyLyn. Both are very friendly and try to put you at ease. There are plenty of water bottles and granola bars to sustain you through the process.PAPERWORK: You will turn in your logbooks (I recommend putting tabs for all your civilian checkrides, not required for military IQ and MSN checks) and interview documents (page 3 of welcome packet) to Doris/AmyLyn. NOTE: The welcome packet doesn’t mention the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) as part of the turn in paperwork stack, but they do require it to be turned in with other paperwork. I luckily printed it out (page 4 in the welcome packet), signed, and dated it the date of my interview. Doris had to print out the FCRA for the other two interviewees and they signed them right there on the spot. NOTE: don’t forget to black out your date of birth on any of the turn in documents. Doris/AmyLyn will then give you a copy of your app which was archived around the time you got the Hogan invite. Highly recommend you bring a complete updated copy of your app to reference as you will be asked to make red pen/ink changes to their archived copy. You will then have to initial each change and initial each page of the app whether you made any changes or not. You will not make any changes to your flight hours on the archived application as Doris/AmyLyn will print out a one page flight hour summary and you will make your updates there. They only require you to write in changes > 100 hours…anything < 100 hours just leave as is. Once the paperwork drill is complete, you will just sit in the small waiting area. I recommend someone start a name/phone/email roster so you can keep in touch when CJO’s start flowing, class dates, etc.
I asked Doris what order I was doing the events (I was HR Panel first, then TSA), and how many people were going to be in the panel. There are normally only two people (HR and Captain) but there could be an additional HR and Captain who are observing as part of their upgrade. I purchased five clear report covers with swing clips from my local Office Depot and filled each one with resume on top (single page printed on 32lb white resume paper) and then copies of the letters of recommendation (LOR’s) from my online app….I had 10 LOR’s. Since Doris told me there were only two people on my panel I grabbed three of the folders….one for HR, one for Capt, and one for me to reference if need be.
As the scheduled start time approached, some of the interview Captains were walking in and out of the trailer. Every one of them took the time to stop by and say hello, introduce themselves, and just offer some words of wisdom, basically telling us to relax and be ourselves.
HR PANEL: My panel consisted of Brittany (Denver HR) and Captain Overmyer (Houston 737). Capt Overmyer had reviewed my logbooks and knew the DPE (current UAL captain as well) that gave me my ATP checkride, so we had a 1-2 minute conversation about him, which was a nice ice breaker and I felt built some rapport. Brittany then explained how the interview was going to work, explained the STAR format for my answers, and apologized in advance for not having lots of eye contact as they will be writing notes throughout my responses. Then they started with their standard background introductions, then it was my turn. They asked if I had a resume for them, so I handed each of them one of my report folders. Like the last 69 trip reports have mentioned, the first question is always the “tell us about how you got interested in flying / walk us through your resume” and the last one is “why United”, with five Tell Me About A Time (TMAAT) questions in the middle. I never really cared what the TMAAT questions were specifically, rather I just focused on which subject they were really trying to get me to discuss. Having said that, my five TMAAT questions involved: 1) great customer service, 2) seeing someone break SOP, 3) stressful flight, 4) conflict with peer, 5) leadership trait I liked and how I used it. At the end of the interview, Brittany handed me a thank you letter from Bill Kennedy (Senior Manager – Pilot Hiring) and a one page FAQ about hiring, airplane purchases, retirements, etc. You collect your logbooks on the way out the room and back to the waiting area. I was done in about 45-50 minutes.
TSA: My Captain was Krasovich (Denver A-320). The room is small with a flat screen on the wall, and a pad of paper/pen on the table as well as a company IPad. The IPad will have 3 apps open: 1) WSI (Weather and Notams), 2) Jepp Flight Deck Pro (EFB), 3) Content Locker (QRH and FOM). My flight pre-selected as Denver to Orlando and I was told I am the Captain and the Pilot Flying (PF), and he would be the Pilot Monitoring (PM).
After a quick tutorial on how to work the three apps, I was given my parking location, expected taxi route (he had already drawn a green line on airport diagram page), runway (Denver Rwy 25), and clearance with expected SID. I was given 6-9 minutes to get my ducks in a row, which consisted of reviewing weather/notams, looking thru the company pages for ramp freqs, notes about obstacle departures, terrain, etc, and reviewing the SID. Weather was VFR at both Denver and Orlando and I was told to not worry about any enroute weather. NOTAMS had a few taxi way closures at Denver, but they were not a factor for my taxi route. I then gave my best version of a Captain Departure Brief, and then the Pilot Flying Brief. Then it was time to start the callouts. The Captain will put the side view of the takeoff profile from the study packet, except all the words will be removed. Capt told me to just recite back however I had been practicing, so I made every PF and PM call as well at chair flying through the non callout notes like manually advancing the throttles to approx. 85% N1, or rotating at 2.5 degrees/second, airplane lift off approx. 9 degrees and then continue rotation up to 18 degrees, etc. Next were a few questions about the SID. I was asked what altitude I would climb to. The SID I was given (EPKEE4.GATTR) has a published Top Altitude of FL 230, but my clearance included “Climb VIA SID expect maintain 10,000” so I answered I would meet all published altitude crossing restrictions until reaching 10,000, then level off until told to “Climb VIA SID” or “Climb and Maintain” some other altitude. I was also asked what speed I would maintain at a certain point. There was no speed restriction annotated at that specific point, but there was a note that mentioned accelerating to 250+ knots above 10,000 for the entire SID.
Now leveled off at cruise, A-D will show up on the screen. The Capt picked a letter for me and the minor malfunction was a cargo door unlock light. The content locker app kept crashing and closing, so after a few attempts at turning off/on, the Capt just said screw it, told me what the checklist would have said (as long as cabin pressure is good, checklist says continue) and then asked what I would do. I told him that I would have transferred controls and radios to PM first prior to me getting into QRH checklist, then after checklist complete, talk about options with co-pilot, get MX involved via ACARS, continue to Orlando, informed flight attendants about the issue, and elected not to make a passenger announcement. Scenario over.
Now you are fast forwarded to 100 miles from Orlando and given another 6-9 minutes to review weather/notams, STAR, and approach. My STAR was the COSTR 3 (RNAV) and approach was ILS 18R. Gave my best version of an arrival brief, than a few questions on the STAR/Approach. One question was about holding speeds at different altitudes. Another question was seeing if I knew the difference between point symbology, with one being a fly by and one being fly over (fly over has the circle around it, see steer point KNUKL on the STAR). I was asked what the highest point was on the approach plate (it is depicted with a thick black arrow called Highest Arrow in Jepp speak) with altitude annotated. Then it was time for the approach callouts. Tower directs a go-around, so right into the missed approach callouts.
For the Climb Via / Descend Via questions I studied this: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/afs/afs400/afs470/pbn/media/Climb_Descend_Via_FAQ.pdf
For studying Jepp SID/STARS/Approach Plates/Symbology I studied this: http://ww1.jeppesen.com/documents/aviation/business/ifr-paper-services/glossary-legends.pdf
DIVERT: Tower says airport closed indefinitely and you have 6,000lbs of gas (1 hour based on study guide fuel burn of 100lbs per minute). Transferred controls/radios to PM and told him to coordinate with ATC for climb to 10,000 and slow to 210 (max endure speed from study guide). I then contacted dispatch for divert options. Dispatch only gave me one option (don’t remember which airport) but I was told it was close, VFR, no landing issues, plenty of gas, long runway, tower controlled, and close enough to bus passengers back to Orlando. Seemed too good to be true, so I asked co-pilot if I was missing something or any other airport he could think of….he said nope. So we went with the lone dispatch option. Using the inside/outside/backside process, first co and I made sure we were on the same sheet of music (inside). Then I had the co-pilot coordinate with ATC to start heading to divert airport while I work with dispatch for passenger connections (outside). Then I gave the lead flight attendant a situation brief and then said I would make a passenger announcement (backside). Scenario Over.
CRM Video: Numbers 1-4 on the screen, Captain picked a number (think it was 2). Video was a crew going into Reno at night and asks for the visual approach. Then the Ground Collision Warning System (GCWS) goes off. Crew mentions that is always seems to go off at the same spot during arrival, they momentarily levels off, then continue with their descent. Video ends, and I’m asked my thoughts from a CRM perspective. I mentioned poor decision making to ask for visual approach at night in mountainous terrain when there is a precision approach available. I also mentioned that even though I don’t know the UAL FOM, I assume there is published procedures for max effort safe escape maneuver when the GCWS goes off and it was probably something like max power climb while in the stick shaker, and that the crew pretty much blatantly blew off published company procedure. Captain said CRM complete and that the Tech Skills was done as well. Back out to the waiting area.
I sat and wrote out thanks you cards (you can ask Doris for names to ensure spelling is correct). I wrote out 6 total: Bill Kennedy, Doris , AmyLyn, Brittany, and the two interview Captains. I was able to hand Doris and AmyLyn theirs personally, and I left the rest with Doris. Collected my bags and walked over to main building to catch airport shuttle (leaves on the 15 and 45 of every hour). From interview start time (1130) to walking out the door after writing out thank you cards was 3 hours!
Is their anything you wish you could have done different to prepare you for this process? No
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