They are very courteous

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Which Airline did you interview with? Delta
How many days between invite, interview, and listed availability? 9-ish weeks invite to interview, interview was 6 weeks before availability.
Did you include volunteer work in your application? Yes
Did you receive a job offer? No 6, months re-invite, HR Failure
If you did not receive the CJO why do you think you weren’t chosen to continue in the process? HR WWYD questions.
What is your experience? Military
Total Flight Time 2,000-3,000
Total Turbine PIC Time
TPIC 121 hours 0
TPIC Military hours 1000-2000
TPIC 91/135 0
General Overview of Experience Pretty cookie cutter. They are very courteous but can only be so personable when they see 10-ish new dudes in black suits and red ties each day, so that’s where the gouge of the ‘cold panels’ probably comes from. I do feel the need to clarify something: in the same vein that everyone says that on day 2 you’re talking to a psychologist but they aren’t YOUR psychologist, Barry will tell you at the inbeief that it’s “pilots talking to pilots.” When I go back in 6 months, Im going to treat it like ‘they are pilots but they aren’t YOUR pilots.’ I honestly feel that if I’d stuck to canned answers but voiced them as believably as possible, the HR portion would have gone a lot smoother. I regarded it as an honest, tactful, respectful conversation between pilots and I believe that didn’t go as well as if I had acted and stuck to a script. Most of the dudes who got the CJO were in that ‘politician’ interview mode the entire time (to include the night before), and I applaud them. They did it right.
How long did you have your application in before you received an invite? 1-6 months
Did you attend a job fair? Yes
Did you do anything special that triggered the interview invitation? October 2017 Delta Air Lines Pilot Career Expo
How many internal recs did you have? 1-2
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? For Military guys/girls/undecided: In the application portion of the interview they caught me a bit off guard by asking why I only had 1 air medal with 266 combat sorties. I was impressed by them even noticing that and told them the truth—that AMC kept us min-staffed and I applied for several air medals but the Awards and Decs 1Lt was perpetually on the road. All the medal applications slipped through the cracks despite years of fighting to get them. They seemed to accept this answer.
Also, I put together a masterpiece of a log book in spite of the gouge that says military don’t need to do it and I can now say with 100% certainty that 68-70 bright white, heavy-quality pages with the Delta widget on each of them won’t be the thing that gets you the job. I’ve ops tested it for you; it was seriously an air-tight work of art. When I go back in 6 months, I’ll just bring the green folder with a summary sheet on top. Spend that time instead with your family or watching Rick and Morty.
How did you prepare for the JKT/COG portion of the interview? RST. I did Lumosity for months but it didn’t translate at all to the COG, so if you’re reading this and doing Lumosity to prep, I can save you 30-ish minutes a day and a $12/month in-app subscription by saying anything other than the RST COG is a waste of your time and beer money—unless you just genuinely love brain teasers. Spend that time instead with your family or watching Rick and Morty.
The JKT: according to the lore, it’s randomly generated from a large question bank and most people say it’s easy. I won the lottery and mine was brutally hard, so I’m glad that giving RST’s 15-day checklist (which took me like 30+ days) it’s due diligence paid off huge. I counted and was literally unsure of 25 out of the 60 questions. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but Barry said I did really well on the COG and JKT and “whatever I did to study for this one, do it for next time.” I owe all of that to RST, though I really really wish there didn’t have to be a ‘next time.’ If you’re still reading at this point, please see the HR section.
Technical Test Questions What do yellow chevrons up to a displaced threshold mean? Yes, I was kicking myself for not knowing this.
Flying the same approach IAS at ATL vs DEN, which will have a greater descent rate? (Probably DEN due to greater GS)
You’re landing and the crossing runway has red RILs lit up because some other dude has a LAHSO clearance to the intersecting runway—what does this mean and what do you do?
Your aircraft has GPS installed and is GPS certified—are you legal to fly GPS approaches? (choices are yes/no/yes, with DME backup/yes with INS something something). I’m pretty sure I got that one wrong.
A couple math questions just like RST.
Gave a crosswind and asked how you’d do crosswind controls. …finally an easy one.
A racemic mixture (is optically active/has more R than S enantiomers/has no chiral centers/is optically active)
You have reduced thrust, will your V1 be higher or lower?
In a thrust limited aircraft, all lift becomes drag at what AoA? (30)
List is established in reference to (gravity/the relative wind/the earth’s surface/the wing)
What is the sequence for crossfeeding fuel?
What is the engine start sequence (it was worded different than Air, ignition, fuel, but you could mostly piece it together from that.
What was the hardest technical question or content you experienced during the job knowledge test? You are at cruise and the autopilot is engaged (like it would ever not be) and you’ve noticed the hydraulic fluid temperature has been creeping up over the last 30 minutes. What is the likely cause of this? There weren’t any answers that jumped out at me, and I’ve never flown a plane that has a hydraulic fluid temperature gauge, so I guessed.
Cog Test Do RST, but remember to read the directions when you do the real one since the games are in a different order.
Cog Math Questions Much easier than RST, so do RST and you’re good.
HR Questions TMAAT you had to reaolve a conflict. I told a story in the Emerald Coast format about resolving a workplace conflict at my military staff job, but was told (politely) by the retired captain that Delta is looking more for stories about flying, so military types reading this should plan their stories accordingly. I don’t think that was the thing that cost me the job, but you can all learn from that.
WWYD—You are on the last leg of a day from Las Vegas to ATL and some passengers returning from a conspiracy theory convention are convinced you are spraying chemtrails from the engines. Update: your FA thought they were joking and said that there is a red button on the flight deck that starts the spray. They are saying they will post it to YouTube. I said to assure them that any fuel additives would alter combustion ratios and would not be economical to Delta or any airline, but would bring their concerns up to the company. I then offered further food and beverage service and thanked them for their attentiveness.
WWYD—you were at a noisy hotel and didn’t sleep. Update: there is literally no one to replace you since it’s an out leg—would you consider going back to be hotel and sleeping for a couple hours and then taking off? I said I would only of it is safe and legal to do so and the captain appeared to be happy with that answer.
WWYD—(I’m pretty sure this is the one that got me) you show up and your FO is doing all your captain duties. Update: he is now reserved and not saying anything. Update 2: you are high/fast at a restriction and he sees it coming, does nothing to warn you and lets it happen. After the first update I had tried to bring him back in with small talk and asking him how he was doing, but they said that didn’t work. After the second update I did the phone a friend on the ground thing and ultimately decided to take him off the crew due to personality conflict. I supported this with my personal experience of how I’ve seen bad CRM lead to genuine safety issues more than once and I truly thought they were testing me to see if I’d exercise my full range of authority as captain. I’m fairly convinced the correct answer was to do the Aaron Hagan thing and take him to dinner and get him to talk about himself to see if anything is bugging him. I thought about it afterwards and kicking him off the crew would have really exacerbated any bad situation in his life (divorce, death in the family, etc). I’m sure my answer was a 2-minute cringe fest for the super nice HR guy on my panel, so learn from my mistake and go get your CJO.
How long prior to the interview did you prepare for the HR portion of the interview? Forever. I did 3 different kinds of HR prep for over 6 months leading up to the big day.
Which HR Prep service did you use and did it help? Emerald Coast, private interview coach and additional HR prep with a friend who does regional HR hiring. I felt about 9.5 out of 10 prepared for the interview, so getting the 6-month re-invite was about as close to fate as things get.
Any additional information you would like to add. I wasn’t staring at their papers, but as I was answering things in the HR portion, I would see/hear them cross things off as if they were checking boxes on their papers. This led me to think 2 things: 1) They really are pulling for you. They would have their pen hovering over the right side of the page (where the highest score on a rubric would be) and wait for me to say that one ‘key word’ or answer, then rapidly check it off and move on. They wanted to give me the high scores, and they’ll want to do the same for you. Which leads me to 2) I am fairly convinced I was crushing it or at least doing pretty well up until the last WWYD question (yes, I know how narcissistic that sounds. Give me a break—I just got turned down for my dream job). The takeaway is that when I go back in 6 months I am going to spend as much energy prepping for the WWYD scenarios as I can because I am convinced they are disproportionately weighted, to the point that a single wrong or sufficiently bad answer in the HR portion costs you the CJO. It could be fake news, but it’s very real to me right now.
Is there anything you wish you could have done different to prepare you for this process? Nope. I gave the tech portions my all for 2 months and prepped for the HR portion for over 6 solid months. At the very least, I’m not sitting here wishing I would’ve done more.
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