Very positive and everyone is really pulling

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Which Airline did you interview with? Delta Air Lines
How many days between invite, interview, and listed availability? Date Avail 1 May; Invite email 26 Feb, Interview 24 April
Did you include volunteer work in your application? Yes
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 2,000-3,000
Total Turbine PIC Time
TPIC 121 hours 0
TPIC Military hours >2000
TPIC 91/135 0
General Overview of Experience Overall impression is this is the Class Act Airline you want to work for. Very positive and everyone is really pulling for you to succeed to include the other interviewees. From the time you are greeted at the door you start to see the well oiled machine work.
Myself and 7 of the other interviewees stayed at the Hilton and another stayed at the Drury. 5 of us met up for dinner and that was a good ice breaker and we were able to bounce ideas on HR questions back and forth. It is a good time to ask any questions you may be unfamiliar with either JKT or COG or even HR as mentioned. Don’t pass this opportunity up. Also, don’t grade yourself compared to the other interviewees. More on that later on. Just trust your preparation and study.
Get a good nights sleep because it will be a long day and you need your brain firing on all cylinders. The people that meet for the dinner the night before all met for breakfast and then walked over together. You will go to the guard shack and get temporary name tags and then you make your way to the pilot hiring office which is like 50 feet from the shack. There you will be met at 7:30 and they will usher you in for stack 1 and stack 2 of your paperwork. Have it in order and ready. After that you will wait in a waiting area with water, snacks and lots of places to sit. We all ended getting to know each other better and waited for Capt Holmes to come and grab us and take us to a conference room. He spoke to us and really put the crowd at ease. Jokes, Stories and let us know how our applications were chosen. After that you will go back out to the waiting area and they have a schedule there for the entire day. We had 3 groups. Testers, Interviewees and guys on the bench for the second interview slots. Then Lunch and then a swap happens. You get the picture.
After everyone is done interviewing and testing, Capt Holmes will come out about 30-45 minutes later let you know. We just happen to have all 9 get the CJO so he didn’t pick off guys throughout the afternoon.
Day 2 is another very early morning. Again we all walked over together and were ready to start at 6:30. You start by correcting any paperwork (homework from the previous day) and then start the MMPI. It’s a long test! Then on to the Pysch Doc and drug testing. I was done by 10:45 in the morning.
All in all, it’s a long 2 days. Try not to stress. Some guys went to the museum however I had been there before for the Job Fair and honestly I didn’t have time in the afternoon to make it over there.
How long did you have your application in before you received an invite? 12 months +
Did you attend a job fair? Yes
Did you do anything special that triggered the interview invitation? Application was scored with my attendance at the October ’17 Job fair. I internal recommendations however I had not told them to email the pilot hiring directly yet. I was about to have them do that when I got the email. At the Job Fair they mentioned if I hadn’t heard anything by 60 days prior to my availability date then have an internal rec send an email directly to them. All in all I didn’t need that but I was primed to execute that option.
How many internal recs did you have? 3-4
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? None. I brought my Air Force Green HARM book and my civilian log book with my 50 hours and I had an excel spreadsheet that had all of the hours on it. Other than that I did not tab a thing. Just the raw data. Nothing special. Air Force guys don’t spend too much time with special tabbed sections. All the Air Force guys just brought the green folder. Nothing fancy.
How did you prepare for the JKT/COG portion of the interview? So of course the RST 15 day program which turned into a 30ish day program. I had to take extensive notes (college days) in order to retain all of the mounds of information you are going to try and remember. I didn’t do much of the HR portions of the RST 15 until later. More on that in a few. After I got done with the 15 day study, I started over but only got to day 7 before I just had too much other stuff going on with my retirement. I took all of the tests several times over and did the ground school and took those tests a couple of times. The RST does a good job beating the Aero and Engines into your brains, however, I was a little rusty on Weather and just random FAR/AIM stuff. If you do the 15 day program and are able to retain that information, you should have no issues on the test. You will not know everything on the test, however you will know or at least feel comfortable with the material that you will immediately be able to eliminate 2 answers and make a 50/50 guess on the remain 2 answers.
For the COG I did a few practice rounds and was able to get 1 actual COG test before it was taken down. That was a big bummer for me. I didn’t do anything else to prepare for the COG portion. Most of the other guys were all in the same boat. All I can say is practice with whatever you can. The day of the test you can practice the few problems they give you. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ARE IN PRACTICE MODE!! I screwed that up on 2 sections and before I knew it I porked away 2 or 3 sections. Ouch! I thought for sure that was the downfall of the day for me.
Technical Test Questions So when guys tell you it was all a blur. Yeah, no joke. It’s a blur to try and remember all the questions you get. 60 questions in 60 minutes. You will be able to eliminate 2 wrong answers pretty easily. Then if you are unsure, you have a 50/50 guess. I did see some RST questions on there. There were some closely worded questions with different numbers or answers. If you know the concepts and can do some deductive reasoning you should be ok. I got a good mix of Aero, Engines, 1 or 2 weather (windshear stuff and Altimeter stuff), Regs and even approach plate stuff. 1 or 2 of Holding ( I don’t even know what that is, as fighters don’t hold).
What was the hardest technical question or content you experienced during the job knowledge test? Something about the ILS is a capable system but disadvantages? I had absolutely no idea. Took a guess.
Another ILS question about distance and azimuth it’s good for? Again no clue. Thought I knew but nothing matched what I thought it was. Oh well!
The rest is really a blur. Trust me when guys say they don’t remember!
Cog Test I So, yeah this part sucks. Quick math. Well math in public is impossible. Math under the gun with a time limit with reverse percentages is well awesome (insert sarcasm). I had 4 problems. Of the 4, I got to submit an answer for 2. Of the 2, 1 was right as I was touching the screen the problem changed to the next math problem and boom. Question answered and I had no clue what the question was. End of module! SUCK!
Cog Math Questions So this is a section I wholesale porked away. I thought I was in practice mode and I wasn’t. So the time I was taking my time by the time I looked up the question changed on me. Oh Crap! So then my mind starts to race and flustered. Regardless, I took my best guess at the next question which was oranges and apples and you want to buy a dozen of each. The next question was a reverse percentage. As I was going to select the answer the question changed and I hit the screen and selected the next questions answer and boom. Module Complete! Oh well. That sucked.
HR Questions OK, so the HR portion is crucial that you knock out of the park. Listen to the podcast where Tito explains the grading criteria. They are very relaxing in the room with you. So much so that it almost throws you off your game and you completely let your guard down which is good. No canned answers. Capt Holmes told us in the morning, “they are pilots wanting to talk pilot stuff with another pilot”. And like all pilots, we love to talk about flying and ourselves! I took off my coat and drank the water. It’s NOT A TRAP!
Tell us about your professional self in 4-5 minutes. Some guys got 2 or 3 minutes. They didn’t time me. So I started at the High School graduation and ended with my retirement which was 4 days before my interview.
After my intro, They started off by asking me about what was the most stressful time in college? I told them my first year. Being away from mom and dad, learning how to social and handle stress which was a lead in to how I handled stress in college. (I took a skiing class and let them know I like to do outdoor activities to unwind)
I see you had a lot of jobs in college. Which one of those did you like the most? (I was a bus driver and so I used that and linked it to customer service)
Where there any challenges in college? ( I felt like this was very pointed at the D I got in Physics so I explained that and why I changed my major)
Why the change in Universities? Explained why and then got into ROTC and used this time to tell them where my love of flying came from.
I see you had a busted phase check in pilot training. Tell us about that. Used that as a stepping stone to being humble and continuing to learn and that I also failed 2 written tests but overcame those with getting help from friends and those around me.
I see you flew F-15’s. Did they reserve those for the best pilots (Hell yeah they did) So I was able to explain that I did better towards the end of my pilot training days.
I see you have been in the same training mission for a long time. Why. Explained I loved teaching the fighter pilots how to be fighter pilots.
What do you see as a Negative working for Delta Air Lines? I told them coming from 20 years of military, the comaraderie is so close knit that I didn’t see that continuing on. The retired Captain looked at me and said “You are correct you won’t have it. Secondly, I mentioned commuting would be a downfall, then I launched into the year away from family and we know the sacrifices and are able to coop with it.
TMAAT that you had conflict with a coworker?
Which then led to how I handled it and what I learned.
WWYD if the Captain is going through a rough divorce and is missing stuff?
WWYD if you at altitude and you get a fire light, you pull the throttle back it goes out, you push it up and it repeats?
This led into TMAAT you had an emergency that you had to deal with. I also had an engine issue once and shut down an engine.
WWYD if there is a Thunderstorm within 3 miles off the departure end and Delta’s policy is it must be greater than 5. You see lots of people taking off.
I know there were more questions they asked me but my brain is fried! Some of them were tailored directly off my application. They asked questions for about 45 minutes and asked If I had questions and I asked 1 for all of them. What has been your most memorable thing here at Delta? Then we spoke for another 15 minutes.
I thanked them for their time and as I was getting my coat back on I mentioned I hope they felt that I would be good fit at Delta and if they extended a CJO, I would love to accept.
How long prior to the interview did you prepare for the HR portion of the interview? About a year or so meeting on average every other month until 2 months prior then met 4 times.
Which HR Prep service did you use and did it help? I did not use ECIC. I used a lady in the Airman Family Readiness Center on the military base I’m on. She was free. Now having said that, the night we meet for dinner the other guys seem so much more prepared than I was. Bottomline, you need to feel comfortable in an interview. If that means going with ECIC or other prep company then do it and don’t bat an eye. If you are naturally gifted in this area then you may be good with some other method.
Any additional information you would like to add. There is a lot that goes on. I can’t remember all of the HR questions and test questions. Good luck!
Is there anything you wish you could have done different to prepare you for this process? I started to second guess myself about my HR prep. I felt this area you have to do well. This is the only human interface you will get so don’t pork it away. Be the best likable version of yourself you can possibly be and it should go well.
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