We were treated with utmost respect and they were very excited to have us interview

rstharold, December 19, 2019, American Ride Reports, CJO Offered, 0

Which Airline did you interview with?	American Airlines
How many days between invite, interview, and listed availability?	Date availability: 2 weeks – 26 days days between invite to interview
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?	121,135
Total Flight Time	5,000-8,000
Total Turbine PIC Time	TPIC 121 hours >2000 TPIC Military hours 0 TPIC 91/135 1-500
General Overview of Experience	American Airlines has mastered the interview process. If you get the video interview and pass it, you are most likely hired, unless you misrepresented yourself in some way on your application. They manually pick the applications and know a lot about you before you arrive to DFW. We were treated with utmost respect and they were very excited to have us interview. There was a panel of 2 captains for the tech portion and then a one on one with an HR rep. It was done under the wing of a vintage DC3 in the museum of their training center. I was given the CJO on the spot. If you are asked to wait around the DC3 after your interview, you will most likely get the CJO the same day.
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?	Added a 2nd type rating with PIC time attached to it and received the video invite 3 weeks later. I had my app in for over 3 years and updated it religiously every month. Passed the personality test on the first try.
How many internal recs did you have?	0
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?	None
Technical Test Questions	You brief departure and runway at the gate, as you push back, you get a runway change. What goes through your mind? Tell me about a time when you were pressured by a co-worker to do something you felt was unsafe. You have a rapid depressurization at altitude, what do you do? What goes through your mind? How do you see our industry 3-5 years from now?
What was the hardest technical question or content you experienced during the job knowledge test?	I didn’t find any of the technical questions difficult because I was very well prepared.
HR Questions	I was asked about my failures and if there was anything I wanted to divulge that I had not divulged in the application. I was asked to explain one of the technical questions in non-pilot talk (they want to see how you can explain something complicated to a passenger).
Cog Test	I honestly thought I had failed it – so did everyone else. It was a battery of tests, including one where you would have done really well if you played “Rockband” as a kid. Hand, eye, ear co-ordination, fast paced. Math questions you need to solve in your head. You are also tested on your spatial orientation with some cubes that you need to find the missing side. Sometimes you have to just turn them around in your head and imagine how they will look from other angles. The most notorious “test of patience” came with 2 tests where you had to watch a circle go from one dot to the next in a clockwise fashion for 25 min, and you had to press a button when it skipped. Another test was black dots that you had to press a button when you saw them form a square with 4 dots. Also 25 minutes.I used lumosity to prepare but honestly it didn’t help me much. You can’t really prepare for the cog test.
How long prior to the interview did you prepare for the HR portion of the interview?	4 weeks
Which HR Prep service did you use and did it help?	Judy Tarver – Did a mock panel interview which helped a lot. Was given a 1 hour audio file detailing what was expected of me, how to show up prepared, and what they look for in a candidate.
Any additional information you would like to add.	American Airlines is preparing to hire 1300 pilots in 2020. I was one of the lucky few to get hired off the street, no military, no flow from their wholly owned regionals and without a college degree. I did have some technical/vocational schooling but no official degree. I believe this is very rare, but it shows AA is expanding their search for qualified applicants based first and foremost on the quality of their flying experience.
Is there anything you wish you could have done different to prepare you for this process?

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