Insights on an Airline’s Pilot Recruiting Process

Any aspiring airline pilot wishes to know what to expect when they apply for a position with their chosen employer. With sweaty palms, they fill out the application form and then hope for the best - feeling a little out of sorts at seemingly not having any control over what may happen next.

Here, Chris Kriechbaum, will let you in on all the secrets you would love to know when it comes to applying for a pilot role within Air New Zealand.

Take it away, Chris!

The road to an airline job is almost always a rocky one, well in my day it certainly was! Like most of my airline peers the journey took nearly 12 years for me - and close to 4000 hours flying before I got the interview for my dream job with Air New Zealand.

My name is Chris Kriechbaum and I have retired from Air New Zealand after 35 years of airline flying alongside holding several management roles during my time there.

My aviation road started when I was at university. I really had no idea what I really wanted to do and was just taking courses, because that was what was expected. At the end of my first year, I attended the Walsh Memorial Scout Flying School, which is held in Matamata every January.

Those couple of weeks changed my life, I then knew what I wanted to do. That it involved aircraft and definitely flying.

The 12 years of my journey to an airline job not only took me to the USA to gain experience, but also saw me pull out of aviation, for a period of time, due to a major downturn in the industry. I knew I was fast approaching the cut-off age generally accepted by most airlines, so I resigned myself to a new career. I retrained in business management and worked in the business world for a year or so before an upturn in the airline industry allowed me to obtain that elusive airline interview. For me my airline selection was a wobbly one taking many months. Without going into the specific details of my process, it was quite a motivating factor when I was offered a management role a few years after, part of that role involved overseeing Air New Zealand’s jet recruitment process, a role I held for about 8 years.

When I picked up that oversight, Air New Zealand Ltd was still operating as four individual airlines; Eagle Airways, Air Nelson, Mt Cook Airlines and the Air New Zealand jet airline. Each airline had its own pilot selection process. Most of the jet pilots started their airline career in one of the regional airlines and one would hear stories of pilots failing one airline’s process and then passing another’s within days or weeks of the failed one. Clearly something wasn’t right!

We initially made changes to the jet process and eventually created the ‘Recruit to the Group’ selection process which is essentially what every new aspiring Air New Zealand pilot goes through today.

Some reflections on some of the changes follows, hopefully they will give you an insight into what airlines look for when hiring pilots.

The Air NZ jet process had a number of selectors, all experienced pilots, who would collectively meet generally once a year and review the pilots selected in between meetings.

The team would look at training records and employment history to see what worked and what hadn’t with the recruitment process.

One of the first major changes was the reference checking process, a key takeout for all aspiring airline pilots. Reference checks were amended to not only look at training history, work history, flying ability, incidents, reliability, licensing history and attitude but also at prospective pilot’s ‘social media presence’. Key takeouts are;

•  Keep your ‘nose’ clean in that you should work hard for all your employers, be flexible, look for ways to improve the company, be a team player and adopt a ‘can do’ attitude (within safely limits of course)

• Be cautious what you post online, what is seen there can well skew a recruiter’s impression of you.

At one time there was a general feeling that an aspiring pilot had to have a university degree to get an interview with the jet fleet. The recruiting team did an analysis of the database that held all applicant’s information and found this to be partly true. To rectify this, we modified the selection weighting to stop this and also started an industry discussion on what is the appropriate educational standard for an airline pilot. The final result is what is now published on Air New Zealand’s web site, which is fair and takes almost everyone’s educational background into account.

 (Melissa here. I’ve added the link here for you)

https://careers.airnewzealand.co.nz/belong-here/career-options/pilots/

As demand for new jet pilots increased so too did demand for new pilot assessors. Once an assessor was selected, we needed to train them and so, with the assistance of appropriate industry experts, we designed an interview training program for all assessors. We trained them in “behavioural interviewing.” This means questioning goes along the lines of “Tell me of a time when you displayed solid leadership”. Key takeout is…

• When preparing for an interview think of personal examples of all the pilot competencies (to be discussed a little later in this blog)

As cooperation between all four group airlines increased, the need for just one recruitment process increased. Eventually it was decided to create just one process and so, design of that process began. It took considerable input from managers from all the airlines as well as external subject matter experts. The process was named ‘Recruit to Group’ or ‘R2G’ (aviation just has to have another acronym!!)  and is essentially the process that is used today for selecting all pilots into Air New Zealand.

One of the first steps in the redesign was to agree on what key competencies a new selection process would look for. This process was a very interesting one as it involved both pilot managers and corporate managers. Both groups had their own opinion on what the business needed. Understanding of each other’s position tested the external facilitator’s skills, that’s for sure!

At the time Air New Zealand was going through a partial rebrand which necessitated looking at what attributes we wanted all employees to display. What resulted was a set of competencies that suited both sides of the discussion.

Those competencies include;

1.     Soft Skills: Maturity/life and life experience outside flying, Honesty and Integrity, Motivation and self-management, Decision making, Workload management, Teamwork, Leadership and communication, Demonstrates the Air NZ Brand.

2.     General: Flying Hours (General, ATO, & Multi-engine), Licences, Ratings & Endorsements, Secondary School Qualifications, Reference, Ability to Work, Criminal Check, Passport,

3.     Hard Skills: Technical (Basic Instrument Flying, Altitude management, Instrument Procedures, Instrument Procedure Knowledge, Response to Instruction, Situational awareness

Take outs for all aspiring airline pilots are;

 ·       An airline is not just looking for a person with flying hours and piloting knowledge and skills

·       Development of one’s soft skills is just as important as gaining flying experience.

·       Be an ‘all-rounder’, develop interests in other things apart from flying, no matter what that interest is.

·       Learn social skills, be willing to talk to everyone, develop a positive and optimistic attitude to life. Perhaps consider doing a Toastmasters or similar course, it’s great training for this competency.

·       Read about good leadership and practice it in everyday life.

·       Learn what it is to be a team player. This could be a classic sports team, or it could be a work environment (a supermarket or a restaurant for instance) that relies on teamwork to be successful. Recognise you will be part of a complex business and your role is one of many that keeps that business running.

Once competencies were agreed, the role of the design team was to ensure there were assessments to measure the agreed competencies. Those assessments sometimes overlapped in that certain competencies are measured more than once to ensure consistency.

Most airline recruitment processes are very similar, they are generally held over a few days. Generally, you will have an interview, most likely with at least a couple of interviewers. Mostly those interviewers will be pilots, who will use behavioural questions.

You will also most likely have an assessment in a simulator. This assessment can be intimidating for some, as you will generally be in an ‘aircraft’ that you are not totally familiar with. Don’t be too uptight, if possible. Ask questions if you don’t understand. Use the other ‘crew member’/assessor to assist with system/radio setup. The airline is looking to see whether you are trainable - not that you are an ‘ace’ pilot. They will also be looking for your crew/soft skills, so remember this when you are under pressure.

B777 Simulator

Some airlines, including Air New Zealand use psychometric testing to establish lots of different personal attributes. They are pretty hard to skew so just treat them as another exercise.

Other assessments used are group, planning, multitasking, role playing and presentation exercises. Doing some of these before an interview can help with familiarity.

One of the key things to remember is to ‘be yourself’ over the time frame of the assessment. It’s hard to ‘put on a persona’ for the entire few days of a job interview and if assessors feel you are trying to ‘pull the wool over’ they will pick it up and this can go against you in the wrap up session at the end of the process.

During my tenure as the manager overseeing recruitment, I observed the pilots we interviewed and those who were successful and entered Air New Zealand.

The applicants who succeeded were the ones who had worked hard and taken every opportunity they were offered. If they hadn't been offered an opportunity, they created one to meet their own needs.

So be prepared to travel overseas to get experience, the opportunity for travel and overseas familiarity will broaden your outlook on life and give you additional life skills that most employers truly value.

The reason I love aviation so much, is that it is an industry where you always continue to learn. There was not a day that went by where I didn’t find out something new. Never be ashamed to ask. The day you think you know it all is the day you are dangerous to yourselves and to the industry.

So, Good Luck, future Air New Zealanders, enjoy the journey!