S I D E WAYS L O O K (In)competency within recruitment A discussion about recruitment and management By a BALPA member (name supplied) S ome years ago, the airline for which I worked went into administration or, in aviation language, the share price went into a nosedive, the profits plummeted, and the company crashed. I and several hundred of my colleagues were made redundant. The senior management responsible for putting the company in this position were dismissed before the final collapse, but seemed to find high-paying jobs in other airlines that were curiously eager to give them the opportunity to continue demonstrating their management acumen. For flight crew, getting back into work involves entering a looking-glass world, because the hiring process has been handed over to people who have no technical knowledge. Presumably because they did arts and humanities degrees they had plenty of time for computer gaming and decided this was a good way to assess piloting skills. One particularly low cost HR department used a cheap computer game as a prescreening test; you had to fly a missile down a virtual tube while avoiding rotating blades. In 20-plus years as a commercial pilot, I dont ever remember having a conversation that went: Right, what sort of approach are we expecting today? Well, captain, its the Rotating Blade One Alpha. OK, not familiar with that one; give me a brief, will you? We have to fly down a virtual tube while avoiding rotating blades. Really is that safe? Apparently the CAA considers it less dangerous than landing at an airport 58 THE LOG Win 24 pp58-60 Dash trash.indd 58 with a poorly oriented runway that regularly under-reports the crosswinds when a named storm blows through. Oh, fair enough then we do that all the time, so no problem! Being good at gaming is clearly helpful in regaining employment, but the most important skill to develop is creative writing. This is because the best way to assess someone for the technical job of flying an airliner is, apparently, a competency-based interview. The interviewer asks a question that begins tell us about a time when and you have to make up a story to fit. Sorry, I meant relate an example from your personal experience. This brings up the prospect of unemployed pilots enrolling on creative writing courses: Nigel, you were working on an anthology of short stories; would you like to share one with the class? Yes indeed, heres one called A time when I had to work as a team to achieve an outcome for some problem, with special reference to integrity. That last bit about integrity is because you get brownie points for including things from the company values matrix. Company values seem to be selected from a menu of buzzwords such as creativity, responsibility, diversity, and environmental sustainability. I was once asked to tell about a time when I had demonstrated transparency. I said that, while at work, I identified as a window, which I thought killed two birds with one stone by also demonstrating diversity. Strangely, they didnt seem too happy with this answer, perhaps because killing two birds with one stone wasnt a good example of environmental sustainability. A HR executive told me an amusing story about a time they had asked a candidate why they left their previous company. The candidate replied: As the operation continued, conditions deteriorated, and I started to show poor judgement and reckless decisionmaking. I made a number of gross handling errors, which resulted in a nosedive, and as Id lost all situational awareness, I was forced to hand over control and subsequently dismissed. Well thank you for your candour, but it doesnt really demonstrate the skill set we expect from our flight crew. Sorry, this is a flight crew interview? I thought I was interviewing for CEO. Silly me, youre quite right! Well thats all fine then, were quite used to incompetent senior management damaging one company then moving on to get a shot at another. Welcome on board. I assume you got a decent severance payment? Oh indeed, very substantial. Shall we include a similar clause in your new contract, just in case we need to get rid of you if you screw up? Yes please; a couple of million should cover it; I wouldnt want to be greedy. Views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of BALPA or The Log 01/12/2023 15:01