I may be wrong on this count, and I'm not trying to defend the company at this point but the lengthy recruitment process may have something to do with all the nationalities we have to work with.
We have something like 50 different nationalities working at EK on the flight deck. This may not be unique, but it certainly is unusual. Along with this 50 different nationalities comes quite a bit of cultural diversity. Like jumping out of the seat just prior to descent to pray for 5 minutes!
The recruiting process puts you with 3 other guys of different cultures and makes the group carry out problem solving exercises. Some of these exercises deliberately pit one team member against the other. The outcome does give a fairly good indication of how any individual can work with others of different cultural backgrounds where language is a problem. And believe me, not everyone can.
Some of you may say "why would language be a problem, as they all speak english". I can tell you there is a huge variation in what can be called English. It can be difficult and frustrating at times trying to communicate your intentions to the guy in the other seat when you are dealing with something out of the ordinary, as we do in the Sim every 6 months.
The actual flying side of things seems to be given only a cursory look. They throw you in the sim for half an hour to see if you can actually fly a big jet. This gives an idea of whether all the hours in the log book are likely to be correct. The tech quiz is simple. So it seems they use the same technique as everyone else when evaluating the pilot. All the touchy feely stuff is to evaluate the man (no girls allowed).
It may be over the top, but it does produce good guys. There are very few d**k heads in EK (management excluded) and I think that is a direct result of the recruiting process.
The need for DE captains has no reflection on the recruiting process. It is a management stuff up which started a couple of years ago, and we are now seeing the results. Having said that, it is now unavoidable if we are to continue the rapid expansion