Originally Posted by
btrdux
At a regional, at a time they were begging for anyone with a pulse? Sure. If you apply for any of the US legacy carriers, you will find plenty of psychometric testing. Hell, one of them even has a full psychologist interview as part of their assessment day.
There's 200 applicants all trained and current, and on paper bring the right attitude. How do you whittle this down if you only have 20 spots, and the resources to interview 100?
I get your point.. here is my take.
When I applied for QLink, I was told I didn’t pass the psychometric testing. No feedback, no explanation just “try again in 12 months. I accepted it and moved on.
A few months later I applied for another Qantas Group airline, and they told me:
“You don’t need to redo the psychometric. Your previous one is still valid and current.”
So let’s break that down: According to their system,I wasn’t smart enough for the Dash 8, but the exact same psychometric result was good enough to be accepted at another Qantas Group airline flying A320 even though I’d been told I “failed” it by qlink.
To make it even more confusing, a guy from my workplace, great bloke, but he had bare minimum hours, passed the same psychometric that I supposedly wasn’t suited for. I had ten times his experience
, airline jet time, instructor experience, and still got filtered out.
So clearly the test isn’t measuring cognitive ability, safety, judgement, or flying potential. It’s simply acting as an HR-driven filter. Who knows mate. And once you see the inconsistencies, it’s hard not to notice the pattern: they keep the people they want
, and remove the ones they don’t. Sometimes it’s as superficial as your background, your name, or whether you fit their preferred mould of diversity they can use this test as an excuse. who knows..
My view point is psychometric testing isn’t a measure of who will perform better on the flight deck. It’s just a tool used by HR to justify decisions that have nothing to do with actual airmanship or operational capability.
And just to add some perspective from the US side because the “anyone with a pulse” comment gets thrown around way too casually. A friend of mine was hired at United straight from Spirit. No psychometric testing, no personality assessments, no psychologist sitting in the room. It was literally a simple panel interview, they gave her a tour of the United museum, and even told her in advance what kind of questions would come up. She’s Australian with a green card and got the job based on her experience and who she was as a pilot nothing more complicated than that.
Compare that with Delta, which actually does include psychometric testing and a psychologist on the interview panel, but even there the main deciding factor isn’t how you score on those tests. It’s your PRIA, your background, your training history, your checkride performance, and your failure rate. In the US, your real record matters far more than how you perform on a personality questionnaire.
Yes, during the shortage the “pulse” era opened doors at the regionals, but you still had to pass the federal background checks, clear PRIA, survive the training program, and perform to the company standard. Nothing about that was a free ride.
Australia somehow takes the same idea, hiring pilots and adds layers of HR filtering, psychometrics, abstract scoring, and personality algorithms, then claims it’s all about safety. Meanwhile, the US relies on training departments, data, and your actual flying history. They assess you as a pilot, not as a psychological profile.
So no it’s not “anyone with a pulse” in the US. It’s people with a solid background, a clean record, demonstrated competence, and the ability to get through training. In many ways, that seems far more practical than filtering out experienced pilots based on an algorithm that can’t even decide whether I’m fit for a turboprop but perfectly fine for a jet.
There's 200 applicants all trained and current, and on paper bring the right attitude. How do you whittle this down if you only have 20 spots, and the resources to interview 100?[/QUOTE]
Exactly the point I’ve been saying for many years: HR in Australia a fn lazy! they rely on there psychometric testing because they’re lazy, they don’t want to do any real work, and they love having something to justify their own jobs. Instead of actually assessing quality pilots, engaging with candidates, or looking at real training and performance history, they hide behind these generic tests as an easy way to thin the pile. It’s never been about selecting the best or safest pilots it’s just the quickest shortcut for HR to avoid doing the hard yards while pretending it’s all part of some sophisticated process. In the US they get hundreds of applicants too, but they are not lazy..they actually do real hands on HR work.