From what I understand the interview experience at Eastern can vary greatly, depending on who actually does it.
In my experience (and that of most from what I gather) the interview was very professionally run - a complete contrast to my experience at Qantas. However I have heard of others who have had interviews more on par with the Qantas style.
It is a panel interview, with two or three people on the panel. Usually a HR rep and a pilot.
Expect the first question to be along the lines of "Tell us about your life since leaving school". Obviously they will probe a little further from things that you bring up.
It's hard to remember everything now - but here's what I remember.
A lot of behavioral type questions. Mine covered:
Team leadership
Communication
Conflict resolution
Achievements
Breaking rules
Why do you want to fly for us?
What other airlines have you applied to?
Technical questions covered mainly what I new about turboprops, and what I new about theirs.
A few Instrument renewal type questions. Basically if you swat up like you would for a renewal you should be right here.
I got asked to interpret a TAF. It was a reasonably difficult long and complicated TAF. I have heard of others who have had to interpret an MSL chart.
What do you know about Eastern? What do you know about our fleet?
Anyway give it a good shot and you should be right. From what I understand you do have to do a run in the sim, and it is the same as the Qantas run. If you have done the Qantas sim within the past couple of years you may want to try your luck and ask to get the requirement waived.
Last I heard $10000 was the figure being thrown around (which would be a partially subsidized figure. I have heard from 'the horse’s mouth', "If we can't get enough guys we will have to scrap it". Expect 5-6 weeks without pay while you do your training.
Personally I feel that Eastern hasn't got a real good short term future. Morale is at an all time low, and I reckon most are busting their guts to get out. Management are continually pushing the crew in the same way that you would expect some sort of crazed dictatorship would. Sunnies would be the pick of the QantasLink operations at the moment, but with the same people upstairs I wouldn't expect much in the future. If you get into Eastern you can expect a bumpy ride industrially possibly within the near future. For info, they still have not signed off on the last EBA (Mid 2004!), and now the company have withdrawn the offer of backpay. Add to that two recent company decisions: Sunstate Q400 base in Canberra - doing the Sydney run, which was Eastern's cash cow (I understand around 60% of their revenue), and also the closure of the 'new' Adelaide base.
I havn't really painted a rosey picture, but there is no point telling you any lies - It is your future. Things just continually go down hill under the present management. Ask someone from within Eastern if they can give you just one positive thing that has happened in the company over the last 18 months. They may be able to come up with something but I bet they will have to scratch their head for a while. On the flip side virtually everyweek there is some other sort of bad news flowing down from 'upstairs'. Certainly some of the bad news would apply to anyone within the Qantas group.
However, having said all that, depending on you circumstances it may not be such a bad thing.
Good luck with the Interview.