Ice Tongs
You can judge a company by the quality of its recruitment team.
Sad to hear about your experience. You obviously expected, like any customer, that what had been represented to you is what you were going to receive. And so you should.
You obviously expected that the airline's recruitment team would deliver your interview process with the level of professionalism you would be expected to deliver to their customers. And so you should.
Its unfortunate that crew recruitment departments never seem to receive customer evaluations the way we do on the line. Aside from loving my job, the flying, my colleagues and the customers I meet, I treat my customers well because they evaluate my performance. Nobody is better qualified to do so than the last person I poured coffee for, or the last person who handed me a sick bag.
No customer evaluations if you work in crew HR, where a qualified human resource manager is a sight never seen. Feedback is always dismissed as 'sour grapes'.
Playing dressups with a CSM badge does not make one a customer service professional. Winning a popularity contest in the local sauna does not qualify one to be a human resource professional. Unfortunatley, add both together and you'll generally find the result giving crew interviews.
As a Flight Attendant with two management degrees and membership with the Australian Institute of Management, I can assure you that there is no evidence whatsoever that bizzarre interview technique measures an applicant's ability to manage situational adversity. This includes passenger management, EPs or the raft of situations that challenge crew to keep good face and the cabin running seemingly smoothly.
I can't find any reason to try and interview two strangers at once except if someone had shortlisted too many applicants, and the interviewers wanted to get home early by doubling up. Rude, and grossly unprofessional, not to mention an insult to your professional privacy. Only a few job related traits can be measured by observing your behaviour. In fact, by putting you in that situation your true behaviour is likely to have been more obscure.
I hate to say it, but what you experienced was just another 'reduce the numbers' exercise. No assessment merit whatsoever.
I've been there myself, on your side of the table. My fifth and successful attempt at getting a Flight Attendant job happened with a first-round interview panel solely composed of Flight Attendants. The panel was 3 on 1 and they earned my respect because they knew what they were talking about, and I knew they knew, so I shut up and listened. I admired their professionalism because they were people who led by example, not by unqualified bitchiness.
Sadly, the same can't be said for others who think they're God because they slip on jackboots and pinstripe for a room full of early-20s wannabes.
I can feel a slight amount of compassion for the poor quality of crew recruitment standards. Line and clerical staff suffer from the same lack of professional development that plagues many company budgets. But, shortcommings inside the company shouldn't be played out on a customer, retail or trade.
A company has the right to recruit its potential employees in any manner the company sees fit, according to law. There's a good reason for that - only a company knows who fits and who doesn't. That's not to say that I haven't looked at some colleagues and thought "how the f*ck did you get this job".
But I would rather be interviewed by fellow crew than a recruitment firm or HR personnel. Those airlines I applied to, who used subcontracted HR outside the company, wouldn't invite me to assessment.
While how a company interviews may not be illegal, Fair Trading law, in most states, specifically prohibits anyone from misleading or deceiving others about the availability, nature, terms or conditions, or any other matter relating to a job opportunity.
I persisted, found an airline with a culture I preferred and I grabbed it with both hands, and they me. If you really want to fly, if you really like working hard, if you can put up with crap from customers, colleagues and come back for more, give as well as take, then keep applying.
Frankly, I'd be thankful you got a glimpse inside the company, saw what it was like and apply elsewhere. Laugh at them, with nothing better to do than try and keep the smart ones out in case they're competition.
I welcome colleagues who can question as well as follow procedure. We need more of you and I hope to see you out there.
