How did you prepare for your interview and sim assessment?

[EGCC4284]

How did you prepare for your interview and sim assessment?

Because of an interesting post on a separate thread, I thought I would start this topic here to get the stories of how you guys and girls prepared for your interviews and simulator assessments for up and coming jobs.

I attended one of these pilot interview courses. I found that this was the main reason I passed all three of the interviews that I managed to have in the last 14 months. Knowing what they are looking for in a person helped me fine tune my answers to possible questions and gave me the opportunity of selling the qualities that I felt I had and which were important to an airline.

In total I have had three simulator assessments.

The first one was on a BAC 1-11 at Cranebank in November 2005. For practice I hired a 727 in the southern part of the UK for an hour with instructor. After the practice, the instructor said that I should be ok for my assessment and saw no reason why I would fail. The following day I had the assessment, and boy was that an eye opener. I failed it miserably and learned an awful lot from the experience. Rule 1, fly the aircraft, rule 2, don't let the assessor distract you and remember to fly the aircraft. I took on boards the experience and brought what I had learnt from it to my two following future assessments.

My second sim assessment was on an Embraer 145 at Manchester in December 2006. As there are no Embraer sims available anywhere nearby in the UK, I thought long and hard about how to prepare for this. My decision was to simply buy the Embraer 145 add on for Flightsim 2004 and to set it up in the same weather, weight, and aircraft configuration as expected on my sim assessment. I then practised taking off and doing circuits from the airport that was mentioned in my briefing notes and I learnt the power settings, speeds, calls and responses and all the important things that I believed would be an issue on my sim assessment. To my surprise, I found the real Embraer simulator easier to fly than Flightsim 2004. Once trimmed it was finger tip flying. The fact that I memorised off by heart all the calls, pitch attitudes, power settings and speeds for certain stages of the flight, made my sim assessment a lot more easier than I imagined. I subsequently passed that sim assessment and four days later was offered a job starting on an Embraer type rating course five weeks later.

My third sim assessment was on a 737-300 in January 2007. As I was only given 4 days notice for this, I had to think quickly about this one. Did I go and borrow £1200 and hire a 737-300 sim for a couple of hours practice, even though I had a good jet job to go to in two weeks time? or, on the basis that I had in the previous two weeks been in a simulator assessment atmosphere and passed, should I just practice as much as possible on Flightsim 2004 and give it my best shot. I chose the latter, even though I appreciated it was a very big risk as the 737 job was one that I had longed for for many years. I did the same sort of preparation for the 737 sim assessment as I did for the Embraer assessment. I set the Flightsim 737 aircraft up with the same weight, weather conditions and on the runway from the airport that was mentioned in the brief and just learnt all the power figures, pitch attitudes, calls and responses. I learned the flight inside out and found that this took a lot of the workload off me on the day. The real 737-300 sim was a handful. You can only imagine the power pitch effect on Flightsim 2004 as compared to the real thing. I subsequently passed that sim assessment and was offered a job with the airline two days later.

If I had not already had a good jet job to go to two weeks later, I would most definitely have hired a 737-300 sim to brush up on. I was asked a couple of times during my assessment if I had hired a 737 sim for preparation. If I had, I would have told them. I am interested to know what their views on this would of been. Does it show determination and initiative, or does it raise the stakes and mean you will be expected to perform better? I would be interested to know the sim assessors views on this.

I have heard of many stories where guys tell them that they have practised on a real 737 sim, tell the assessors and subsequently pass and others that also tell them this and also fail. So telling them you have practiced does not mean you are going to necessarily pass or fail. I suppose its how you perform in the sim that counts. Just wondered what the assessors think about guys hiring sims before hand and does this make their assessment harder. One thing for sure, I know if you do hire a sim and are asked if you had, tell them the truth. If they don't believe you, I am certain you will fail.

I am interested to hear from guys and girls about what preparation they have done for interviews and sim assessments and if hiring a sim beforehand made the difference for them. Did you pass or fail and what did you learn from the experience. I would also be interested to hear what sim they hired in relation to the type of sim that was to be used in their sim assessment.

I put my success down to the pilot interview courses I attended for my interview successes, plus the lessons learned from my first sim assessment for my success in my next two assessments with lots of preparation.

I do however feel that if you walk into a sim assessment with a positive mental attitude and a smile, then your body language will win half the battle.

Good luck to everyone for 2007.