I attended the OD here in Sao Paulo (Brazil) last Sunday. It was my first time and there were about 120 people (not more than that, I suppose). Usual stuff... they showed us a video, talked about salary, benefits, things like that... Then it was time to hand over our CVs and photos... when it was my turn Tanja (a malaysian woman) asked why I had been to Italy and what I was currently doing)... it took about 30 secs, then I went home. When it was about 15h30 she called me and told me to be there next day at 10am.
Next day there are about 40 people only. We did an English test (nothing to worry about) and an essay... the topic was: "Share an experience that you went through that made you grow stronger and take a new direction in life. What have you learnt from this? How can it help you be a potential flight attendant?"
While we were doing the test they called one by one to do the reach test and asked one or two more questions. After 50 minutes we handed in the English test and were asked to wait outside the room for 30 minutes.
Next, they called us back into the room and annouced those who had made it to the next stage.... now we were only 24.... we were split into 2 groups of 12 people each and given two topics to discuss. The first was:
- Pretend you're a flight attendant and there's a passenger who's blind. How would you deal with this?
- Pretend you're a flight attendant and there's a mom with 4 bratty children messing around. How would you deal with this?
We had 6 minutes to talk about these 2 situations... Then we had the next topic:
- Mention 5 things that you're proud of being brazilian and 3 things that you're ashamed of.
We had 6 more minutes... After the group discussion we were aked (again) to wait outside... then they read a list of those who had made it to the next stage... unfortunately I didn't =/ I left the hotel with my soul shattered and wondering what could've possibly gone wrong. My English may not be perfect but it was way better than many others who had passed and I didn't dominate the conversation or stayed with my mouth shut all the time. There were people who didn't listen to others at all, didn't give you room to say anything and others who just wouldn't open their mouth no matter what. And they succeed... One things that I noticed was that when the recruiters were walking around the group and taking notes, they weren't paying attention to what we said at all... many people said unprofessional things such as giving chocolate to the children (without the mother's consent) and made it through... Apparently they were analysing other things, body language I guess... but again it makes me thing where I went wrong, because I didn't act so differently from those who passed... anyway.. next time then =) Good luck for all of you flying to Doha or attending an OD.