When push comes to shove !
At the moment airline recruitment is largely run by so called ( usually by themselves) HR professionals who demonstrate an ostrich like talent for ignoring common sense and using trendy theory driven methods of recruitment.
While airline boards like to think of themselfs as progressive equal opportunities employers embrace these practices as a filter to cut down job applicants to manageable levels during periods of pilot gluts, however the prospect of aircraft sitting on the ground un-crewed will bring a new reality to the recruitment market.
Jet 2 have already junked most of the recruitment bull that had vastly experienced candidates being judged and rejected by computer games that are the stock in trade of the HR people, this comes first to Jet 2 as they are the last place ( unless you live oop North ) that a pilot would seek employment.
The same sort of recruitment reality will be headed towards all the airlines that find themselfs short of pilots, in short we are likely to see better T&C's and recruitment done by senior pilots interviewing candidates and applying what the guys at XL airways called the Sharm El Sheik test. ( could you go to Sharm and back and not want to throttle the guy by the time you got back to Manchester ).
It so going to be very interesting to see who is going to be next to find a new pragmatism in pilot recruitment, as usual Ryanair seem to be ahead of the market in this by improving the T&C's as it becomes first to identify the looming pilot supply crisis, perhaps it will also dawn on the management of other airlines that are copying the former Ryanair ways that perhaps the market has moved away from this way of doing business with their employees.
Last edited by A and C; 2nd Jun 2015 at 08:10.