Where did all the applications go?
 

At my wash up 1 year ago, the HR 'lady' told us there was no need for road shows as there were (quote) thousands of high quality applications on file, with many arriving daily.

So, in light of the ever present banner ad, advising of road shows lasting for over a week in India, The Neterlands and the USA, I have to ask, where did all the applicants go?

They are enjoying their last days of leave and days off without being completely shattered before joining EK.

Because all of them have read pprune, they know that they will not be able to have a regular life and a hard time to travel back to see their families and friends, they accumulate such experiences beforehand.

But they have made up their minds and with that well informed and pprune sharpened opinion they still decided to join EK, and are sure they will never regret their decision or rant about it later.

Just wait for their applications, they will trickle in in abundance after the announcement of the expected huge profit share this year!

HR told me.

Twenty weeks & 20%, I heard.

I hope that's true for your sake, Junglie Driver.:ok:

As far as the road show in india, majority turned out. 12 to 19 /20 per day.
They seem to be desperate now. Most of the applicants have signed up a non reducing bond with a promising blue carrier. They pay more than EK (on Left seat) and have varieties of contract like 15 on 15 off/ 45hr/ 80hrs/ 1 on 1 off etc. Many of the guys who gave PSP wont be joining them due to the bond.


Apart from this, At EK , 92hrs a month with no overtime !!! sounds crazy. QR I believe starts OT at 75?

Even the UAE neighbour down the road has overtime based on 75hrs, although factored across 2 months, i.e. you need to exceed 150hrs in 2 months. At least that's how I understand it.

flyboy did you attend a roadshow in India?

Promising blue carrier???
Can you please explain?

I think he means INDIGO

"At my wash up 1 year ago, the HR 'lady' told us"

Was that the dark-haired limey 'lady' with the saggy boobs who stood there with her arms crossed (holding up her saggy boobs) and a sour look on it's face the whole time, and only (nearly) smiled when it had bad news to deliver? Had that one once and only heard lies and bad news. That's the good thing about doing the free ground school on Fridays - no lies from management, just go home early. Their BS is so important they cannot be bothered showing up on the weekend.

Just listen to yourself for one second...

So they have stopped overtime payments and in lieu are making large profit sharing payments. Therefore you are forced to fly for good money. Not as bad as I was thinking. I'd prefer to have the option of flying above 78 hours or not though.

What huge profit sharing???

Just for info, I did my assessment in DXB recently. Most of the guys attending were called within a week of applying, some of them even said two days...

So yes... they are desperate.

Polax

Sorry, what airline is it you're talking about there? Are they recruiting?

The saggy boobs comment! Just had me laugh.
I would never talk like that, but this is some description you are giving!
:D

Profit share? What's that?

Well not so long but just 3 months ago people who are really qualified all failed on the last day. They could pass through the sim and all kinds of testing, all failed on the last day either on the psychologist or the group assessment. As they don't give you any sort of feedback you never know, however there were really solid pilots among them. One group have joined the assessments with 10 people and all failed(different backgrounds, including turkish, french and dutch). Another group of 8 attended of highly qualified ones including some friends(engineers and ATC included), all failed except one, who was carrying an Australian passport and a lot of hours on a widebody airbus.
Now EK will come to a certain point, they will start hiring anyone whoever attends to the assessments regardless of their quality and experience. Besides they will never call back the pilots for rescheduling in 2 years, whom they have failed for nothing imho.
How is this fair?

Not sure what you are saying foswillrule. Are you saying that it is unfair that EK doesn't hire people who don't make the standard?
Lets hope they don't need to drop the standard I the future.

donpizmeov, i certainly am not complaining about that.
I mean that imho i do believe most of the guys i know were really fitting the standarts of a major flag carrier airline. However for some reason they have been eliminated on the last day of assessments. Most of them have joined to QR and EY. Now what i mean is "was the other companies wrong and EK was right?". Because they are pretty successful and stable guys, also have a really good level of both technical and practical knowledge(CRM, decision making with the help of inputs) have been eliminated, and if i know the true mentality of EK, instead of calling those guys back and making another objective assessment on them, they would rather lower their limits.
If they don't meet the standarts, they don't meet the standarts. But in this case the question raises; what are the standarts of EK concluding the technical knowledge, simulator success(with the type they haven't flown before) and practical thinking style? Because they have all passed those phases on the first day of assessments.

foswillrule, qualified is not the same as suitable. If you hadn't noticed yet being able to fly the aircraft is only a small part of being a commercial pilot, and an even smaller part of being a Captain. The people EK recruit today are all being hired as future Captains, possibly in only a few years.

BigGeordie i don't want to mean any disrespect but a few years happen to be approximately about 8 years now.
Besides, i think most of the majors in UAE are looking for the same suitibility.
I don't think EY or QR or any other major company are looking for just looking for a person with flight hours and flight hours only.
So how did %90 of people who were rejected by EK found a job on the equivalent companies? Do they look for something that is only visible to the EK HR?
A pilot with enough hours to join EK can get the upgrade in 3-4 years in QR which is half time of EK.
However as everyone in the business knows that if your have the material, you have it. If you don't, you don't get recruited by any of the companies mentioned above.
So what is the big mystery here? Am i terribly missing something?

Supply and demand. EK then could go for the more suitable candidates, EY and QR needed pilots and took what was left.

I guess today it looks a little different though ..... times change, I would not wish for a recall, buddy!

Well i just want it for my friends. I already found my company or they find me. Anyway, just wanted show how a company can change total strategy in just 3 months, after they have eliminated so many people. If they start calling people back, that would be good, but i am pretty sure that people who attend to the assessments will start passing with a rate of at least 80% and that won't be a coincidence. If you need pilots; you prepare the assessments and recruit, if you don't need you just freeze them until further notification. You don't assess a lot of people and fail them out of nothing and say that they can't reapply for 2 years. That shouldn't be the way of doing things.
This is like looking for a 10, eliminating all the 8s and 9s, ending up with 6s lol

Actually, aiming for a 6 that can be traind to get better and getting rid of the 5,4,3,2 and 1s.

Schnowzer,
What i understand from your words is that, EK doesn't hire very good pilots and very good people combined together, but only average pilots with average personality and try to train them into better but not very good?
How can that be a company aim?
I find that a little funny. Of course the aim is to get people highly trainable but that doesn't mean that a person can be on a good level and cannot be trained. as achieving to a certain level can very the time needed to be spent but just for that, idea of hiring what is "below good" is just doesn't fit the daily world...
Plus it doesn't add up with the thread. Where did all the 6s go?

Fos,

I think Schnowzer is pretty close to the truth. The EK recruitment team are very experienced. They hire hundreds and hundreds of pilots each year. They know what they want. EK has struggled to find pilots on many occasions, but still has not lowered the bar in quality of the pilot, but have lowered the hour requirement.
When you arrive for interview with Ek, you basically have the job, unless you can't fly or get along with the other kids in the group.

I was actually putting a line in the water. It doesn't matter where you set the bar, you will always have above average and below average pilots relative to the standard set.

You just need pilots that will fit into the company culture, that have the requisite experience, the right psych profile and aptitude to do well. The pilots that fail the selection have come up short in one of those categories. The bar set at selection matches the entry into the training system and the worst pilot selected should be able to pass the training at minimum standard otherwise the recruiters have failed.

Don, I remember when.....

Fos, I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Emirates is my fourth airline (5th if you include military) in over 30 years of flying wide body aircraft and I have to say the standards I continually see on the Flight Deck are right up there with the best I have ever seen.

Given the way the diverse nationalities and associated cultures that inhabit an Emirates Flight Deck get along professionally and socially, I would have to say that Emirates has got its recruitment standards pretty much spot on.

Hours requirements may get lowered but it won't (I hope) affect the basic skill sets and personality scope that we have had since way before I joined.

OK i need to take a step back here.
I have never said that they are recruiting pilots below the average. I am saying that as they are recruiting, they miss a lot of good pilots, too.
Some of the guys i know could definetely be successful with the training and could adapt the environment pretty easily. However they chose not to pick any of them.
I have been informed that they were(the ones in the group work) getting along pretty good, however just 1 out of 8-10-12 has been picked. So you don't have the job even you do the testing good and get along with the other kids and even very skilled in handling.
But if the working conditions continue like this EK will come to crossroads; either opening the reapplications of the ones they didn't pick and do the reassessment more detailed, or they will lower the standarts. I don't see any other way for a company which is trying to grow bigger.

fos; "give it a rest mate". As my British colleagues would say.

@Outatowner:
Would you prefer a fat bald guy with a 60 inch waist and an overhanging belly and six chins jiggling under his face? Not to mention holdalls under the eyes, beetling eyebrows and a scowl to scare the barnyard fox?

Strange tastes.....:rolleyes:

HR Lady
 

Grandad,

I think what the out oftowner was alluding to is the blatant unprofessionalism of many in the EK HR brigade. We are required to attend ground school in uniform and in the same fashion, always display a smart efficient looking presence while on duty. One of them once came to my wash up dressed like she was going on the school run: no make up, no jewellery, cargo pants, t-shirt and hair stuck on the top of her head with a spring grip. She proceeded to deliver an unrehearsed, fractured and utterly meaningless diatribe containing the kind of rubbish we'd all heard before and more or less declined to answer any of the hard questions that were put to her. She had absolutely no credibility and I(we) were insulted that she had come before us in a professional environment without the slightest regard for her dress. It sums up the contempt in which we are held by those in Handbrake House.

Apologies if off topic.

Bloggs.

HR Lady
 

Your point appreciated Bloggson, Outatowner.

In any industry, leave alone aviation, unprofessionalism and hypocrisy should NOT be tolerated under any circs. But the focus shifts away from the critique of unprofessional-ism and turns towards sexism with such comments.

Maybe my salt n'pepper beetling eyebrows talkin' but gentlemen n' ladies.....!!

foswillruletheworld, the thing is that they look for a specific personality profile that they deem adequate for the job.

Of course, judging that profile from psychometric tests and a 30 minute interview alone, will eventually have some collateral damage.

I have some friends who I consider among the best pilots/professionals/people I have ever come across that didn't make it through day 3.

On the other hand, I have some other friends who made up all the answers to the "tell me about a time when" questions and got the job.

HR will always be an imperfect system...

EK Recruitment
 

Fos,
EK recruitment is top notch. A few things perhaps you may need to consider are.
1. The training pass rate of those who are hired is very high. (DEC's not as high but still pretty good.) EK uses this a matrix on how effective their selection process is. EK gets very upset at recruiting when the failure rate exceeds the threshold. It not only costs EK $$$ but also they now have to hire ANOTHER pilot. EK recruitment tends to err on the conservative side when hiring, as they are running the numbers so tight they can not afford to lose one in training. Being able to read write and understand English is always at the top of the list, as poor English compounds issues in training.


2. Everyone has a bad day. An applicant may have simply misunderstood a question in the interview or did not give the warm fuzzy feeling to the sim guy. Also, yes even recruiters make mistakes. Everyone feels they should be hired, but not all of us are. These guys and gals process dozens of applicants a week and have been doing so for a very long time.


If you are not selected, don't take it personally (Unless you failed the personality test.) Be honest with yourself on what you could have done better, and go kick a$$ on the next interview. There are many many opportunities out there and several that are much better than EK.


ALL this is IMHO

Fortune spent in recruitment at EK........
 

Isn't it somewhat amazing that as some of the correspondence above confirms, EK are prepared to spend a fortune on getting the recruitment process right........ and seemingly nothing in getting the process of retention right....... How many more guys and girls would stay longer if only the company cared about their wellbeing after hiring them?

To miss out on such a large part of the employment process...... now that really is a waste of money.

having done some recruiting here and there, I would venture to say, many would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at some of the answers and what not, in the one and one interviews. You will walk out of the interview and shake your head and ask yourself, did this pilot really want to get hired when he mentioned or said xyz? They all might be solid citizens and pilots in one's eye, but their judgment can come into to question with the whole interview process, answers and all.

EK Requirement drop??
 

Hello all,

just flown with my personal assistant :ouch: and CSA :ooh: (Cockpit Sanitary Assistant) and one of them mentioned that EK has now set the entry requirement at 1500hrs Turboprop?? Any truth in that?

Just pointing it out.. :E

Pointer

I did not check the website but Emirates will have to lower the requirements soon if they haven't done so already.
No one is coming. If they are qualified most go to the Unmentionable and Qatar.
It is going to get real interesting in the months to come.