How many Easy Jet Applications ????????
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: u.k.
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Cruella,. .Since I eventually completed the on-line application for ej late december, I have received ONE update. Once every 13 weeks! hmm I suppose that is regular. I have also e-mailed ej recruitment twice, asking for an update with no joy. Is this because you are simply overwhelmed by applications? ,if so just own up. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="confused.gif" />
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: UK
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IMHO Dirty Harry has a very good point here. Like him, incidentally, the following comments are not motivated by sour grapes, since I've never applied to easyJet. However I have been amazed by the "easyJet selection process" stories I have heard from pilots I've flown with lately, and I believe that for easyJet's own good they desperately need a dose of common sense injecting into their hiring programme - before they reject too many more good people..... .. .Lots of pilots in my company were given leaving dates with varying degrees of immediacy in the aftermath of 9/11 and our Chief Pilot (who's matey with his opposite number in EZY) apparently put in a good word for our lot - an excellent bunch of chaps and chapesses, a truckload, in fact, of experienced, jet-qualified, already-psychometrically-tested pilots who had been honing their airline-crew skills flying heavy jet airliners around a large portion of the globe until they found themselves suddenly on the wrong side of a line on our seniority list. Officially, EZY's response was to warmly welcome this opportunity and praise our airline's reputation for the excellence and professionalism of its pilots. So how did EZY go about availing themselves of this offer? By making them all go through the entire nauseating selection process - group exercise, logic tests, the whole nine yards. And some, sure enough, have failed - despite it being blindingly obvious to anyone who had the good fortune to fly with them that these individuals are GOOD AIRLINE PILOTS (sorry to shout).. .. .Logic tests and building stuff in a group out of lego or whatever it was are, I'm sure, handy things to assess young people whom you are considering for ab-initio sponsorship, but look here - these people typically had a couple of years and a thousand hours or more as second-in-command of a large jet airliner, being exposed to the various situations which tend to come your way in that time. I think that's enough to earn you the right to bypass this nonsense, don't you? If they were short in the logic or getting-on-with-a-crew departments, they wouldn't have been able to stay the course in a long-haul crew in my opinion.. .. .EZY, your selection procedure is wasting you a lot of time and money. How have we reached this bizarre situation where the people who consider themselves best-qualified to assess pilots, are not pilots?. .. .There, that's a load off my chest!
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Dubai
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I CAN SEE WHERE YOUR COMING FROM WITH THE ABOVE AS THESE PEOPLE WERE VERY EXPERIENCED.. .. .BUT AS HAS BEEN SEEN IN THIS AND OTHER INDUSTRIES EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE ONLY FACTOR IN WHETHER YOU HIRE A PERSON OR NOT.. .. .I QUITE LIKE THE IDEA THAT EVERYONE GOES THROUGH THE SAME PROCESS. AT THE TIME IT MAY HAVE SEEMED LUDICROUS BUT WHAT VIEW DO YOU THINK THE PILOTS WOULD HAVE TAKEN IF THEY WERE UNEMPLOYED AND THEN GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO DEMONSTRATE THEIR SUITABLILITY TO JOIN THE COMPANY. MOST WOULD IM SURE JUMP AT THE OPPORTUNITY TO GO FORWARD TO THE SELECTION PROCESS.. .. .EASY JET HAS A PHILOSIPHY WHICH STARTS AT THE TOP AND RUNS THROUGH THE COMPANY. EVERYONE HAS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THEY WOULD FIT INTO THAT ETHOS( AND NOT EVERYONE DOES). HORSES FOR COURSES..... .. .BUT AGAIN I DO SYMPATHISE WITH YOUR COMMENTS..... .. .GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE WHO IS OUT THERE LOOKING FOR THEIR DREAM. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="tongue.gif" />. . . . <small>[ 28 March 2002, 19:25: Message edited by: waitingforclearance ]</small>
Join Date: Nov 2001
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What a dreadful thought - working for easyJet, no thanks. They have taken some real NUTCASES that I know, the chance of working with them again fills me with chunky sick!. . . . <small>[ 29 March 2002, 09:22: Message edited by: Mentaleena ]</small>
Join Date: Jul 2001
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Jumbojockey - I take issue with you on the usefullness of group lego exercises during a selection process.. .. .A few years ago I was part of the selection team for BA. I used to mark application forms, do interviews and observe the group exercises. To my surprise, the group exercise gave me far more info about applicants than anything else.. .. .Like you I was very sceptical about lego etc. until I started to watch what happened. It very soon became apparent who could work well with others, who sulked when their ideas were rejected, who was unable to make their views heard, and who just HAD to be IN CHARGE. In short it gave a reasonably good pointer about who could work well as part of a team. There is no point in hiring a copilot who can fly an immaculate ILS engine out in a 30 kt crosswind if he is not going to speak up when he sees his captain about to do something stupid, and there is no point in hiring a captain who can do an even more immaculate ILS in an even stronger crosswind if he is going to refuse to listen to the voice of a concerned copilot.. .. .I interviewed both cadets and experienced pilots - some very experienced with several thousand more flying hours than myself - and in all cases I found the group exercise the most revealing part of the selection process.
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Let's say I have a B737 type rating and 5.000 hrs on type. I have to admit that, personnally, I would find quite irritating to go through all the selection process and show my ability to put LEGO bricks together. I would (silently) say "What's going on in their heads ? After all I've been through, why don't they give me a break here ? Why don't we go directly to the torture chamber and do a sim check ?". .. .I truly sympathise with this point. But on the other hand, I approve EZY's point. The "LEGO challenge" reveals a lot about yourself. I might have 5.000 hrs on type, 15.000 hrs total, a PhD in astrophysics, and anything you could ask... and also, AT THE SAME TIME, be the worst perverse bastard in the Universe. I could have an airline "Spirit" close to zero. How would you know ? Who says that I was given my first airline job because I was the best applicant on the list or because the chief pilot owed money to my dad ?. .. .To force even experienced people to go through the "LEGO challenge" is still, I think, a good idea. Recruiters are playing with your balls for a few hours, just to see how you react. Okay, that's not very nice but at least it's fair. . .. .We all know both low-time and high-time pilots who are excellent, average, or terrible aviators (apparently, if the learning curve didn't improve in the first years, it will roughly stay where it's stuck, while others have a learning curve that's steadily going up, and that's great). Sometimes you fly with a guy close to retirement who couldn't even shut down a jet engine properly without putting the flight in trouble, and you feel kind of sorry for all the applicants that were not taken instead of him.. .. .I wish the "LEGO challenge" had been invented 40 years ago !. . <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="biggrin.gif" />
I am not averse to companies having selection procedures and, at the end of the day, it's the employer that's calling the shots.. .. .However, I do think that some of these parlour games have gone a bit too far and there seems over-reliance on such procedures.. .. .Is the path to success really based on having staff who are easily (sorry - no pun intended!) "brain-washed" or employing pilots who are "yes-people" with no individuality? I think not.. .. .We have to start with the outcome in mind and I still tend to think that the best people to assess pilots are (guess what!) fellow pilots! I think I can get a pretty good idea within a short period as to whether I would enjoy doing my third night flight to Paphos with a fellow colleague.. .. .I can only think that a lot of companies are using these systems so that they can blame an outside agency when it all goes wrong!. .. .As an experienced professional pilot I take the view that what you see is what you get and I am not prepared to lose "congruency" by pretending to be someone who I am not. If that means I cannot get a job with that company then I would rather not work for them.
