To Sim ride or not Sim ride...
 

I was sitting here wondering is it REALLY that important for a potential employer to put you through a through a sim assessment? Virgin Atlantic are no longer doing sim assessments and I don't hear of guys being kicked out of Virgin failing their course because of bad flying skills!

Ok if your fresh out of an aviation school then yes I can understand but if your a current Commercial Pilot flying regular and doing your airlines annual checks, does this not prove you can do the job and at least fly an aircraft?

Comments would be appreciated :)

Just wanted to start a debate on the pros and cons of sim assessments :D

Many years ago whilst serving in the RAF I read Ernest K Gann's book 'Fate is the Hunter'. In one of his stories he recalls an unqualified pilot who managed to get through the net and was only 'discovered' after flying for an airline for some years. (If you haven't read the book, you should - it's essential 'trade-training' for pilots.)
Years later, as TRE on an overseas operation and later CTC for a UK airline, I came across several pilots who somehow got through 'the net'. Whether or not they used P51 hours to get their licences I'll never know, but a simple 'sim check' may just have weeded them out. It's very difficult to 'dump' a pilot later, and there's a reluctance to brand anyone with a Fail Certificate. It's a funny thing, but I found that these individuals had, without exception, a very high opinion of themselves (over-confidence) and were reluctant to accept the 'soft' option of resignation.
rts

I think sim checks are essential to see how well a guy operates under a little bit of pressure particularly if you want to give pilots, globally, the chance to get a job with your airline.

Yep, everyone has a licence but they come from widely different training backgrounds and with very different operational experiences. The licences they have come from many different countries that apply many different standards. If you have a limited recruitment outlook, a lot of airlines do, it makes the choice easier. If say you only recruited from other employers known to have the highest standards in the industy, you wouldn't need to give a sim check because the guys you get would be known quantities. All you would have to check is whether they have the personal quantities to fit into your organisation. Sadly you would be excluding anyone with a different background. That strategy tends to work best if you only need to recruit only a few pilots every year and can 'cherry pick' from others.

There are good doctors and bad doctors but they all have a licence. I bet you'd prefer to have the good doctor carrying out your liver transplant rather than the guy that just scraped through his training. Its just the same with flying. If you are going to recruit globally, I'd rather spend a bit of cash on a sim to find out how competent someone is rather than having to deal with a more difficult problem later.:ok:

Most airline pilots, now know what the airline's HR dept wants to hear at the interview, its carefully worded answers and the HR are happy with the reply; its only the sim check that brings out the true colours..

a lot of good pilots but :mad: holes to work and fly with get Sr. management jobs as there is no sim check to weed them out.

If evaluating pilots for a training course to a new type, any sim check is better done on a sim that the candidate is not likely to be familiar with. This levels the playing field.
Of course, if the candidate claims to be an ace on the specific type, and it is a condition of employment that he/she holds that rating, then the specific sim theoretically also levels the playing field among similar qualified pilots.
It is amazing how the fakes can be sorted out in a basic sim check that requires a bit of old fashioned orientation, speed control, tracking and an approach or two on raw data.
Better than all the psycho-babble, which as has been mentioned, can be rehearsed with no real flying skills required.

I'm not a line pilot, but I am an HR consultant.

Were I to be advising a client about investing a considerable amount of money in training a new employee in skills based on an existing competency (i.e. a type rating for an ATPL), I would certainly advise that that existing competency was assessed very carefully at a peer level (e.g. by TRI/TRE or whatever they are called these days) before the hire decision was taken. (BTW, competency includes attitudes as well as skills, so the assessor may also see a cultural non-fit under a little sress.)

Otherwise you are risking a bad investment and the attendant writing off of valuable time and money.

As an afterthought, even if you weed out a non performer early in the training, you have still lost the opportunity to fill that seat with someone else and thus its bad news.

I won't comment on the risk elements of a bad hire, as I'm not qualified to do that.

Virgin only hires pilots who have a proven track record at other, reputable, employers. They appear to take the point of view that the weak ones will have been weeded out by those employers, and that those who have the (verifiable) history and experience demanded by Virgin would be able to fly a simulator - and, after training, an A340 or B744!

Just a slight bit of divergence here but..a question directed for you 3 greens:ok:

Why is it that there is a plethora of airline "HR" consultants that seem to delight in making candidates endure various psychometric tests as well as further numerical and linguistic gymnastics to enable them to be assessed as "suitable"
Where I currently work, these kind of aptitude tests are viewed on with derisiveness and suspicion as the companies experience has been overwhelming indifference... i.e. they have made little or no difference to identifying suitable and experienced candidates...as an aside ostensibly we operate a similar recruitment program to VS.
Is there a pay off for this kind of testing? or is it as I suspect, a less expensive way of weeding out those who the company may have difficulty rejecting on other grounds.. i.e. the candidate is a twit

Some good points :) Thnx for the replies :)

Haughtney1

Psychometrics have pros and cons, not just in airline use, but generally.

I can't give you a straight answer to your question, only my own opinion, which you may accept or reject as you wish ;)

Selecting the right person to fit into an organization is challenging and pyschometrics MAY help to get someone close to the profile.

For example, someone with a strong preference for introversion (a preference to take in data, process it internally and draw their own conclusions) may not make the ideal member of a team in some circumstances and psychomtric testing (backed by other technicques, such as observation of participation in exercises or even plain old taking up of references) can help to recognise that preference - by the way a preference like that could be a flaw in one role and a veritable strength in another, so pyschometrics shouldn't be viewed as the tools of the devil nor as a panacea for all evils.

People are becoming more skilled at "passing" pyschometric tests (presenting the desired profile by manipulating their answers and some tools, e.g Myers Briggs, are quite easy to manipulate.

There is no substitute for skilled human intuition (IMHO), the tests should simply support the interpretation of whether someone is right for a particular role, one of the reasons why a sim ride might be very enlightening if the "simee" regressess from their interview behaviour to their normal behaviour, under a little pressure.

As for weeding out, well I suppose if you needed a high level of mathematical reasoning and a test said that someone did not have that, it could be used in that way.

As I say, I can't speak for others, that's my own view - I hope that I've at least partially answered your question.

Irrespective of logbook hours, or previous experience, a 30 minute sim evaluation ride will easily confirm if the applicant:

- Can Fly,
- Can fly instruments,
- Can be trained.