Tell us all something interesting about yourself. “an interesting fact about me is I’m not interesting”. Lets come back to this later.
I was made redundant from the company I work for now a few years back. I’m not really sure why but the manager at the time decided that there were 110 too many pilots and that was that, well almost. We had a union and they decided to question the management about the numbers, saying that they thought airline had made a mistake with the number they needed to sack. So the head of HR left the negotiating room and returned some time later saying you are indeed right we did get the numbers wrong, we can now get rid of 136, well fucking done BAPLA! Not. So on Christmas eve the unfortunates received a redundancy notice and off we went 3 months later to pastures new.
Anyhow, 3 years after that the company decided that they probably needed to recruit some pilots, all the cadets they had taken on the year after making the real pilots redundant weren’t enough and so after an initial refusal because I hadn’t flown a Boeing for 3 years I was invited to apply for my old job. I think they needed to make sure I wasn’t angry with them or something. After having to complete the full application process again and jumping through various hoops I was invited to attend a recruitment day.
Unlike many pilots I have never been very well prepared for interviews, I certainly wasn’t aware of all the new ideas of probing and competency based questions that were fired at me. I still really don’t understand how it works but there are people out there who will happily lift your leg for a few quid to teach you how to pass, which might explain a few things. Whatever happened to just having a chat with someone, ringing up a mate who knows them and asking if the person you are about to employ is a descent type or a complete cock?
Lets rewind a bit further though. The first time I was interviewed for this company was a bit more ‘normal’ if you ask me. First day was maths (yes you Americans maths not math) and English tests followed by a group exercise. I remember it well, I opened the maths question booklet up and wondered if there had been some mistake. Apparently I was looking at a quadratic equation, or something similar. I presumed it was a test to see how you coped with stress. I looked around to see everyone else knuckling down to it. So after a bit of contemplation I went to the back of the book and found a graph, I like colouring in so got stuck into that and worked forward from there. English I found straight forward, reading this you might be wondering why I would say that. Finally we all got together for a group exercise, not the kind of exercise you do outdoors in lockdown though, more of a team building thing.
I was quite relaxed at this point. I knew I had blown it because of the maths and was just hoping to get away early so I could beat the traffic on the long drive home. Sat around the table were six hopefuls, each of us had been given printout describing our individual roles and problems we were facing running our oil rig based department. I think I was the catering manager and we had 30 minutes to come up with a plan to make the oil rig productive, happy and safe, although possibly not in that order. One well prepared chap decided he would be in charge of time keeping. In no particular order we were to explain our departments difficulties and then come up with a plan. I don’t think there is a right answer or even if you can actually complete the task but it is just to see how people interact. The guy sat to my left decided he was going first he started to drone on and waffle. Then after he had used up too much time another candidate put his point forward followed by the next. The guy sat next to me kept butting in and coming up with random suggestions and just generally being a dick. I asked the time keeper how we were doing and it was apparent we were running out of time.
I was getting annoyed with the mouth next to me now. “excuse me can you wind your neck back in for a few minutes and let the rest of the guys have their say, we are running out of time.” I noticed the invigilators start scribbling notes in earnest, obviously less than impressed with my forthright comments. So that was that. I jumped in my old banger and headed North. I rang up the following week on my dodgy mobile with a terrible connection to be told I had been unsuccessful, I said “well thanks for letting me try, is there any point me applying next time”? There was a pause, “I’m sorry I don’t understand, I said you have been successful, we would like to invite you to day 2”. I was stunned. Obviously they liked my use of shading and colour on the graphs!
Day 2 involved a sim check, an interview with a pilot and an HR person and then a chat with a psychologist. Of all of these the chat with the shrink was the thing I was most worried about, maybe she could look into my mind and see all the scary things in there. The voices were telling me not to go. But I went anyhow.
Being short of cash I couldn’t afford to book a room the night before so I launched off from home at about 03:00 and drove to the sim ready for the 6:30 start. I was going for a First Officers position so would be flying from the right seat but up to this point I had mostly flown from the left seat so as I walked into the simulator I asked the grumpy old Captain (yes Frank that’s you) who was firmly installed on the left corner if he minded moving over to the right as I would probably crash if I tried flying from the right seat. My joke was met with silence and lots of heaving and puffing as he swapped seats. He then proceeded to sarcastically call me Captain throughout the detail, but as I got up to leave he smiled and winked at me so I presumed it had gone OK, or he maybe fancied me?
Next up was the interview and never having read books on how to interview or being coached I was just myself. When asked what am I most proud of I thought for a minute and said “my kids, I can take them out and they behave and don’t let me down. It’s nothing to do with me though, my wife has had to do most of the work there because I work away a lot.” which was met with smiles, “that’s probably the most unusual answer I have ever heard to that question but a good one, most people drone on about how good they are at flying or their personal achievements”.
So with that done next was the psychologist. By this point I was absolutely hanging. I can hardly remember anything about the interview, I know there were lots of notes and lines been drawn on paper. The sun was shining on me through the window and I had to try and stop myself staring at her cleavage more than once, was she wearing such a low cut top to catch me out? I presume she didn’t notice because a week later I was offered the job.
Right going back to where we left off and I was now 6 years older, no wiser and trying to get my old job back. There were no maths or english tests, no sim check and sadly no cleavage. There was a group exercise this time it was to do with aircraft and making sensible decisions. It was fairly obvious that some of the candidates were lacking in the required aviation related skill and knowledge and may have been better suited to the catering department on an oil drilling platform.
The very first item on the agenda for the selection day was where I started this little essay and as a way of introduction everybody was to introduce themselves and give an interesting fact about themselves. Thankfully I was sat in the middle and had some time to think, as I listened to some of the other hopefuls I got more and more stressed:
“Hi my names Tarquin and my daddy owns the biggest Rolls Royce dealership in London”
“Im Felicity I have 300 hundred hours flying time and you can find me on Instagram where I have 3000 followers”
“I’m Peregrine Mainwearing-Farting-Loudly I have 500 hours of jet time and am an Instagram influencer”.
Well you get the idea, one guy who looked normal said he payed the saxophone, or was it the pink oboe? This is how my mind goes sometimes. They were getting closer to me now, what the fuck do I say? I played the E flat horn at school? I was chased by the police down the M18 doing 190mph on a nitrous injected motorbike, no, that is too irresponsible. I just wanted to come up with something bland! I like dogs? How about my first girlfriend is now a lesbian. I nearly crashed into a housing estate on my second solo in a glider? My tongue is really long and I can get it up my nose, oh bugger, just come up with something normal! I have never been this stressed before, ever, perhaps the fact that I have survived 5 engine failures in single engine aircraft, no that will sound like it was my fault (it wasn’t). It’s about this time that my mind started to wander again and refused to get back on message, it went quiet.
All eyes were now on me. The confusion in my head was gone I had decided there was nothing interesting anyone else needed to know about me because I thought 50% of them were bell ends and were just spouting pre planned and rehearsed bollocks to impress the people doing the selection. One of whom is a friend and someone I respect massively who after the event gave me a bollocking. “Why the fuck did you say: there is nothing interesting about me?”
I just couldn’t think of anything sensible to say and I honestly don’t believe there is anything interesting about me, I’m just the same as everyone else, I’m not special other than perhaps to my mum.
So that was it. Even though I wasn’t in the school lacrosse team, have never payed the Saxophone (or the pink oboe) and I never had an ‘Insta’ account or the only influencing I have ever done is usually on the way home from the pub and ended in tears or injury to someone near by.
So if I had my time over again what would I say? It needs to be something that is impressive perhaps but not all about me. Something that is different to everyone else so you stand out from the rest. I have given this a lot of thought, especially on the long night flights whilst Tarquin catches up on his selfies sat next to me whilst telling me about his Rolex collection. So as my head nods and I make an occasional grunt of fake interest the perfect and I hasten to add true, interesting thing about me is:
I know 9 people with 1 or less legs, 2 people with one arm and 2 people with one eye, one of whom is called Harold.
The guy who lost both legs did it in a flying accident, which proves flying is more dangerous than motorbikes, or making canoes as most of the others were motorbike accidents and one canoe related explosion plus a farming ‘incident’.
I got the job anyhow and am happy to be back even if they did charge me 7 grand for the ‘training’ which was strangely about the same amount of money they gave me when I was made redundant. People wonder why I can be cynical.
Another sad fact is it took me 30 years for me to realise why having one eye and being called Harold was quite ironic, I can be slow sometimes but I get there in the end!
