| I flew to SLC via non-rev ticket courtesy of company. Stayed at the comfort inn, paid $60.00 for the night.
I arrived Monday morning at 0720 for 0800 appointment. Janitor met myself and one other pilot and escorted us to conference room. As time neared 0800 the room had 6 guys there awaiting interview.
A line cap't came in and gave us standard welcome speach, showed us a video promoting company and then passed out combo 50 question ATP and 20 question Mechanical aptitude test.
We were told to work on tests and await to be called into different phases of testing. I was first to be called to sim. It was take off, turn south RV to VOR. While enroute got direct (kind of pain since the RMI would not work off nav 2 and the radios were not flip flops so I had to lose the Loc freq I had in there, or other option is to use old fashioned obs and fly like we did in our CFI days. Not a big deal, but just a FYI issue. Got to VOR, flew outbound to loc, did procedure turn outbound, turned inbound, picked up LOC and flew ILS to mins and told to land. It was very similar to the BUR RW8 approach. Don't think it was that one, but it was very similar.
After that I went back to holding cell, oops, mean coference room. Worked on test more.
Just before lunch I was called in for combo Tech/HR interview. Seemed to go well. Was asked about everything on Jepp enr chart and Jepp approach plate. Know your jepps. I did well on that. He drew a Thunderstorm clound with anvil and then asked which way is the storm moving (anvil points in direction of travel). He asked how would I avoid it, I told him 20 miles behind anvil. He seemed to like that answer. He asked what the 3 stages are of a T Storm. I goofed and forgot the "Cumulous" stage term and described it as "updraft". I described it properly and the interviewer said, you mean Cumulous, I said yes...thats it. Otherwise I belive I had it all right. Then I was asked to describe my fuel system on last airplane, mine was a Cessna Caravan. Pretty easy. He looked at my log book and asked me how accurate I felt it was. He suggested 70 - 80%, I disagreed and said 98-99%. I hear thats the right way to answer that. They want to hear you are confident that your logbook is as accurate as possible. Nobody is perfect, and niether are any logbooks so it can't be 100%.
HR question were why skywest, what do you bring here, how you would benefit company, why should we hire you, have you ever been scared in an airplane (if you ever instructed should be easy to come up with something...awww, that upside down ILS in 02) Few other normal things, pretty typical interview questions.
Went back to holding cell, worked on test more. Got called in for CRM evaluation with 2 other guys. I played jumpseater. They put us in the CPT (Cockpit Procedures Trainer...sorta like a paper simulator). Guy told us we were flying from SLC to OAK, and we were approaching sierra nevadas, just past Reno. We saw a dangerous line of Tstorms and we were to figure out what to do. We called ATC and asked for pireps and found out that a 737 had moderate turb going north of us. We called dispatch and were told others have had to divert as well, so we decided we would divert south, then FA called and said a pax had just bumped his head and was bleeding pretty badly. We decided to divert into Reno and then that was it. Not sure what they were looking for. I don't know if I did well or not.
After that we were told thank you very much and that we should be getting a letter in 5-10 days.
I left went to airport and boarded a 1700 departure to Ontario, CA. On my flight the same Cap't who interviewed me sat behind me for the flight home. Of course he recognized me and asked how I was doing. I had already taken off my suit and was in a T shirt and levis by now. OOOPS. To add to the fun, the Lav was broken and the flight was delayed to fix it, They couldnt fix it and they just put it out of order. People started talking about it and putting down Skywest. The guy next to me asked me if I had any experience with this airline (and he didnt describe skywest very well). I just tried to stay positive (since interviewing cap't behind me was probably evaluating me) and I told the pax they do their best, this is a pretty good airline, but sometimes thigns happen and I'm sure they will fix this. Not sure how I should have handled that. I did my best, and I have no idea if it made any difference anyway.
I got home and got the letter 8 days later. The letter was typical "Thank you for your interest in Skywest Airlines." We all know where that leads. The next day I was called by a better paying charter company and I accepted that position. I was disappointed, but I think I am better off making twice the money. My kid still has this funny thing about eating.
Prior to interviewing for Skywest, I had just lost my last job under unusual circumstances. I was there for 2 months and then told I wasn't progressing. I'm not sure how much you are supposed to progress flying boxes in a Caravan, but what do I know. When I interviewed with Skywest, I told them exactly what happened, but I don't think they belived me or they just didn't want to deal with it. Before I interviewed with the charter company, I received word for Unemployment that the official reason for the loss of last job was "Position was eliminated" which made me furloughed. It would have been nice to have been able to tell Skywest that, but I didn't have the information yet.
Well, good luck to you all. If you can live on minimum wage for a year, you have a good future with Skywest. I was going to try to make it work, have no idea if it would have. Maybe this was all for the best for me. I'm a single dad and I don't know that skywest would have paid enough to eat, pay daycare and pay rent. Maybe my doubt showed through during the interview, I tired not to let it show, but no way to know for sure.
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