[Music] hello welcome to the pro pilot playbook where we teach you tips and hacks to launch your aviation career i'm mike martin and i'm sean ritchie yeah today we're uh we're gonna go over some questions you guys send out a lot of great questions um first i have a question for sean why are you always at home and i'm always working i mean what what's that what's the deal there i i tell you you know that is a good question uh there somebody's got to keep the people flying man right yeah exactly that's gotta be
out there working to be honest with you i have been working a lot oh good yeah uh it's just i mean i mean really you're right that is a great question because there might be some viewers you know if you're watching this on youtube you might be actually wondering that but uh the there actually is a good question we would film a lot more of these if we were set up better but since we're doing the zoom thing um yeah you know i've you know that i've got the computer at home here to record it
all and edit it easier to do it easier to do it this way is the actual real technical question but yeah he's he's the technical uh mastermind here behind the pilot playbook so i just fall in his lead i'm i'm i'm uh sitting in the marriott with my earbuds in and he's got the big fancy bike right right yeah i'm out actually in jackson hole wyoming one of my favorite places in the whole world um and we've been out here for several days and it's rained almost every minute of every hour of every second that
i've been here it's starting to i'm looking outside starting to stop raining i was my plan was to go find a spot where i could have a dramatic view of the grand tetons behind me but uh well you'll have to settle for this black and white uh picture here right yeah i am really good you got the smoke out there going on yeah right yeah that's that dixie fire is uh burning and then there's another one that just erupted that's i mean there's a number i mean there's a dozen or so fires out there but
i think the dixie fire is one of the largest ones ever um and then that that smoke is all ran into here so when we we landed here it wasn't raining uh it was actually clear uh but the smoke was so bad i think the visible was three or four miles we were on instruments all the way down and typically when you land on the ramp you have this dramatic view and you know it's unbelievable the the airport's in a state park and it's probably the most photo ramp photo ever you know everybody's taking pictures
of their plane with the mountains in the back and everything you can barely see the mountains with the smoke and uh you open the door and it smells like a barbecue restaurant which if you're hungry is probably not bad but uh so the rain came through and uh actually i think it cleared out some of the smoke so this afternoon it might be better uh but yeah that's unfortunate thing later in the season uh here in the late summer uh all of the west coast you get those fires and it can be disruptive yeah yeah
yeah i was out i mean even in even in denver yeah there was you know there's smoke everywhere yeah i mean yeah it's uh it's crazy out there right now yeah yeah but for those of you that haven't been out here and now the word's out it's it's super popular now but it is really a spectacular place to come and visit all right so yeah yeah it's gorgeous out there it's like everywhere you go it's like a you're in a painting or something that's right that's right really neat oh man so so we got a
great question i think to start with what what did what do you got there sean all right so this comes from uh riley and uh riley is and i guess that could be a guy's name or a girl's name so we'll just play it safe here my name is riley i'll leave the last name out uh i've graduated from kansas state polytechnic flight school and i'm currently instructing there i'm hoping to get an interview for a with a corporate pilot for a corporate pilot position in my home state of iowa i have a captain there
right now who is referring me for the job also i was hoping to get some so here's here comes the question yeah that is a great great opportunity uh i was hoping to get some insight on technical questions that may be come up in the interview as well as some hr questions so i can knock it out of the park any help would be appreciated love the podcast hope all as well riley riley that's a great question there and and i think a lot of viewers could get some value from that um the problem is
i'll go ahead and start sean the problem is with these corporate interviews and i've done a lot of them and i've conducted a lot of them is you know when you go for an airline interview there's all these gouges on the internet and they have these hand questions that they have to ask and you can be ultra prepared for those because you can see what they asked the last guy they're probably going to ask you that and you can just knock it out of the park well there's not even really any probably i mean there's
very little variance from what you're reading on those on those gouges for the airline interviews i mean they have to maintain that that line they can't you know make one interview incredibly difficult compared to the last interview um they gotta they got to be careful with that stuff yeah yeah in corporate obviously they have the hr guidelines that any company has and the questions they can ask and all that stuff but but really it's just a small thing they're only instead of you know airlines are inter interviewing literally thousands of pilots a corporate operation might
interview five four or something so there's not a big standardization on what they're going to ask you and how they're going to go um but i can give you some general pointers just in my experience from interviewing people and then also being interviewed in the corporate department um the the the most critical thing i would say is they already know based on your resume and your experience and everything that you can fly you've passed all the check rides you've got all the ratings you're qualified for the job you know you've got these hours that they
want all that stuff what they're looking for in an interview is uh is this somebody i want to spend time with on the road you know how's their personality um how are they going to interact with the other people that work here and importantly too is how are they going to carry themselves around the passengers you know so you you want to come across uh i would say as is someone that's easy to get along with easy to travel with um and also can communicate well with high net worth people um you know and you
know what to say and when to say um and but you know also be technically competent um and appear confident but then don't appear arrogant because nobody wants to work with somebody that's you know thinks they're god's gift aviation i'm sure you've flown with those guys right oh yeah so that would be my brief answer if i could just uh tell you anything is that it's such a it's such a hard question to answer it's so broad because you could be you know without without you filling in the details of what kind of corporate flight
department we're talking about here is this is this somebody that's they got four or five airplanes and several pilots and they have a process in place or is this an owner that has one airplane and you know i've flown i've been to corporate interviews before where they were very organized and it was you know darn near uh you know they knew what they were doing and then i flown for several corporate and this is more likely the case you know the guy that owns one maybe two airplanes and you're there because one of the pilots
that already flies for this individual recommended you and they know that they can like mike just said be good with a four day trip with you on the road and you won't be trying to kill each other um right you got stuff in common you know you're both into the same thing and uh you know you'll get along on the road so you present you're presented to the boss or the principal we call them uh hey i got a guy you know i really think he'd be good for the job and check him out and
then your interview consists of meeting the boss um and these guys you know these guys worth you know multi-millions dollars they're usually pretty good read of somebody's character oh yeah you know and there might be a little bit of an hr thing in there uh you know the hr people get involved you know one of that at work for one of the companies the principal owns or something and they might have to do uh you know one of these uh you know psych tests on the internet or something or whatever but right it's so it's
so all over the board your your interview may consist of going to lunch with the owner um you know there may not be any technical aspects of it if it's a larger flight department yeah i mean i would say some of the go-to things uh to answer your technical questions they're you know i think one of the things that most pilots who don't give interviews all day long every day like at an airline you know they may hand you an approach plate and ask you to what's this mean what do you suppose this is yep
you know what's the lowest you could go down on this approach or they may give you scenario based things um well you're on your way into an airport and there's a uh you know that airport's closed now what are you gonna do you know that kind of thing but chances are if this if this individual is recommending you that's not even gonna be a situation it always goes back to you know the answer in those scenario-based questions 9 out of 10 times the answer to those questions is uh get other people involved in the problem
talk to the guy sitting next to you in the cockpit if you can get company on the on the you know talk to the passengers where they want to go you know in the corporate environment you talk to passengers but uh so i wouldn't but your best resource no matter what the actual answer your question is you need to talk to the person who's recommending you right the insider yeah you need to beat these people down for for what the interview is like what's the process going to be like is there even going to be
an interview are we just going to go out to lunch you know i mean how is it going to go because it's in their best and you might want to remind them if they're actually recommending you it's in their best interest for you to not hose this up as well because it's going to look bad on them so right even for some reason they don't know the answer to what the interview is going to be involved you know what's involved in the interview they need to go figure it out so they can get back to
you because it's in their best interest too right no i agree with that completely yeah uh try to figure out you know what was their interview like because they obviously worked there when they were hired there and get any heads up another thing too don't get wrapped around the axle about aircraft specific questions right because yeah that's kind of a misconception that i thought when i first started interviewing for these kind of jobs is oh are they going to ask me a bunch of questions about the planes they fly well they realize that they they've
been trained on those and you haven't so you usually the interviewer hasn't flown what you're flying and then they also uh know that you haven't flown what they're flying so like sean said they're going to ask a general maybe airspace or technical uh judgment questions but not not anything specific to their plane so i wouldn't research that and of course the old ad is a huge thing is research the company whoever the parent company is that owns the aircraft i would know everything about them what they're doing what kind of deals they're doing where they're
going just read all that um and then if you can think of some questions uh to ask them because they're always gonna ask you do you have any questions you could ask specific questions about um well i saw your offices here is there any expansion you know just to show that you've done your homework on the company yeah never do not have a question you know waiting in the wings to throw it there right that if you're in an interview and they ask you so you have any questions for us and you say no no
no no i'm good yeah you're probably not that's such a huge red flag and negative to the interviewer yeah that's a yeah it always has something geared up to ask them whether it's something to do with you know the airplane or you know the company the future of the company whatever that kind of thing but yeah as far as technical stuff i would be surprised you know most corporate interviews i've been on there's never been a technical question no no yeah yeah yep i think you'll be in good shape and uh yeah just find out
all the information you can before that to be prepared and uh you know getting the interview is is you're 80 percent there probably in the corporate world oh absolutely right yeah yeah yep just don't come across arrogant don't use any profanity you know don't don't uh uh complain about your current job that's another bad one because they're like oh this person's a complainer you know so absolutely hopefully that uh that works out well and you know any general interview prep uh not aviation related that you can find online i think would be very helpful yeah
there's oodles of that stuff everywhere you can just go right there's youtube videos out there um you know where you're driving in your car you can watch youtube videos on how to interview and you know everything from eye contact how to shake somebody's hand to you know the general general questions if you do end up in an hr you know situation uh you know there's always those half dozen dozen questions that every hr department on the planet asks a person you know you can get you know how to answer those on the internet real easy
riley one thing to remember though do if for some reason this doesn't shake out um you know because mike and i have done a similar podcast on this before about how the hiring works in a corporate department you know and typically especially if this is a small corporate department you know when when there's an outage when there's a an open seat it is a the house is on fire i mean that thing needs to be filled quickly and uh you know if this doesn't work out for some reason do not get discouraged because there are
plenty of jobs out there yep there'll be there'll be something else for sure absolutely a good experience and you know uh oftentimes people will interview for a small operation like that not get the job they pick somebody else then later that that pilot doesn't work out or moves on and then they're calling back like oh we should have you know we really should have hired sean you know so uh yeah it's it's just a positive thing all around that you got the interview yes yeah all right great great question riley yeah thank you for the
question if you have a question for us you'd like us to answer you can email us at podcast pro playbook.com and we'll see you next week with another one thanks for watching [Music]
