Personal Experience Essay: My First Job Interview

The day started at exactly 6.45 am. It was an excellent morning in Denver, Colorado. The interview took place at Frontiers Airlines Headquarters main building. We were a total of eight candidates competing for one post. Every one of us wanted to pass the interview and start the job immediately. Two of the candidates were from my home state of Florida, so we became friends almost instantly and spent the better part of the day conversing.

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At 7:00 am, we were greeted by human resource (HR) personnel and given the days schedule. The day was scheduled to start with the introduction, name tagging, and tagging of picture I.D. Also, we were given the rules governing the interview. After introductions, Frontier HR Personnel took us to a break room. This was going to be the holding tank for the rest of the interview day. The holding tank had vendor machine, water tanks and television monitors that displayed the airline performance live for that particular day. However, the holding tank had a feeling of a retail store display since everyone who came in stared at us curiously. They were attracted to us as we had worn name tags reading Im interviewing.

The first part of the interview was a briefing conference. This was conducted by the Chief Pilot and Assistant Chief Pilot. The companys briefing and history lasted for an hour. At the end of the briefing, we had a question and answer session. Every candidate was given an opportunity to ask one question. The questions were short and direct to the point. We were all satisfied with the answers we got from the Chief Pilot about our questions. After the briefing conference, we went back to the holding tank. The journey back to the holding tank was a very educative one since there were posters on all hallways that showed the history of the airline. Thus, I made a brief stop to read all the posters and made sure I was able to remember as much details as possible. I did this because I was certain some of the interviewers would ask questions about the history of the airline so as to see if we were paying attention to our surroundings.

The second part of the interview was the panel interview. There were ten interviewers in the room. The group was composed of the Chief pilot, Captains for the airline and HR personnel. They all took turns asking questions. The Chief Pilot was the first to ask the questions. He asked a total of five questions related to regulation and flying technics at different phases of flight. Next was HR personnel. He asked me questions concerning my past criminal records. The questions were so instant that I felt I was seating down responding to a question for a full day, but in reality, it was only ten minutes.

The last portion of the interview started at 11:30 am. It consisted of flight scenario. In my scenario, I was acting as the Captain of the aircraft who had a very inexperienced First Officer. The scenario was that we were called by flight dispatch who told us that there was a bomb onboard, and we had seven minutes to land the aircraft. At that moment, I gave the command to dispatch to give us all the necessary details of an airport that was near our location. We made the decision to land immediately and let the experts solve the problem on the ground. As I was discussing what to do next, the First Officer got out of his seat and started trembling. As a result, I was left by myself flying the aircraft as well as talking on the radios and coordinating the situation.

The scenario only took seven minutes, but it felt like thirty seconds. So many factors to consider were going through my mind and made time to go very fast. By the time, I was deciding to continue to destination or land at the nearest airport the scenario had advanced to a point that I had to make another decision, but at the back of my mind I knew I had not taken a decision on the main problem the bomb onboard. Before I was able to explain what decision to make concerning the bomb, the seven minutes were up, and I was sent back to the holding tank.

At the end of the day, I did not get the job. I felt disappointed at my performance in the flight scenario as it was one of the things I studied for weeks before the interview. It took me days to recover from the disappointment. However, after a few days, I started to feel better as I took it as a learning experience rather than a failure. This is the kind of experience I will use to tackle all the interviews ahead of me.

I feel that my first job interview with Frontier Airlines on March 16, 2016, was the toughest. All the other interviews that I have had were simple and run by only one interviewer. The Frontier Airlines interview made me use all professional interview skills that I learnt in college and life. Therefore, I can say this was the first real interview I have ever participated in.