This job is not for everyone dear…

It was almost 5pm when I finally had my interview. And who walks down the stairs to fetch me but L. She beckoned me with a bony hand and powered up the stairs way ahead of me. The crew had partitioned off the room into three tiny interviewing cubicles. The seat I sat in opposite L and D, another scary senior crew member, was so close to the table I felt I almost had to suck in my stomach as I sat there.
All my life I’ve had a bit of trouble looking people in the eye. I don’t know why – it’s not like every word that comes out of my mouth is a lie and therefore I can’t look people in the eye or anything. I just find it a bit off putting and intimidating. But I knew I had to make good eye contact with L and D right then. D acted as scribe as L fired questions at me for 40 minutes – everything from what would you do with a drunken passenger? to could you really handle running through a dark, smoke filled cabin to open an exit? Do you mind working public holidays? Do you realise that ground school training will be the most intense and difficult four weeks of your life? Are you ready for that?

Of course I was! Well, at that moment I thought I was. For my first real interview though, I thought it had not gone too badly. I left feeling happy. I just had a great vibe – it seemed like a great company to work for, one I’d want to work for, and everyone I’d met that day seemed very nice. I wanted to join this team. So I thanked them and left, getting into my stinking hot car and driving home via the shops to get myself a block of chocolate as reward for surviving such a long day and making it through.

I spent the next three weeks back at my waitressing job, eagerly awaiting any news from my interview. As luck would have it suddenly every airline started calling me and I went to two other interviews while I waited to hear from J or L. But none measured up to the experience I’d had that day in January.

Late in February I was just about to head off to work when I received a call from an Australian airline recruiting for one of their east coast bases. As I was about to head to work, they promised to call me back later in the day. Any call from any airline was a cause of excitement for me so I was bubbling over the whole day, so keen to get home and have this woman call me back. And she did, as promised. Being a large airline, she was critical of my answers to her questions and as we wound up the interview and she still hadn’t asked me to attend a recruitment day, I feared my chances were slipping away. But to my surprise she extended a sympathetic hand. “Your answers aren’t as strong as I’d like, so you’d need to work on that. But I can tell you mean well and so I’m going to put you through to the recruitment day,” she said. Only problem was it was a five hour flight away and was in 3 days. And I hadn’t been too eager to move out of my state for this job just yet anyway. I told her I couldn’t give her an answer right then. “Don’t let me down,” she said. I was grateful she was giving me a chance. I knew it was rare and it made me realise the people on the other end of these phone interviews aren’t just reading off a sheet and ticking boxes…they really are human and go beyond your answers to make an assessment on whether you’d be right for the job.