This review is regarding my F2F Interview on September 10, 2019, in Dallas Texas at the American Airlines Training Center at 1:00 PM. Upon arriving in Dallas, The shuttle bus took me to the training center. I met a few more candidates in the lobby area. The candidate pool lacked diversity. Everyone was dressed up.
We had one girl in the lobby who was bragging about how she worked for American as she sized up everyone and was talking negatively about AA flight attendants. As we approached the 1:00 pm mark, we had close to 30+ candidates.
Two male recruiters approached us with no smiles on their face to invite us to the conference room. Once we arrived in the conference room, a male hostess who was wearing a flight attendant uniform greeted us. He had fake smiles. It appeared as if he didn't want to be there and he wasn't friendly when attending to our needs.
He asked us to check-in with our passport. While I was checking in, the two women that checked us in tried so hard to be friendly. After that, the fake smiling male hostess invited the other recruiters into the conference room to introduce themselves. At first, the recruiters made it seem as if they wanted us there, then as time progressed, their fakeness was more pronounced and evident.
The interview atmosphere became cold, scary, and tense, sucking up all the happy energy out of the room. Then, we had a writing activity to do: American Airlines flies to many destinations around the world. Where would you go and why? Then, the fake smiling male hostess collected our writing activity from us stating that it is going to go into our files.
Then, we took a break. During the breaks, most of the recruiters disappeared. You don't seem the anymore. They don't interact with the candidates at all, especially during our breaks. Then, it was time for group activity. For the group activity, the recruiters called us one by one out of the conference room and asked us to follow them into another room.
The group activity was to create a 3D object using multiple colorful shapes. However, there were rules that we had to follow such as (1) only one person can touch certain colors (1) Only two people will have diagrams of the 3D objects and will instruct us on how to make the 3D object. (2) Two shapes cannot be used in the 3D object building activity. We were only given 12 minutes to complete the group activity.
I believe group activities like this should be regulated to children and not be used at this interview. After we completed our group activity and we were led back into the conference room, a small handful of the candidates were not in the conference room. I guess they may have been pulled them aside for a secret one and one or additional questioning, but they returned to the conference room with a bunch of recruiters behind them who stayed in the hallway maybe 10 minutes later. After the group activity, we took another break. Then, we were brought back into the same room again to do group interviews.
This was where things got things got out of control, scary, traumatizing, and crazy. More recruiters who you never saw before came into the room and they started watching us as they take notes on us. We were asked two questions each: What can you bring to American? and I don't remember the other question that was asked in addition to questions that we each picked from a card.
The recruiter that was conducting our group interview was fake smiling. He was cold and mean as he rushed us through the group interview. For example, as we answered the questions, the male recruiter would often cut us off by saying "Thank You" in the middle of our answers with a very cold tone to indirectly tell us to stop. The group interview was cutthroat. Some people dominated the group interviews while others stayed on the sidelines quietly. Some people tried to outshine each other. Most people including myself were eliminated during this process.
After that was completed, we returned to the main conference room where the fake smiling hostess did a quick presentation on the company. They didn't even have time to answer most of our questions. Then we were called one by one. I was led back to the shuttle and told to re-apply again in 6 months. I don't know what AA is looking for. I am so happy I got rejected! I didn't want to work for AA as their culture was reflected in the Face to Face.
I am still traumatized by this fancy cattle call. While I was on the shuttle, another lady who got a one and one said she didn't know anything about a crashpad. As I am writing this review, I am trembling and shaking by how cold the recruiters were to us.
American, you need to be more friendly to your candidates during the interview process and add more diverse as well as male recruiters to the process.