If you have put in an online app and haven’t heard anything, I think it really helps to talk to somebody in HR.  Talk to the Cathay rep at a career fair and try to get his/her email address, and establish a line of communication.  I talked to another candidate at the 2^nd interview that said he just cold called the flight recruitment department and was able to establish a good rapport over the phone and get an initial interview. 

The initial interview begins with a written test of 30 technical questions, multiple choice-3 choices.  What are katabatic winds?  What is washout?  This just isn’t stuff you see everyday as a pilot.  At least I don’t.   The interview itself was about an hour:  half HR, half technical.  What other companies are you applying and which one, other than Cathay, would be your favorite?  That was a tough one, because you have to talk about why you would like to work for another company.  Tell me about your typical day?  Would you consider yourself a good captain, instructor, evaluator, and why?  Know the chairman (Chris Pratt), the CEO (Tony Tyler) and the Director of Flight Operations (Nick Rhodes).  Know a couple of cities in each continent Cathay flies to.  Particularly, know some cities in Asia and some cities in whatever continent you are applying for a job in.  Know what is in the fleet:  777s, 747s, 330s, and 340s in the pax fleet and a couple of different 747 models in the freighter fleet.  There are also some more on order.  It’s all on the Cathay website.  Read the about the company on its website, and wikipedia has a good article on Cathay as well.  I really don’t think you need to spend more than a couple of hours studying the company and it’s history.  There are all kinds assumptions out there on what Cathay is looking for.  I found a most of them to be inaccurate.  You don’t need to make up a story about the other companies you are applying to.  If you are in the job hunt, it’s reasonable that you applied to several companies.  If you have reservations about going to Hong Kong, I wouldn’t try to cover this up.  Most people in the world don’t want to just up and move their family to Hong Kong.  It’s not unreasonable to say that, if it came up, which it didn’t in my interview.  You could spend your whole career on a foreign (from Hong Kong) based freighter fleet, and they have foreign-based pax fleet pilots as well. 

I kind of got the feeling that the technical portion was whatever the pilot interviewer wanted to ask I talked to different people that got a variety of different questions.  I didn’t get any about the RB211 G/H-T engine, but other people did.  I would definitely know about typhoons.  How and where do they form?  What direction do they track?  What are the procedures for penetrating a thunderstorm and landing in wind-shear?  Also, expect a variety of questions on the airplane you currently fly, and the type of flying you do.  This is a way for them to ensure the gouge does not comprise the interview. 

For the second interview, if you are traveling across several time zones, try to arrive a few days early to shake off the jet lag if you have the time.  Hong Kong is worth seeing, and they will make the appropriate reservations.  You just have to pay out of pocket for the extra nights, but it’s worth it.  It is very easy to find the hotel shuttle (Headland or Novotel), and get yourself to the hotel.  You receive an itinerary at the hotel.  It’s all pretty simple and self-explanator.  The first day of the interview we started with a few briefings, and then split up with our separate schedules.  The only 2 appointments to prepare for are the sim and the interview (similar to the initial).  Don’t even worry about the group exercise.  You will only hurt yourself by trying to game the system on that one.  The sim evaluation was very challenging.  As in most interview check-rides, you can’t use any of the automation, and you don’t get any altitude, speed, or heading calls from the guy next to you.  The 747 classic is very sensitive, and nose heavy.  You take off tracking the localizer on the departure, and climb to 2500 ft, do some steep turns, flying an ILS to a missed, have an engine fire on the outboard engine, and come back for an ILS to landing.  If you could buy sim time, this would definitely help, but this gets expensive and timely quick.  They have to be looking at your basic flying and instrument skills, and not the procedures on the classic.  What I would recommend doing is flying without any of the automation on whatever plane you fly as much as possible.  This will help to knock the dust off your instrument crosscheck.   Getting back into the habit of hand flying, regardless of the type airplane, should help, and it’s free for people who currently have a flying job.  Flying the ILS with an outboard engine out was difficult.  I think most people are all over the place, so if you are outside of your normal tolerances don’t get too stressed about it.   You will receive a profile in the mail.  I recommend chair flying it several times.  This will help get the pacing down since there are so many steps in configuring:  flaps 1, 5, 10, 20, gear, 30.  Start at 15 miles, and get to maneuvering configuration (flaps 10) without delay, and then 20 at glideslope alive, gear at 1 dot, and 30 at glideslope intercept.   And of course, the best part about chairflying is that its free and doesn’t require vacation time. 

The interview itself, although similar in format, was a bit easier and more relaxed than the first.  Again, I felt like the technical part consisted of whatever the pilot happened to feel like talking about that day.  I got a few more questions on typhoons.  Most of the questions were about the plane I currently fly.  The HR portion was fairly standard HR stuff.  Why do you want to work for us?  Why should we hire you?  What are your 2 best qualities and 1 worst quality?  Always fun questions. 

There are a lot of stereotypes and assumptions about Cathay that I found not to be true.  And I hope I didn’t create any stereotypes in this post.  I thought everybody I met in Cathay city was friendly, and fairly laid back.