JetBlue Airways: Employee Selection

The employee selection process in any organization is crucial to its success. Selection is the
process of choosing from a group of applicants the individual best suited for a particular position and
organization (Mondy & Noe, 2005). Jet Blue uses the process of employee selection in its selecting of
pilots, mechanics, and etc.

The employee selection process starts with preliminary interviews. The primary objective of the
preliminary interview is to weed out or remove individuals that are clearly not suited for the position
available. The individuals may not meet standard requirements, personalities may conflict with the work
environment, and the individuals’ expectation concerning the position may not be fulfilled. For whatever
reasons the candidate sits in front of the interviewer, it is vitally necessary that the interviewer determines
if this individual is going to be qualified and well-suited for their organizational needs. While, the
interviewer may not believe that the individual is well-suited for one position it’s possible the interviewer
finds them suitable for another position that’s available. The preliminary interview helps to reduce the
applicant pool by rejecting applicants that are overtly unqualified for the position or positions that are
available with an organization. Preliminary Interviews are often done by telephone, videotape and virtual
job interviews. These three types of preliminary interviews help to lower cost involved with traveling
over wide geographical locations to set-up interviews and also allows for mass interviewing to be timely
as well as efficient. The next stage in the employee process is the reviewing of the applications and
resumes. Often time this process is done while the preliminary interview is taking place. The reviewing
stage allows the recruiter to select and target individuals based on credentials and experience for further
consideration and perhaps a second interview. After the reviewing stage the next step is to have the
selected individuals take a selection test. Their on many different types of selection test and those are:
cognitive aptitude, psychomotor abilities, job knowledge, work sample, vocational interest, personality,
substance abuse, genetic, hand writing, and internet testing. All these tests are designed to give the
recruiter more information than what appears on the application or resume. These types of test can be
good indicators on whether or not a candidate will be successful in a certain job or career. These tests are
great in determining what a candidate can do but that doesn’t mean that the candidate will perform to their
expectations. One also must note the legal liabilities of such testing. These tests must be job related and
can’t discriminate against any protected individuals. Therefore, the before mentioned test must have the
following characteristics: standardization, objectivity, norms, reliability, and validity. The next step in the
selection process is to perform employment interviews on the applicants that have yet to be eliminated.
The employment interview is especially important because the applicants who reach this stage are the
survivors (Mondy & Noe 2005). These select candidates have achieved success in the preliminary
interviews and also on the selection tests. Know the employment interview is designed to determine
whether or not the candidate will do the job required of them. The difficult part of the employment
interview is that an interviewer must dig beneath the candidates projected image and find the candidates
true willingness to achieve. Interviewers can and have been fooled when determining if a candidates right
or wrong for a position. The fact remains, its is there job to make a decision and more often then not the
best interviewers are those who’ve had plenty of experience and even those can be fooled. The following
step in the selection process is Reference and Background checks. The reference and background checks
are designed to acquire information on candidates from there previous employers, credit bureaus,
universities and etc. This information is compiled and compared to the candidate’s applications/resumes
to find or see if any discrepancies may occur as well as to validated pertinent qualifications. The
background searches are crucial in today’s society where documentation fraud is high. The principal
reason for conducting background investigations is to hire better workers (Mondy & Noe 2005). The
Selection Decision is now time. In the selection decision interviewers/recruiters review all the
information obtained on the final set of candidates that are remaining. Individuals most often hired from
this point are those that most closely meet the job requirements of the available position. There are
sometimes when an organization may decide to hire based on ones potential rather than ones current skill
level, but ideally the one hired is the one best suited for the position. Once a candidate has been offered
employment they can then be asked to submit to a medical examination and their job offer is conditional
based on the outcome of their medical results. Keep in mind that the medical examination must stay
within in the guidelines set out in the Americans with Disabilities Act. The last step in the employee
selection process is the notification of candidates. This step is where all candidates are notified of the
selection decisions whether or not it was successful. The employee selection process is vital to
organization being successful, because and organization is only has strong as its bottle-neck.

Selecting the right people for pilots and mechanics position was important to JetBlue. JetBlue
established five values that it believed were essential characteristics of its company. The five values were
Safety, Caring, Integrity, Fun and Passion. JetBlue is a value-based company built on the principle that to
be extraordinary on the outside you must first be extraordinary on the inside (Cittell & O’Reilly, 2001).
Taking the five values as a guide, JetBlue used targeted selection process to identify employees who
were most likely to fit (Cittell & O’Reilly, 2001). This targeted selection process used the five values of
the company and converted those values into attractive or unattractive actions. Then the interviewers
would ask questions regarding past actions of the candidates and they would evaluate those actions as
either attractive or unattractive. For example, applicants were asked to recall incidents in a previous job in
which they exhibited a particular behavior, to describe how they arrived at the decision to take the action,
and to describe the consequence of the action (Cittell & O’Reilly, 2001). A pilot, for example, would be
asked to talk about a time he or she had a customer request that was in conflict with company policies and
what actions he or she took (Cittell & O’Reilly, 2001). The interviewers would then have to make a
decision based on a general agreement of all interviewers. To further demonstrate the selection process at
JetBlue:

In describing how this process worked in practice, Rhoades recounted how a mechanic who was being interviewed was
asked to think of a time that “integrity” was an issue in his previous employment. He described how as a junior mechanic, he got
a plum job at a major airline. Soon afterwards, he was pressured to certify an aircraft for an international flight, even though it
wasn’t in complete compliance. He refused to “sign off” on the airplane and the flight was delayed, much to the annoyance of
management. The mechanic was subsequently let go, reflecting the obvious displeasure of his superiors. “We hired him,”
Rhoades said. In another instance, she refused to hire a pilot because of his arrogance. (Excerpt from Cittell & O’Reilly, 2001
JetBlue Airways: Starting from Scratch)

Along with seeking individuals who fit with in the culture of JetBlue they also sought after individuals
with high comfort levels with computers since JetBlue used A320 airbus planes that are highly
computerized. Pilots were often recruited from other Pilots already working for JetBlue and I suspect so
were mechanics. Pilots and mechanics whose friends also worked as either pilots or mechanics would’ve
been a great way to select applicants since friends tend to possess the same core values, thus the basis of
friendship. Basically, Pilots and Mechanics were selected based on their qualification as a pilot or
mechanic but primarily on their cultural fit within the organization. The candidates cultural fit within the
organization was determine by their sharing of common core values with the company. Those values were
determined to either be possessed or not by the candidates in the interview process.

Properly matching people with jobs and the organization is the goal of the selection process
(Mondy & Noe 2005). JetBlue Airways meet this goal by recruiting primarily within the Airline Industry.
JetBlue would sought out qualified individuals and then screen those individuals based on their cultural fit
within the organization. As previously mentioned those individuals would be evaluated on the five core
values of JetBlue and whether or not the individual possessed the same values. Another way JetBlue meet
this goal was in offering customized compensations. Customized compensations would help to attracted
qualified individuals as well as to meet the needs of employees and perspective employees. Pilots were
paid the industry average from similar sized carriers and were entitled to 20 days of per year (Cittell &
O’Reilly, 2001). Unlike the other employee groups, JetBlue pilots, dispatchers, and technicians got stock
options (Cittell & O’Reilly, 2001). Different job positions different needs. The flight attendants position
was created has a short term position but JetBlue offered more money per hour than the industry standard.
Through Customization of benefits JetBlue was able to draw in more qualified applicants and then
through the use of there targeted selection process was able to narrow those applicants down and make a
selection decision.

The employee selection process is necessary. If individuals are overqualified, underqualified, or

for any reason do not fit either the job or the organization’s culture, they will be ineffective and probably
leave the firm voluntarily or otherwise (Mondy & Noe 2005). Thus, the employee selection process is
crucial, in order to select the right person for the right job and organization.

Reference:

Review Case Study: Cittell, Jody H. and O’Reilly, Charles (2001). JetBlue Airways: Starting from
Scratch. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, pp.1-20 (58-78).

Mondy, R. Wayne and Noe, Robert M. (2005). Human Resource Management (9th ED.). New
Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall