Jet Airways Talent Acquisition

SYNOPSIS

Jet Airways is India's second largest airline, and its scale of operations is massive: it operates over 3,000 flights daily to 76 destinations worldwide. Its success lies, among other things, in its unshakable commitment to hiring only the finest crew—people who are focused on passengers’ comfort, and strictly adhere to safety standards. When Jet Airways wanted an online testing solution to shortlist fresh potential candidates, as well as assess the learning growth of its existing staff at its DGCA-approved training facility, it put its faith in ExpertRating—the relationship has only grown stronger over the years. 

Jet Airways faced a unique challenge while hiring in remote areas: poor Internet connectivity and rickety IT infrastructure were limiting factors in the hiring process. ExpertRating created an OMR-based solution for Jet Airways to broaden testing locations for hiring of potential candidates. Once the candidates were shortlisted on the basis of online tests, they were screened with personal interviews and other parts of the selection process.

Jet Airways also used ExpertRating’s psychometric tests—specifically tailored to their needs and designed in collaboration with psychometricians to measure cognitive, behavioral and personality traits of potential candidates. These tests help in identifying a candidate's suitability for a certain job, beyond qualification and experience. Jet Airways was able to screen potential candidates at a faster rate and a fraction of cost as compared to traditional pen-and-paper testing.

The Talent Acquisition Need

As the airlines runs operations pan-India, their requirement was to hire resources from all over the country—even from remote areas, so that meritorious candidates could be reached, however farther they lived from bigger cities. However, sourcing and hiring the crew members was a difficult, lengthy task: there were many rounds of interviews, interactions and assessments by the Jet Airways human resources (HR) department, as well as by senior cabin crew staff, before a crew was inducted on board. This posed a two-way challenge: how to gather and manage candidates at a remote venue, and how to align the resources from the HR department to be available for the same.

As the airlines had its base pan India, the requirement was to hire resources from every city, even the remote areas, so that the meritorious candidates could be reached, however farther they lived from cities. Sourcing and hiring the crew members was not an easy task. There were many rounds of interviews, interactions and assessments by HR Department, as well as Senior Cabin Crew staff before a crew member was inducted on board. This requirement posed a two way challenge: first- to gather & manage the candidates at a venue near/within the remote area & second- to align the resources from the HR department to be available for the same.

The cabin crew were selected using a carefully planned process, which involved, among other things, communication skills, aptitude and attitude to learn and adapt to the company's work-culture. The freshly inducted candidates were then be groomed and imparted training: skill-oriented and behavioral training. This process took a lot of time and resources, as mobilizing the candidates, HR resources and preparing a list of shortlisted candidates took weeks, sometimes months.

The Challenge

The challenge faced by the Jet Airways management was how to hire the best talent in the shortest possible time. The objective was to reach out to all the cities—metro cities as well as non-metro cities—and shortlist the candidates possessing the desired skills and aptitude. With airports and other logistical facilities available across different Indian states, a broader approach was required for a robust talent assessment solution, which could test and shortlist large number of candidates in a short span of time.

The Solution

The Jet Airways team decided to find an objective mechanism of assessing the personality and skill of candidates, which could provide reliable results in the shortest possible time. The solution was required both on a pen-and-paper format for remote areas, where connectivity and infrastructure were a challenge, as well as an online solution for metros and other large cities where there were no infrastructural challenges. ExpertRating Solutions was chosen to explore the feasibility for providing an assessment solution which could be used in online as well as the offline mode.

The testing initiatives were to be focused at shortlisting the candidates having the requisite communication skills and aptitude by a common objective test, followed by group discussions and further scrutiny by the HR and senior cabin crew staff.

As the assessment solution would funnel the candidates fulfilling basic communication and personality traits, 90% of the effort on the part of HR and senior cabin crew staff was to be saved.

Online Assessment Solution

The scope of the online solution was to have two modules: Test Administration and Test Taking, with the following features:

Test Administration Module

• A password-protected administrative area.
• A user-interface to facilitate supplying the test taker information, its storage and easy retrieval.
• A capability to send automated email invites having a link to testing engine and the unique passcode.
• A capability to deliver test completion alerts at designated email address.
• A reporting interface to monitor the assignment, progress and completion of tests.

Test taking module

• The test taking module was a platform for the test takers to attempt the assigned tests.
• The testing engine was required to display one question at a time.
• The user-interface of the test taking window was required to display the time remaining to the test takers.
• A review feature was required where the test takers could review their attempts towards the end.

Offline Assessment Solution

The offline solution was to have two modules: Test Administration and Test Taking, with the following features:

Test Administration Module

• A password protected Administrative Area.
• A user interface to facilitate supplying the test taker information, its storage and easy retrieval.
• A capability to send automated email invites having a link to testing engine and the unique passcode.
• A capability to deliver test completion alerts at designated email address.
• A Reporting interface to monitor the assignment, progress and completion of tests.

Test Taking module

• Hard copy versions of online questionnaires were created.
• The questions were scrambled according to topics to create different paper sets, so as to prevent the use of unfair means.
• Hard copy, machine-scannable OMR sheets were created and branded with company logo.
• The OMR sheets and the question papers were distributed to the candidates during the exam and collected from the candidates upon the completion of the exam. 
• The filled-in OMR sheets were scanned and soft copies were transmitted to ExpertRating headquarters for further processing. The scores of all individuals were made available on the test administration module within 3 hours.

Test Attempts on OMR Sheets

Hard copy machine scannable OMR sheets were created & branded with the company logo. The OMR sheets and the Question Papers were distributed to the candidates during the exam & were collected back from the candidates upon the completion of the exam.

These filled in OMR sheets were scanned and then soft copies were transmitted to ExpertRating headquarters for further processing. The scores of all individuals were then made available on the Test Administration Module within 3 hours.

Designing the Skill Assessment Instrument

A Skill assessment instrument - Cabin Crew Selection Test was also to be designed and developed. The scope of the test to be designed was defined as:

• Mode of test delivery: Online using any Windows/Mac PC & Offline via hard copy question papers
• Question type: Multiple Choice Questions
• Number of questions: 40-50
• Test duration: 1 minute per question

The Test was to be designed with the following foci:

Testing Campaign

ExpertRating developed and deployed the online as well as the offline solution and over 15,000 candidates from across more than 20 Indian cities took the test. The testing campaign was held over a period of 2 years. For achieving best results, different aspects of solution developed by ExpertRating were tweaked at different points of times during this period.

The reports of individual test takers were made available within the solution and were monitored by the Jet Airways team. The candidates obtaining the cut-scores in the assessments were then interviewed and analysed by the HR teams.

Outcome & Benefits

The hiring rate rose from a meager 8 % to a considerable 45%, as non-talented candidates were eliminated in the first round via the online and/or offline assessment process designed by ExpertRating. The HR department had its work immensely reduced, and interviewed only those candidates whose personality and skills were in line with the expectations of the company. 

Jet Airways saved considerable expenditure on human resources and infrastructure, as ExpertRating managed the end-to-end shortlisting process for both the online as well as the offline assessment modules.

However, the biggest benefit for the company was that it was hiring only the finest talents, which resulted in increased accolades from fliers, who enjoyed “beyond expectations” hospitality and customer services delivered by the able crew—suitably matched by ExpertRating’s assessment solution.

Process Re-engineering

Jet Airways witnessed a sea-change in satisfaction rates of its passengers with the services of its knowledgeable and friendly cabin crew. The assessment process provided a transparent, scientific and efficient method for shortlisting candidates for further evaluation, which considerably reduced the involvement of HR resources in the initial stages. This campaign was a catalyst to a complete re-engineering of the shortlisting and recruitment process. The new blueprint required the skill assessment process to be rolled out across the country for pre-employment testing, for the positions, including, but not limited to:

The Online and Offline Pre Employment assessment process adopted made the selection process reliable and effective, besides reducing the pre-hiring costs by 90%.

The turnaround time for a selection process was reduced by 45%, saving valuable time for the HR and training teams. The operational costs for hiring process was reduced by 60%.

This laid the foundation for new-age pre-hiring assessment process. Excellent services by the better matched employees also brought up the customer satisfaction rates.