CPP Psychological Personality Test for Candidate Aviation Pilots

Effectively reducing human factor related risks from the start

Screening of ab initio pilots and experienced airline pilots must not be limited to the testing of skills and knowledge of pilot candidates. FTO’s and ATO’s need to fully understand what kind of personality the candidate pilots have. The reason is simple. Lack of knowledge and skills can be trained and corrected only if the underlying personality of the pilot candidate allows for it. 

This is the reasoning behind the development of a specific aviation pilot psychometric test as part of the COMPASS screening method. This test will give recruiters an overview of the candidate pilot’s personality traits. With this psychological test for pilots, FTO’s and airlines will not only understand the candidates' willingness to learn and develop his or her skills, their ability to integrate into an organization as a team player, but also be able to prevent human factor related risks by thoroughly assessing the pilot candidates’ competencies in decision-making and inter-human communication.

CPP psychometric report as foundation for the personal interview

The CPP psychological test should be seen as an important part of any pilot candidate’s screening process. It does not replace the personal interview, where personality traits are also closely observed. But the CPP test helps to pre-select candidates to be invited for the interview. It also can be used as a foundation for the personal interview. Its detailed reports will give the interview-conducting recruiters an idea on the personality items on where to focus on during the interview.

The CPP aviation pilot psychometric test at a glance

The CPP psychological test for pilots has been developed as an advanced, but easy-to-use psychological screening tool.

  • Pay-per-use: have a perfect cost-control by only paying for the tests actually completed without any fixed or hidden costs
  • Can be installed on any PC and administered from anywhere in the world
  • No training required for recruiters, administrators or management
  • Reliable and objective results available instantly
  • Seamlessly integrates with COMPASS and Advanced COMPASS

For any questions regarding the CPP psychological screening tool, please feel free to contact us on [email protected].

Science based screening of all crucial airline pilot competencies

The CPP psychological test is based on extensive scientific research and confirmed by statistical analysis. It is specifically designed to measure the candidate pilot’s ability to develop competencies that are important in the function of an airline pilot. For each competency, the test assesses the underlying personality traits needed to achieve the most crucial competencies for airline pilots:

Core competency

  • Personal stability
    • Resilience
    • Stress tolerance
    • Impulse control

Primary competencies

  • Conscientiousness
    • Ambition
    • Accuracy
    • Perseverance
  • Leadership
    • Dominance
    • Persuasiveness
    • Assertiveness

Personal competencies

  • Executive orientation
    • Accuracy
    • Empathy
  • Team orientation
    • Teamwork
    • Autonomy
  • Decision-making
    • Accuracy
    • Variation
  • Communication
    • Assertiveness
    • Empathy

  • Relational competencies

    • Service orientation
      • Helpfulness
      • Empathy
    • Sociability
      • Openness
      • Variation

Candidate pilots can complete this psychological test within one hour and the results are available instantly through an automatically generated and therefore objective report.

An objective and conclusive report on the candidate pilot’s results

The test results are available instantly after completion of the test and can only be viewed by personnel issued with a specific access code. There is a summary report of the results and the system generates also detailed reports. The detailed reports are designed in a way that they

  • Combine traits to form competencies and explain relevancy
  • Estimate the potential of competencies to be developed
  • Draw a conclusion regarding the personal psychological profile

Furthermore, the report advises regarding risk prevention by categorizing the pilot candidate’s profile into the following risk indicators:

  • No serious concerns
  • Some serious concerns
  • Grave concerns

The report allows FTO’s and ATO’s to have a great psychological overview of their candidate pilots and their potential in terms of decision-making and teamwork.

Key advantages of using the CPP psychological test for pilots

Create a real team of airline pilots

By assessing sociability and communication traits of your candidate pilots, you will not only be able to select pilots with potentially outstanding skills in terms of cockpit crew coordination, but also help to build a pilot department where teamwork is key. Screening these skills in advance will help improve the company culture within the airline.

Improve the success rate of the pilot training process

Assessing conscientiousness and leadership competencies enables FTO’s and ATO’s to positively influence the success rate of pilot training programs by actively selecting candidates with a high degree of ambition, resilience, stress tolerance and perseverance.

Reduce costs and improve time-efficiency of your pilot candidate selection process

By adding the CCP psychological test for pilots to the already existing COMPASS pilot screening tools, your candidate pilot screening process will be very straight-forward. The high degree of automation enables FTO’s and ATO’s to view results instantly after completion of the various tests. As it requires close to no human intervention, COMPASS and CPP also allow for a neutral and objective selection of candidate pilots.

Maintain standards of your current airline pilots by monitoring training and development needs

CPP can also be used to screen and monitor the competency level of your current pilots, helping to quickly identify their training, learning and development needs. Also coaching needs for specific pilots can be set up using the CPP tool.

How to integrate the CPP aviation pilot psychometric test into your screening process

Although the test can be used as a stand-alone psychological screening tool, it was designed to be used in conjunction with the already existing COMPASS candidate pilot screening tools. We recommend pilot training organizations to conduct the Pre-COMPASS, COMPASS or Advanced COMPASS test first. Successful pilot candidates should then complete the CPP test for further screening and selection.

If you have any question on how to use the CPP psychological assessment or on how to integrate CPP into your selection process, then please feel free to drop us an email at [email protected]

Frequently asked questions about CPP

If you have any questions about the CPP pilot psychometric test, please feel free to contact us without any commitment on [email protected]. We are happy to help.

For your quick reference, we have summed up the most frequently asked questions below:

Does the CPP psychological test for pilots anticipate that some candidate pilots try to respond to questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably by the FTO or airline?

Yes. The CPP has been designed in a way which makes it particularly hard for the pilot candidate to guess the appropriate response. CPP was specifically developed because other psychological screening tools often were too clinical in their approach, making it easy to cheat by giving social desirable answers. Great care has been taken to fully discard this so-called social desirability bias.

Does the CPP aviation pilot psychological test take into account social or cultural differences that may exist?

The answer is also yes. For each country or culture, specific norm groups can be created, where results are compared only to this norm. It is also possible to create other norm groups, based for example on airline specific norms or pilot experience levels. But of course users of the CPP can also choose the international worldwide norm. Please talk to us if you need to create more specific or local norms.

How have the norms and thresholds of CPP been calculated?

The norms and thresholds of the CPP psychological test for pilots are based on the normal probability distribution of scores for a particular norm group and have been set based on scientific research and statistics. Several reliability tests have been conducted on hundreds of candidates until the overall reliability was satisfactory. The CPP has also been extensively tested for convergent validity with other tests measuring the same competencies.

How sure can we be that the CPP test correctly predicts the candidate pilot’s aptitude and behaviour?

The behavioural patterns of a human being can never be predicted with 100% certainty. This is why the CPP test should be used as an indicator of the candidate’s aptitude for the job of an airline pilot. By using this test in combination with other screening tools like COMPASS, the recruitment team will have a good general overview of the candidate pilot’s competencies, skills and aptitude.

How long does the CPP test take and can it be done remotely?

The CPP test takes about one hour to complete and can be installed on any PC. It also can be done remotely over the internet, will the assessors being notified as soon as a test has been completed and results being available instantly.

What kind of training or psychological knowledge is needed for recruiters to use this test?

The CPP provides an informative and practical automated report with an overview of competencies and traits of the candidate pilot. For correct interpretation of the test results there is no need to actually employ a psychologist. The reports are automatically generated and therefore objective. They are self-explanatory and can be used by any aviation related recruitment personnel.