Something I discovered early in my career is that one of the easiest ways to combat complacency and maintain proficiency is to join the training department of wherever I am lucky enough to be flying. I know this is not always easy or even logistically possible, but if the opportunity arises, I will take it every time. At a previous job, one of the duties that the training department was responsible for was job interviews, both technical and practical. They usually involved about an hour of ground and an hour on a desktop simulator. It made sense, because the training department is in charge of taking these pilots and getting them up to speed. Who better to gauge the applicants than someone who will shortly be molding them into line pilots?
The job was entry-level, so the majority of applicants were instructors, skydiver or pipeline pilots. One thing that I consistently found lacking in these simulator evaluations was approach briefings. It sort of does make sense; for the most part, the applicants had come from single-pilot IFR operations in aircraft that do not have reliable autopilots. So, the goal is to cover as much ground as fast as possible, especially in the training environment where approaches are done one after the other.
