That video clearly illustrates selective attention — and it’s the same thing at play in the cabin crew interview.
During the interview, applicants focus on tasks (counting passes).
Meanwhile…
Recruiters are looking for gorillas (instinctive behaviours).
The task is a decoy; your behaviours are the real assessment.
Who you are when no one’s watching is exactly who shows up when you’re sidetracked by activities.
Whilst you busy yourself with paper towers or ditching scenarios, recruiters are watching how your gorilla behaves; how you engage, who you interrupt, who you include, how you share time, steady nerves, recover from mistakes, and take correction.
This is why so many people leave the interview process, scratching their heads, convinced they passed the activity — “I did the task perfectly” — whilst muttering: “What are they looking for?!”
Recruiters are trained to see gorillas. What feels invisible to you is floodlit to them.
The fix isn’t sharper eyesight — it’s sharper awareness.
but, not so fast…there’s a catch:
Awareness can lead to micromanaging your gorilla: over-policing your behaviour, second-guessing every move, trying to choreograph yourself so tightly that you stop “counting passes”. In other words, you’ve swapped one form of tunnel vision for another. And that makes you just as ineffective
The key is to train your gorilla in cabin crew habits long before the event.
Only then can you relax, count the passes, and enjoy the game.
That’s why Crew Crosscheck takes a behavioural approach, not a traditional one.
We help you fine-tune your crew habits.
By the end of this course, you’ll have awareness, but you won’t have to micromanage your behaviours.
