Originally Posted by
JohnnyG
It'd be hard for me to convince myself to pay for interview prep when there aren't jobs out there and I'm not getting interviews. As much as I don't like to be the one 'flopping like a fish' at the last minute before an interview, how feasible is it really these days for someone who wants a 121 job but isn't given the opportunity to compete for one to go around purchasing seminars and interview prep?
Feeling you, but in my experience the phone rang and i had 2-3 weeks until the interview. Lets also state that i do believe there will be calls from UAL, Delta, and AA going out over the next year. Not the mythical pilot hiring boom but phones will be wringing more than the last two years. Can somebody go from phone call to successful interview in two weeks? Sure, but i couldn't. If you don't have the tell me about yourself, SBI, and TMAAT scenarios down, you have to do all that plus technical test/sim profile prep, travel arrangements, and get your haberdashery/grooming on. We all have heard of the guy who didn't do anything and got hired, but we all know the super pilot who did that same thing and didn't. Having been on receiving end of both a no thank you letter and a congratulations phone call, you will wonder what else you could have done on the former, and patting yourself on the back for your sagacity on the latter.
Saw a guy on the tube today at the training hotel(hint) who was talking about winning the lottery. He has won multiple times. He said the keys were playing consistently and making sure you had "good numbers" and played them repeatedly. You have to apply where you want to go and update monthly. If you need to fix a hole in your resume, do it. Then hone your answers over and over and over so you are polished. Malcolm Gladwell pointed in Blink that most hiring managers make the decision in the first minute whether they are going to hire you. Willing to just let it all hang out and hope the free to be you and me thing works out?
Take it from a guy who just used the words sagacity and haberdashery in a post on APC, do the prep.