Originally Posted by
Bzzt
That is partly true for all business. In careers outside of aviation there are some metrics you can be measured on against your peers. Salesman get sales numbers, managers have productivity metrics, etc. As a pilot there is nothing we can do to distinguish ourselves from the pack once we've embarked on this career other than go to job fairs and suck up to mainline pilots. I'd equate the airline career more to being a politician than a baseball player.
You can become a union volunteer or a check airman, for nothing but the sole purpose of filling out your resume.
It works great, but sometimes I wonder why companies value people who "volunteer" to do things they don't really care about beyond the resume value. So in the interview, these resume fillers who convince the hiring boards that they are genuine, are the biggest liars, and the biggest winners. The rest of us just have 6,000 or 8,000 or 10,000 hours of safe airline flying experience to offer, and that just isn't enough right now-- it's far too ordinary. So yes, politician is a much better analogy of how to get a mainline job-- I don't have one, and my resume may be inadequate for that purpose , but I also look myself in the mirror and know I am not full of #%^*. And that is priceless.