Originally Posted by
aiir
When you say that the current hiring trend is to hire fresh young regional CA’s and even FO’s at the majors. Is that with relation to lower hours equals more trainable or do you literally mean “young” as in age, like mid twenties.
Would someone 30-32 years old with a masters degree, a clean record, a good attitude, with some volunteer time, and other extracurriculars be likely to get hired at a major as a regional FO?
Maybe. It's more about career "youth" than chronological youth, although when I was pursuing legacies a good buddy with very deep insight told me that my age would be a factor. You're starting about when I did but you'll be younger than me when the time comes, because you probably won't get a decade-long career "time out" at the regional.
I suspect some of it is just human nature, ie they look at you and you're just not as "sexy" as a younger person. You can mitigate that by being fit, well-dressed, well-groomed, and dynamic.
Some of it may be more overt, the requirement to do volunteer work and chase recruiters all over the country to various job fairs... I suspect this may have been intended to select for young/single/childless people, real grownups with families just don't have time to play those games. Between family and my other job, I did zero job fairs (but I was fortunate to have some unusual resume bullets). I suspect as hiring ramps up, this sort of thing will fall by the wayside, ie a job fair might get you called quicker but I doubt it will be a de-facto requirement for too much longer.
There's also the legit concern of training success, older folks don't learn as well (especially if they've been stagnant for many years), and they are more likely to not have any recent training events. This should be less of an issue for you, since things should move right along from here on out, but it's something to keep in the back of your mind... if you go to a regional with only one A/C type, and get delayed for a few years, you'll be stale. A regional with more than one type would afford the opportunity to reset the training clock if needed. The ERJ's arrival at SKW a few years ago was a career godsend to many "stale" CRJ CA's.
Another concern they have is that of older folks (especially CA's) being too set in their ways, there has been some friction with new hires recently for that reason. You can mitigate this at the interview, by how you present yourself and answer questions. Probably won't be an issue for you, since you probably won't stagnate.
Of course you should consider the AA wholly owned regionals (flow), and then other regionals with preferential interviews to bypass this whole issue.