Originally Posted by
Keizer Soze
Applying is never a waste of YOUR time. However, I used to hire pilots and it was really frustrating to post a job with minimum requirements and then have to sort through every Tom, Dick, and Harry without the required minimums that felt applying wasn't a waste of their time. Now, that was as a chief pilot with a lot of other job responsibilities, so I was not a full time recruiter. Maybe it is different with someone who only gets paid to sift through resumes looking for the next best employee....
Personally, I feel the right time to apply at any job you are interested in is exactly when you meet the minimum requirements, or when you have already met the requirements and are available to accept the job.
You weren't hiring pilots using one of the online portals(airlineapps, pilotcredentials), because that's not how they work.
If you don't meet the minimums, they won't let you apply. If you do but aren't competitive, then your application just stays in the pool but never gets out on any of the pulls. So there's absolutely no harm to have your app in the pool, but having an early timestamp can help you when you eventually become competitive. So your advice isn't relevant to the airline scale. Smaller 91/135, maybe, where they actually manually read every resume that comes in. Airlines don't do that.