Originally Posted by flensr

I "knew" I was going to get hired quickly too. I even got a better than expected starter job. Then my first interview at a legacy turned out to be absolutely awful. Reality check.

Apply everywhere. Take the first offer. Keep applying to anywhere you'd rather work than the place you're at. Repeat until you're at your "final" destination, and hope you made a wise choice. Then put your fingers in your ears shouting LALALALALA while your friends at fedex and UPS brag about making 25% more than you do while sitting reserve at home, blocking maybe 100 hrs on the year. I've had to listen to 5 years of that garbage but no I'm not gonna jump ship.

Seriously, that's an industry "best practice". Why beat a different path when the proven one works so darn well? The only gotcha is I would NEVER suggest to anyone that they even apply to a place that has a training payback, unless it's their very first instructional gig and it's their only foot in the door at the local flight school. Even then, the terms need to be really short, like 6 months. When I was moving up to the majors, the only 2 places I didn't apply to were American and Frontier. American because every time I jumpseated with them, the pilots seemed to be really disgruntled with their company and co-workers. Frontier because they had a 2-year training contract. I'd rather deliver pizzas than jump into either of those situations and I'm very thankful I landed at the "right" job for me. If you're not going to apply somewhere, have a better reason for it than you'd rather work somewhere else and you're waiting for them to call. Apply everywhere that you're willing to work if it's better than where you're at, period. My personal thresholds were training contracts and a disgruntled pilot group, other people have other criteria. I know lots of people who didn't apply to any cargo outfits because they don't like PM/night flying. Just pick reasonable criteria otherwise you're deviating from a proven career track for a silly reason.