Originally Posted by
alwayshungry
It would be nice if HARM/SARM had the most accurate records. Definitely some blame on me who signed off on it, but I wasn't really concerned with my hours over a decade ago. I went and put it all in a spreadsheet, took me a couple of months and asking friends to verify some dates/times. I hope it'll work. Any suggestions for pointing out omissions on the line-by-line HARM didn't include in my records, or discrepancy on hours? I did keep a pocket calendar with general information, but not as accurate as a logbook.
Applications and interviews are a haze to see who wants to be there, who gives a **** enough to put in the work to land a 8 figure paying career in which attention to detail is a faily useful skill set. You can interview prep all you want and come off as slick and charming, but if someone can't be bothered to spend an hour or 3 getting their records tight as possible that will shine through.
I had the exact same problem! I looked at my logs and I had like 25 extra hours of primary, 10 less of IP, 2 more EP, 10 extra night hours, etc. It made no sense. I went through my records and the line by line to see where ARMS had typos or maybe it was my math errors they fixed, and out of my ~3000 hours I got mine within about 10 hours of the official record. I had a reasonable response ready to explain the air force records keeping process, and especially how screwed up it was while we were deployed, and I was ready to speak to those numbers and my app had the lower of the 2 numbers. In the end nobody asked me about them, but you can see how an answer about my methodology, an explanation and a good faith answer that isn't trying to game the system would go over much better than a shrug and "IDK lol. Can I have my legacy job now?"
1- Do your due dilligence and be ready to speak to your logbook deltas
2- Present them in a nice clear spreadsheet that is easy to comprehend
3- Bring all your official records as proof in case they need to see them
Just because the interview packet says they do not need to see official records deosn't mean that you can't bring them along just in case and keep them in your bag on the small chance they could be useful.