Celeste

I have about 275 hours TT with ~50 multi and commercial/multi certificates. To make a long story as short as possible, I went to a flight school that went bankrupt a little over a year ago, lost some money (basically what I had put down for CFIs). At the time I was very close to finishing a commercial multi 141 program, so I went ahead and finished commercial and multi part 61. I'm currently working a couple jobs saving up to get my CFI/II/MEI. I moved back home with my parents (yuck) which is in a small midwest town. This place is really a dead end for getting started in aviation, I work at the local FBO and there is nothing to be had job-wise for pilots and CFIs. Its even really tough to get some right seat time with anyone based out of the airport because there's several of us at the FBO that are low-time and fighting over anything we can get hehe. Meanwhile I"ve been applying for various low-time jobs that I hear about, but nothing comes of it.

I've finally gotten to the point where I've scraped together almost enough money to do CFI and possibly CFII at the beginning of next year, and I feel like I really need to get the ball rolling on my career, especially with that 1500 hour rule coming up.

However, I'm really having a dilemma of where to get my CFI ratings at. A lot of people have told me the best thing to do is find a school that is/will be hiring CFIs and get my CFI stuff done there and I will have my foot in the door to be hired. But that seems easier said than done. I've been looking around a lot, and pretty much every place tells me they aren't hiring, or they have a wait-list of people who have done most/all of their flying with them, or have minimums that just aren't obtainable for a first job like at least 350-500 hours plus 100 multi.

Would i be better off taking my chances on going to a smaller no-name school that *may* be hiring at some point in the future, but isn't very well-known for hiring prospects elsewhere? Or do I go to one of the pilot-mills like American Flyers or ATP that at least carries a name with it? Does anyone have any advice or opinion on American Flyers and/or ATP and would my hiring prospects be good coming out of a place like that? I don't mind relocating, and I'd prefer to go somewhere in the south (Georgia, Florida, etc).

If anyone has an alternative ideas to doing the CFI thing that would be great too. I don't mind being a CFI, and I do want to instruct, but the whole flight school bankruptcy thing has put constraints on how much more money I can spend on this, so the less is the better. I just want to start getting paid to fly, it doesn't have to be a lot since I've been surviving on my barely-above-minimum-wage FBO job, I just need to be getting some flight time (that I"m not shelling out my own money for) and progressing towards my career goal.

Sorry for the ridiculously long post. Any advice is greatly appreciated.