Not suggesting you fake it. Just for your own planning, you need to be aware that the higher up the food chain you try to go, the more important the presentation becomes. You just need to present like a professional, not like a HS drop-out right off a job site.

They'll care about the presentation much, much more than what (legal) work you did along the way to school and flight training.

What do you mean "legal?" You've mentioned that twice already. All of my taxes are paid, I'm not a convicted felon or a drug dealer.

:confused:

The airlines have some "baggage" from 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's...

Back in the day, they inadvertently hired some pilots who had flown drugs for a living in the past (I suspect a few are still employed today).

So they are VERY anal about accounting for ALL periods of alleged "unemployment". They want to know for sure that you didn't do anything shady, ever, in aviation or otherwise. If they can't satisfy themselves with reference checks, they might want to see W2's, tax returns, etc. Majors more so than regionals.

Very annoying for career military people, you end up trying to account for every 30 day TAD, school, etc.

Hopefully your construction days were W-2 or 1099.

Okay. No worries there. It was all W2 and all union dues were paid.

Also, I remember a few years ago a SWA pilot and former USAF pilot was caught cursing and yelling disparaging remarks about gay people and "granny flight attendants" over ATC. If a person like that can pass the interview for a major, I'm confident that I will do well.

It’s because of those pilots, the hiring is so rigorous. I wouldn’t take that experience as a guide to how you will do in the hiring process. I flew with lots of the 60s guys, colorful would be a modest way to describe them.

GF

Yes, different era by a very long shot. Glad I overlapped with them for a few years, entertaining to say the least.

Also glad my early military training was done by 'nam vets.

He "thought" it was a private conversation. People have to jury-rig the 737 intercom panel with rubber bands to have a hot mike... there's a reason for that.

But different era today.

What has significantly changed recently in the hiring process or in aviation general?

Airline medical exams are either gone (they photocopy your FAA 1C), or a few still give you a straight FAA 1C exam, as opposed to the astronaut physicals of yore.

Instead of interviewing 30 and hiring 0-3, they try to do a lot of analysis and screening based on the data in your app and their own statistics. It's harder to get the call, but if you do it means they intend to hire you unless you screw it up (or some background irregularity is discovered).

It used to predictable when you got called to interview (X amount of TPIC at a commuter). Now some folks get called by DAL out of the blue with very low experience, while other eminently qualified and experienced pilots cannot even get called by the worst of the LCCs. But the dust is settling a bit, some of the majors have been burned by their HR's experimental hiring paradigms so they seem to be shifting back a bit to traditional metrics. Seems that now an experienced RJ CA who does all the right things will get called with 8-10K hours and at least 2K 121 PIC. Caveat is that he might need a recent training event/type rating which is not practical for everyone.

Company hiring physicals were really crazy—stress EKG, AA did an electroencephalogram of your brain and a glucose tolerance test (about a gallon of simple syrup to begin with), 20/20 uncorrected vision was universal, no glasses. Age maximum until the discrimination suits started was pretty much 31 and out of contention. I was the oldest in my EAL class at 33. A friend squeaked under AA’s 30.5 age max by weeks. Until about 1983-85, it was very selective, uselessly so.

GF