My story to cheer you guys up during the holidays:
I finished training back in 2010. Got a menial job as soon as I finished training to start paying of the training debt and have some money for additional training/renting aircraft. In the first few years I stayed as current as I could, renting aircraft at the local flying club (including IFR). I did manage quite a few invitations to selections/interviews. For some reason I failed each and every one of them, always for a different reason. I always debriefed myself or tried to find out why I couldn't proceed to the next stage. After about 5 years of this I managed to reach the final stage of selection of an airline that actually paid for the type rating on A320 in my home country. Unfortunately, despite several hours of training in a simulator I failed the sim check, party because I got sick the day before the check. By this time, I had also met my wife and decided to call it a day and I didn't renew my multi-engine rating. I stayed flying for another 2 years before I quit that as well.
In the meantime: I started studying to obtain a bachelor's degree in tourism through distance learning. I completed my internship for the degree with a rather big airline, working as a check-in and gate agent. I still couldn't quite get aviation out of my mind (I gave up on actually flying though). Immediately after the internship, in 2016 I was offered a position with another airline to work in their safety department as a Flight Data Monitoring Analyst (FDM/FOQA) and do some administrative duties on the safety reporting. In most part I got this job since I got some knowledge how to operate an airliner, but I didn't have the licenses to fly them.
This changed after having several talks with senior pilots in the company who urged me to 'have another go at it', since the market was rather good again and the company was having a harder time finding FO's. Doing an observation flight and discussing it with my wife sealed the deal. I renewed my ME-IR, this was quite expensive but I found the love for flying again.
3 months after I got the paperwork back I applied internally as a first officer. And guess what: this time I passed the selection process. My type rating started 2 months later on the 737NG. Everything paid for by the company. I have been flying the aircraft since a little over half a year, mostly to sunny destinations and obviously, I couldn't be happier: I am based 30 minutes from home, I fly a nice aircraft to nice and sometimes challenging destinations. Raw data flying is actually encouraged and there are opportunities ahead to fly long haul or do mixed fleet. I have just short of 500 hours on the 737 now.
Bottomline is: persevere in what you are doing. Even though the airline I fly for has a history of hiring staff within the office (most ab initios start with a job in the office). Do not exclude the opportunity to try this. It took me 8 years from obtaining my CPL to starting the type rating. It can be done! It is important to keep flying to maintain a high level of confidence and skills. The job is worth the patience.
Keep the faith
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