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Old 3rd May 2020, 17:36
  #79 (permalink)  
GoldenGooseGuy
 
Join Date: Oct 2019
Location: USA/England
Posts: 10
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I was facing this predicament in 2009, when the airline industry was being crushed due to the financial crisis, and had no backup options because of a useless Professional Pilot type of degree that wasn't transferable to the real world. I tried applying everywhere, but even with a few friends vouching for me, all of my resumes were rejected because there was no experience overlap. After starting a Master's in Finance and attending career fairs, still no luck because automated resume systems just kicked my resume out at large firms.

The savior ended up being a small business government defense contractor with less than 50 employees who specialized in aeronautical data. I emailed an actual person my resume and they offered to hire me at a rate not quite as high as my previous regional airline captain level, but considerably better than first officer. They bought me time to finish my degree and practice working with tech knowledge like databases and scripting, which I then applied to the finance industry and was able to break into asset management, where I've been ever since, working as a financial manager in a fintech role.

I've chronicled the entire process of changing my career in my blog in the hopes it might help other pilots in a similar situation (I can't post the link because I don't have 10 posts on the forum here, but it's called the Golden Goose Guide). Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.
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