Fresh Grade 3 Instructor with $120,000 debt. Driving street sweepers...
This is going to be depressing but looking for help on whether my situation is normal or not and what to do.
I finished all of my training at Moorabbin (CPL, IR, ATPL) under VET FEE HELP in early 2019. I was told early to mid last year by the school that I should get an instructor rating because the industry will need more instructors (during COVID) then any other type of pilot. So I signed up and did the Instructor rating (VET FEE HELP) with the same school which was alot of work. I finished and of our entire group (11 of us including me), they only hired ONE person. The rest of us have been desperately hunting around Moorabbin and Essendon with no luck whatsoever. Four of us in the group have even road tripped (one car, 4 dudes) out to aerodromes in Victoria trying to get a G3 job. Almost all of them are saying that "we don't hire instructors trained by other schools". This came at a huge shock to me as I was under the belief that an instructor rating is a standardised course across Australia.
Nobody in our group, except one girl, managed to get a job with the same school that we did our IR with.
Is this normal? We feel like we've wasted $30,000 each and being misled by the school... We all finished late last year and I've been desperate to find ANY work which adds another problem. I am "overqualified"!! I applied to some corporate jobs and a few of the HR people have told me that I am too qualified for the role! Last week, I started driving street sweepers on a temporary 6 month contract to try and not fall into a complete depression. One guy in our group is already seeing a psychologist for anxiety as a result of this situation... he has 2 young kids and feels like he has let his family down.
Does anyone have any experience with instructor jobs and the mess we are in? I mean, there is something seriously wrong with this system where instructors are only hired by the school that trained them? Really?
Thanks for reading and any input will be useful...