Originally Posted by
Clare Prop
The point is, that if someone is using a scattergun approach to sending out resumes, particularly to operators who have not advertised, then they will have less of a chance than someone who has actually bothered to find out the name of the person they are sending it to and what kind of operations they fly.
Not that difficult to understand, surely. In an industry with hundreds of homogenous people coming out of the "big schools" all the time then I understand the OP is looking for advice from people involved in the interview process, which I have been for the last 35 years, but instead of sneering at me why not give the OP some of your good advice?
Absolutely this, it takes a little more time but it's how I approached my resumes. I had 2 fairly generic paragraphs but the first paragraph was always aimed at the Operator, so looking at their operations and drawing links to my experience, for example, if they did Scenic Flights I'd mention my history in Hospitality and Tourism, if they did Freight I'd bring up my forklift licence and warehouse experience etc... the second paragraphs were more generic about who I am and what experience I had at the time because you want them to get an idea of the sort of person you are, relevant hobbies and such that will make you more likely to fit in and ability to work in the environment they operate in. When I was a fresh CP and doing my first recruiting I vividly remember the number of "Dear Sir/Madams" I'd get and invariably the next few sentences seemed to be based on working in an Airline which we were not and showed they didn't have a clue who or what they were applying for and whilst I wouldn't bin a resume just for using it, seeing it set the tone for the rest of the resume.
Aviation is a lot like Hospitality at the beginning, a good CP can teach you most of the things you need to know and will do that before letting you loose, they expect you to be a raw CPL and have to be taught a bit before being happy to let you go, what I didn't have time for though was correcting a couple of decades of bad behaviour, poor attitude, and unwillingness to take that just little bit of extra effort to at least look at who we were and what we did which was as simple as going to the website and reading the job description.