Originally Posted by
Nonsense12345
So, in the EU, if you are not hired immediately straight out of flight school (for whatever reason), you either:
continue flying (increasing hours thus reducing your chances),
or stop flying (deteriorating your skills, and producing a gap in the logbook, also reducing your chances)?
So you have to be hired somewhere no matter what soon and fast, otherwise you are forked?
Unfortunately this seems to be the case. 'Fresh' CPLs are more attractive than someone who got their licence 3 years ago and has barely flown since. I know a few people who didn't make the first draft when they graduated (usually through no fault of their own, supply and demand) who renewed their ratings a few times then ran out of money and passion and gave up.
Someone with 200 hours who graduated last week is Fresh, still in the learning mindset and hasn't got too much single pilot experience which might cause problems down the line. Jets are a multi pot operation and people with lots of single pilot time have been shown to struggle more in training because they have to unlearn a lot of behaviour. There is a prevailing mentality (right or wrong) that you have to train them when they're young...
This is why I advise people entering the pipeline to save some cash and get all their ratings single engine only. They way they've 'saved' the exams, only spend half their budget, got through 85% of the training but not actually 'finished' - they can assess the market with a 2 month lead-time rather than a 2 year lead-time.
(a) If there's a hiring frenzy they can finish up with MEP/MEIR (add on which saves money)/MCC and start applying, or
(b) If there aren't many jobs and competition is fierce they can wait for the market to turn, finish up and emerge with a 'fresh' licence.