Ok, so it seems that everyone agrees that my experiences are quite common. Well, that's a minor relief
In the hope that it might help some others who are not too far behind me, I thought I'd recount the tale of how I actually got my job. I walked onto one of my local airfields a week or two before my skills test (an airfield I know reasonably well from the ground, even though it's too close to have bothered flying in more than once), and handed my CV in to the schools that I know of. One of those schools happened to mention that "XXX is always looking for instructors, have you tried there?" I hadn't, but I had a spare copy of my CV with me, so I walked in. The admin assistant took my CV and suggested I call the next day, when the CFI would be in.
I called, and eventually got hold of the CFI. He took a bit of time to explain the school's operation to me, and asked me to call back once I'd passed the skills test. So that's what I did.
When I called again, the CFI clearly had no recollection of me. He told me to drop my CV in, and when I said he already had a copy of my CV he asked if I was free "for a chat" that afternoon. I was, and the CFI explained he'd just got back from some paternity leave, hadn't got anything sorted out yet, and he'd call me at lunch-time to arrange a time to meet.
Lunch-time came and went. By 3pm I was wondering how late a CFI can have a bite to eat and still call it lunch. At 3.30, I thought I'd give him a call. I was a bit unsure of this - being this pushy goes against all my natural instincts. But it turned out to be the right thing to do. There was no reply when I phoned. Nor was there a reply at 3.40, or 3.50, or any of the calls which I made at 10-minute intervals. At 5.00 I headed down to the airfield and went to the office, but found it locked. I phoned my girlfriend, who happens to live a 5-minute drive from the airfield, and arranged to meet her for dinner at 6pm. In the mean time, I hung around watching the aircraft come and go, and continuing to call every 10 minutes.
At 5.50, I had time to make one last phone-call before going to meet my girlfriend. And this time, he answered! He asked where I was, and I told him I was a 5-minute drive away (I didn't want to admit to already being on the airfield!) so he suggested meeting up 5 minutes later. That gave me enough time to cancel dinner with my girlfriend and get myself cleaned up a bit.
When we met, it was obvious that this guy still hadn't seen my CV. He couldn't remember my name and didn't know where I'd done any of my training, despite this information being right at the top of the CV. As far as I'm aware, he still doesn't know how many hours I've got in my logbook unless he's managed to find my CV since then. The first half hour of my "interview" consisted of me watching him phone a customer to get some credit card details, and then watching him talk to a sign-maker about some new signs to go on the tail of some of his aircraft, and on the airfield fence. After that, he had enough time to talk to me. He told me exactly the same information about his school that he'd told me two weeks earlier, but filled in a lot more detail. He asked me the odd question or two (mostly stuff he could have got from my CV if he'd found it!) And then, before I knew it, we were talking about start dates.
He wants me to work for a two-week trial period. During this period I will get to know the airifleds and aircraft the school uses, and sit in on some other instructors' lessons in ordre to see how they teach, and to standardise the training the school gives. After that, I will be allowed to take lessons myself. After two weeks, if both parties are happy, I will sign a 6-month contract. In other words, the two week trial period basically takes the place of a formal interview, which seems a little unusual when I compare it to my pre-aviation job-hunting experiences, but it happens to suit me quite well so I don't mind.
So the moral of the story: make sure you're seen and heard
in person. Although I will actually be based some way away from my current home, the school's head office is close enough to home for me to drive there easilly, which is lucky because otherwise I would almost certainly never have got the job.
Of course, this only relates to one specific incident, I'm not suggesting that everyone else's experiences will match mine, or that the techniques which worked for me will work for you. But I hope this helps someone.
Now to answer some of the other questions: I'm not sure if mentioning details of the school will break PPRuNe's No Advertising policy (it's not something I've ever had to considre before in my few-thousand posts!). I suspect it won't, but if the mods disagree then I have no problem if they remove these details. The school is FlyTeam Aviation. I will be based at Cranfield, which is where all of the flight training is done. They also do rental, but not training, at Elstree (which is where all the administration is done, too), so I will occassionally be called upon to do checkouts and so on at Elstree. My two-week trial period starts on Friday (11th June).
Lookoutbelow - I have 380 hours. If you're thinking of doing the course, my advice would be that hours don't really matter too much. When I was on the course, I met other students with 250-300 hours. And I also met a retired airline pilot with tens of thousands of hours who was current on the B747 and the Chipmunk. As far as I could see from flying back seat and mutual with other students, although our relative experience, or lack of experience, might have shown to a small extent in our ability to handle the aircraft, it had absolutely no bearing on the ability to teach well.
Anyway, thanks for all the good luck messages. I can't wait to start instructing - I have a funny feeling I'm going to enjoy it
FFF
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