Really sorry to hear about this and I feel for you chaps who are just short of gaining what you have earned.
I agree with MSF – this does need to be put in perspective by us, and by the media. Whilst very say, these trainee pilots are probably amongst the most employable of all those to be made redundant. They are predominantly young, clearly capable and many of them will have the ability to engage back up of parents of middle incomes. Their University qualifications still hold currency and they are marketable in the workplace.
The real tragedy is with the (proverbial) 47 year old bloke who just lost his job, 3 kids, lives on a council estate, earns 16K a year as a hard grafting bin man because he wasn’t born with the opportunities/luck that many of us were. He is likely to be turned over for every future job owing to age, commitments, qualifications etc etc. This bloke has dreams and aspirations too and is far more worthy of sympathy so I think we need to put our comments more into perspective. For every one pilot there will be hundreds like him whose families will be almost written off permanently by this recession.
Advice for those trainee pilots made redundant? Try to stay positive. Be careful how you approach your RAF time on your CV and in interview. If you are going for a job in, say, finance and have a finance degree then putting ‘I was an RAF pilot’ at the top of your achievements and making it out as though it was your only dream and that you are brokenhearted will only put the employer off. Frame the RAF as a period in your life/amibition that did not work out – but not your entire life coming to an end. Talk about how IOT skills and flying training skills show you are capable to be in finance. Be proud of the RAF, but make sure they know it is behind you and a part of your development as an employee rather than a great dream snatched from you. Your answer to the interview question ‘you must have been gutted’ should be something like ‘yes but I am excited about this opportunity now’ etc etc. From dark shadow to new horizon! Use it as an example of coping with challanges at interviews. 'I went out, got work experience, sought careers advice, altered my horizons' etc etc.
You are entering a civilian market place (if you are not going for an airline job) where most HR people probably will not care about your experience or might see it as a threat/risk ‘you top gun god you!’. You need to manage this situation. Try to circumvent HR departments if possible. They would rather see 4 weeks work experience in a relevant job than two years as an RAF Officer/Pilot. They would also rather chat all day and slack off than actually properly read CVs. If they do read your CV they might see you as over qualified or not truly interested in the job owing to their narrow mindedness and well-known lack of brain power. Contact Directors directly where possible and get yourself on Linkedin. Get your network going now. If you struggle then get work experience! Contact a Director in your desired line of work, employ the sympathy card and say you will work for free for a few weeks – make coffee, do the copying if necessary. Proove yourself. The worst that can happen is that you get a reference from a civvy employer showing that you can adapt to the civilian workplace.
Chin up! Good luck!