Let me tell you guys about myself.
I adopted the nickname Captain Bling during ATPL ground school when i was all pumped up with naive ideas about been set on the road to the best job on earth. I WAS going to be in the right seat in 16 months, i had no doubts.
It has been 1 year since my Blue Licence arrived. 1 year of applications ranging from 15mins of typing to 7 days of collating data on forms so giant i might as well have been applying to Air Force One.
No interviews. No reasons. Nothing.
Graduated with average results and have progressively watched the fair majority of my peers take up jobs with Ryanair, Easyjet and the like. They moan about rostering. I moan about having to feed myself on Tesco Value noodles.
Currently working in fast food, which is, for complex reasons the best job an overqualified and out of work pilot can get. I earn around £10k a year. Before tax, that is. I get the privledge of delivering fast food to the nearby Air Training School where hundreds of young hopefuls are ploughing their cash (usually their parents cash) into the same naive dream.
Not a single member of the public, nor family or friends can conceive that there really are hardly any jobs, and simply assume me to be lying about my qualification or some kind of dropout. In summary I am 25, single, broke, stuck in the lowest of jobs with no pastimes that i can afford due to all my spare time and money going to currency and applications.
I am sure loads of you guys echo this situation and possibly worse scenarios. All of us asking why we let ourselves get deluded into thinking this would be fair and that it would be easy.
At graduation i swore that i'd never give up and that oath has carried me through 12 months of hell that no professional should have to endure securing a job. The truth is though, i just don't know how much more of this bull__t i can take. Im not really ranting here to educate or seek sympathy but i want all you guys out there in the same place to know that you ain't alone.