Will I be able to pick and choose later? I don't agree with just taking any job, as I pointed out above i've also got some other good and interesting employment opportunities. I feel like I have to be a little bit picky.
Look around this forum and try to understand the reality that is faced by most of these guys ... they have completed their training and they have NO flying job. They would sell their left nut for a job at either Flybe or BA, or just any company on earth that would just give them a chance to sit in an airliner and get that experience. But nobody's hiring, so then they get desperate, and do stupid stuff like pay another 50,000 for some 737 time in a crappy third world Indonesian operator under the misguided belief that this will enhance their employment prospects at home.
There are many hundreds of wannabe pilots in this exact situation, with 200 hours, an FATPL, and nowhere to go.
I went through all the pain back in the '90s when things were a little bit easier but it still took me 9 hard years and 3000 hours of instructing and GA flying and air ambulance work, before I got my first break into a 19-seat turboprop, 3 years after that before I got my first A320 FO position.
So it just kind of makes me chuckle to see someone who has yet to gain even a PPL licence, sitting there and seriously discussing the relative merits of joining BA vs whatever other airline.
The first and last rule of being a wannabe pilot is, take the first multi turbine job you are offered, and the second rule is that the job offer in the hand is worth more than a million prospective offers or interviews or upcoming assessments.
The other thing is of course, how do you know they will even be hiring when you've finished your training? They certainly weren't through most of the '00s when I was in the right age and stage to apply.
My point is that with regard to entry level airline jobs you don't really have the option to pick and choose, if you get one job offer then you're lucky, if you get more than one at the same time then good for you, but that's really a one in a million chance of happening.
Of course if you have "other good and interesting employment opportunities" then go right ahead and fill your boots. To be honest, a lot of jobs in this industry are neither good or interesting, once you've done them for a couple years and got the shiny jet bug out of your system
