Why cant we low timers CFIs get a job?

[ToTall]

Good advice for new CFI to get houres! (New title)

At last finished with my CFI training and looking for job. We are a few newly educated CFI’s that are looking for a job with only 200 h helicopter.
How can we obtain a position as CFI these days since everybody is asking for +300 h.
Does anybody have any good ides? I have a friend that have sent out approximately 200 applications and now answer
Please help so we can become as good pilots as you guys J

[ToTall]

thecontroller
Thanks for ur blunt answare :-)
U dont know how much we have reserch the possibility. When I started 200H was the requierement and now its 300H and thats for CFI and CFII.
But just buy 1000 H and I will probably get a job or........

[gulliBell]

Let's face it, 100 hours more isn't much extra time, many pilots fly that in a month alone. But it's 50% more time than what you've got at the moment, so for you it's quite a lot.

I have always wondered how CFI's can pass on their worldly experience to their students with what amounts to just a basic licence. There is a lot more to flying helicopters, and thus teaching how to fly helicopters, than what a 200 hour pilot can be expected to offer.

Take for example teaching physics (or almost any other subject) at high school level. Virtually all those teachers have College physics degrees and a teaching qualification as well before even getting back to the high school class room i.e. about 4 or 5 years experience at an advanced level before being able to teach the subject at a basic level. Because that's what it takes to become a high school teacher. Why should teaching flying helicopters be any different? Like I said before, I have always wondered about that.

Also to illustrate the point further, I have flown with a few 1000+ hour co-pilots and wondered how they ever got a licence (I'm not suggesting that they were the products of low hour CFI's, I just don't know). I would shudder at the thought of them flying passengers as PIC in a 206 even with those 1000 hours of "experience"; what's worse, of them being able to teach students to fly after only 200 hours.

Pilots with only 200 hours don't have much more than basic stick and rudder skills, and certainly don't have the operational experiences necessary to make a well rounded helicopter pilot. So that's why it might be difficult for a 200 hour CFI to find a job. It's just the brutal truth, and some would say for good reason.

[ToTall]

gulllibell
U dont know how much I do agree. There is no pedagogic in the training and I have seen some wierd things.
But then again; how can a lowtimer get more houres without working as a CFI or II?
I would love to work and get houres before I start working as a CFI but how?
But then, all u guys did probably have 1000 h before u started flying helis

[ToTall]

If I was offered a job today I would have moved, not asked for pay or anything, just got there and started to work.
Any have a job to offer? Have houres on 22, 44 and 300

[Heliport]

thecontroller

"does anyone have any good jobs?". that's classic.

It might have been, had he asked it - although he wouldn't be the first and won't be the last.
ToTall actually asked: "Does anybody have any good ideas?"
A perfectly reasonable question.

you should have researched this before you googled "helicopter pilot" and then booked a flight to the usa.

IIRC, he trained in Cape Town.


Heliport

[voodoo2]

As I understand it there is not many options for lowtimers today. Most of my fellow pilots started as a CFI in the USA. I stayed on with the school i trained to get my hours up. This was in 1990 and I ended up getting 2000 hrs on the R22 before I got my first break and had the chance to move up to heavier equipment. Not sure what the tunaflying req are today in SouthAmerica but thats another route I took. Good money aswell but a bit risky. Good for building hours for sure, I averaged 8,2 hours per day on my first trip. Lots of lowtimers get IR today and become co-pilots. Don't just email companys, go there and show your face. Important to never give up and never burn any bridges.... you want it bad enough, you'll get it. Best of luck.

[sir.pratt]

but a bit risky.

as opposed to flying an R22 with a 200hr instructor?

[Name of Pen]

Gullibell has it about right.

Although i would suggest that you could have an exceptionally qualified instructor who does not give a hoot for his students.

OR

You could also get a relatively inexperienced instructor who gives all he has to offer. All he has to offer, even in his spare time.

god help us if you get the wrong combination of the above: eg an inexperienced instructor who does not give a hoot.

Which country are you from? because over in Jaaland we are short of instructors.

Good luck either way.

PS, cliche alert!: You will get out what you put in

[gulliBell]

If I was offered a job today I would have moved, not asked for pay or anything, just got there and started to work.

Admirable ambition ToTall, as long as not "asking" for pay does not mean being prepared to work for free. Offering to work for free in this forum, and amongst your colleagues generally, is a sure fire way of wearing a Stinger missile in the tailpipe.

I figure some of the key aspects for a low timer getting a job are:

1. Networking. You've got to get to know pilots who are in paid employment. That's where the hints of upcoming jobs first circulate.

Chief Pilot A rings Chief Pilot B and asks "do you know of anyone available?"

Chief Pilot B asks his line pilots "do you know this guy?"

Line pilots then say "yeah sure, he's OK ...." or "No, never heard of him."
Go figure who's going to get the job.

Get outside the protected environment of the school where you trained at, obviously things aren't going to happen for you there otherwise they would have happened already.

2. CV. Have a 1-page CV with correct gammar and no spelling mistakes (get someone else to proof read it for you). Attach it to a covering letter introducing yourself. Get to the point in your CV. List your relevant qualifications. Don't put in anything that's not relevant, if you've got a rocket science degree don't list it. Chief Pilot thinks this guy has a rocket science degree, why isn't he doing rocket science?

3. Take the initiative and make yourself known. Use the 'phone, follow up with a visit, and be contactable. Don't show up at the office dressed in mufti, but don't go overboard wearing 4 gold bars either!

These are the most important things because you have control over them. You don't have experience on your side so you need to control all of those things that you do have control over. Together with an ounce of luck you just might get lucky, so good luck.

[Driptray]

ToTall,
Not wanting to p*ss on your parade, but if I were to learn to fly I would not be wanting a low time pilot to teach me, I would be looking for some crusty old fart who has plenty of experience. Now my way of looking at it may be influenced by working in the industry for a few years (Baggy ar*ed engineer), and I guess that some new budding helo pilots may not consider this as they look through their rose coloured glasses at becoming a pilot.
I wish you luck with your future.

[ToTall]

Thanks guys at last some good advice here :-)

Name of Pen: I am from Norway, have my privat from South Africa, Commercial and CFI (soon) here in the US. But I move anyplace to work, of cours for money :-)

gulliBell: it was a figur of speaking :-) Everybody needs money, I think...... The pay u get as a CFI is not good but I totaly agree with u how to proceed to get a job and I am very active. I like to think :-)
I like the advice u have given here and I hope that if just let me know if u have any more.

Driptray: U are so right but for the moment there are only from 200 to 1000 CFIs here in the US. When I did my PPL in South Africa I my CFI had 3000 and 9000 heli time adn I can see the differance.
When I am doen now I dont know if I am ready to instruct new pilots but how to get more time without working as an CFI?

Keep all the good ideas flowing and keep safe in the air :-)

[PhilJ]

Pack your car and start driving around schools, there's a lot of work out there. My trip took me from Titusville to Dallas to Chicago to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks, after I accepted a job I kept getting calls about other jobs.

Plus I spent so long driving in a car with no AC during summer my weight dropped enough to make me more employable in a R22.

[ToTall]

PhilJ
What kind of car did u have :-)

Weight, thats the problem with me, I am 6.6 and 230 so figure out who would like to hire a nice, tall and heavy Norwegian :-)

I will find something some day I hope and think, but the thing is that the requierment for CFIs per today is 300 h.

Just have happy thougts :-)

[Lightning_Boy]

ToTall,

Getting that first instructors job is very difficult. You have lots of things against you and not much to offer. A lot of people here have been in that same situation, including myself. As far as who is the best instructor, a 200 hour of 5000+ hour guy (or gal) I don’t know. I suppose it can depend on who you are teaching. When I was doing my initial training I had instructors who ranged between both scales. The high hour pilots had experience to offer, the newer guys had all the theory and techniques fresh in their brain.
But what you do have to offer, is your personality and dedication to your employer and student. My 200 hour instructor was VERY well organised, flexible and accommodating and in return, didn’t stay at 200 hours for long.
I’m sure in your short flying career you have experienced both good and bad instructors and hopefully learned from them all. To be honest, you’ll learn a lot more being an instructor, than you did as a student!

My simple advise, as philj said, get yourself on a road trip. Go visit the training schools and speak to the chief pilots. Show them your lesson plans, show them you are the man for the job and that you’ll work your arse off to live up to your promise. Be honest about what you know and what you have done. A lot of the CP’s know each other and may know if there are jobs becoming available. If nothing else, the trip should be good fun and an experience in itself.

Good luck and give um hell!!!!

LB

[gulliBell]

ToTall, unfortunately your prospects in the U.S. are looking more grim by the hour. Your weight is a bigger problem than your low experience because a high percentage of your students will be heavy also, and 2 heavy pax in an R22 just doesn't work even with small fuel loads. A flight school isn't going to hire you unless you can fly with any of its students. I'm guessing you're not that much over your ideal BMI weight for your height, so to lose the 70+ lbs that you need to lose is an unhealthy if not impossible option.

The other thing that is a bigger problem than your low experience is a Norweigen accent. I have previously flown with 2 other Norweigen pilots and their accent is almost impossible to understand. I can understand Chinese pilots far more easily than Norweigen! If a student has difficulty in understanding normal conversation then imparting critical knowledge in the pressure cooker environment of the cockpit will be problematic. A student won't want to pay for an instructor he has difficulty understanding.

So there you have it; 3 insurmountable problems to overcome, weight, accent and low experience. Unless of course you find a school with an International contract to train light weight Norweigen pilots, then you only have the low experience problem to overcome!

With all this in mind I'm very surprised you started out on this adventure in the first place. But I admire your dedication.

[gulliBell]

Gullibell - were you bullied at school ?

T_F_S, yeah, why? I went to a Catholic junior boys school and had my backside whipped almost daily with a leather strap stiffened by hacksaw blades. Then I went to Military College and got whipped there too. Now I have discipline. Those were the days when teachers had the authority to do that, nowadays it seems kids are treated with kid-gloves and teachers are more on the whipping end.

ToTall is a teacher but he hasn't been handed a whipping, certainly not by me. Just passed on some of my 20 years flying experience to someone who asked.

[spinwing]

To Tall....
I've sat back and watched this thread develop ....
Finally the truth has come out .... you are just physically too big for the R22!
And I suspect that is part of the problem ... many Chief Pilots and Chief Instructors will be looking at you and think "this dude needs to be in a 205 not a Robbie" ... and with 200 hrs you are not going to be let anywhere near a BH205!

It is going to be a very hard task for you to crack that job market.
My personal point of view is that candidates for an Instructor rating should need to have about a 1000hrs of PiC (in a real operating envoironment) before commencing their course ... yes I know that is hard ..... but then so is the REAL world of helicopter aviation and to be frank I cannot see how or why you should expect to teach a skill you have in fact not got anywhere near mastering yourself.


I am sure that this post will bring down a firestorm of vitriol ... but there is more to teaching helicopter flying than just teaching a student to hover and fly a traffic pattern..... the importance of an instructor being able to pass on to a student what NOT to do and WHY is just as important and that is what is needed in the industry now more than ever! You will not have those skills with only 200hrs of Heli time!


Good luck

[Buitenzorg]

People make their own luck.

I was hired by the school where I’d trained right out of training. Yeah, so you had it easy I can hear you think. Well, stacking the deck in my own favour certainly helped. For one thing, I knew that seasonal companies hire away the more experienced CFIs in early spring, so I timed my training to graduate at that time. For another, I didn’t fill the hours between gaining the CFI and meeting the requirements to teach in the R22 with jollies with friends, but spent the extra few bucks per hour on an IFR trainer and a CFII, and gained the IR and CFII ratings. When my school’s CFIIs got turbine job offers, who do you think was well placed to replace them? Lastly, I budgeted for not only training but several years of starvation-wage existence as a low-time CFI. Quite a few contemporaries had to take a lot of time off to wait tables and such, in order to pay the bills.

The 300 hour requirement I suspect is an insurance requirement. But since a helicopter sitting idle for lack of a CFI is a drain on any flight school’s finances, they might decide to waive this requirement – for the right candidate. It is up to you to convince them that you are that right candidate.

Most Chief Instructors are very busy people and yet another resume to them is nothing but a piece of paper. At best it will go into the same file as the other several hundred resumes. On the other hand, almost every Chief Instructor has at some time been in the same situation as you are now, so as a person you will have their sympathy and where possible, their help. The way you go from being a piece of paper to being a person deserving of their attention, is to see them face-to-face. So get off your butt and get on the road. (BTW, during your training cross-countries, did you visit at any flight schools at your refueling stops?)

When you go visiting flight schools, remember that you are in fact going on job interviews. Don’t make cold calls – phone ahead, tell them that you are in the area and you’d like to talk with them, and ask when would be a convenient time for them. Be pleasant and courteous to everyone – if the receptionist has to tell the Chief Instructor “This a*****e on line one says he’s a CFI and he wants to talk with you” your job interview is already over. When you go in to visit, dress as if going for an interview – like a professional. A tie is optional, but a T-shirt and jeans won’t cut it. To illustrate the difference this can make: a few years ago a fellow CFI and I visited the HAI convention. We both had about 1500 hours at the time. There must have been hundreds of other CFIs there, easily identifiable by their Air Force-type flight jackets and jeans, looking cool. On the other hand, in my jacket, shirt and tie I looked, in the words of my companion, like “a nerd going for a job interview”. He preferred to look cool. But about one hour later I had an invitation to interview for an overseas flying job with one of the exhibiting companies – a flying job on a type I had never yet flown that never required shirts or ties but had an official minimum requirement of 2500 hours total time. My colleague and the other Tom Cruise wannabees went back to instructing.

Finally, a couple of personal tips. I don’t personally know you other than from this thread so my impressions could be wrong – I hope they are. Still, one never gets a second chance at making a first impression, and if you impress a Chief Instructor who doesn’t have any openings but who knows a friend of a friend who just had a CFI quit, he may well get on the phone for you and you’ll be in.

First, get a positive attitude. Look at the title of this thread. It’s not “CFI job hunt; any hot tips?” or “CFI 300 hour requirement” but “Why can’t we get a job?”. It sounds like moaning. If this attitude comes through in personal interviews I fear your chances of securing that first job will be low.

Secondly, practice your English and find out how to use a spell checker. You are applying for a teaching position in an English-speaking country, teaching technical subject matter in English, and so far you average at least one grammar and one spelling mistake per sentence. In a teaching context this is distracting and will interfere with a student’s learning, so any responsible Chief Instructor will take a dim view of a poor grasp of the language.

[ToTall]

Some good advise and I will soon attend some English classes here in the US I know my spelling is not the best but CVs (for the English speaking its a resyme) alwasy perfectly correct grama vise :-)

I have leader experiance so I know that the first impression is the most importent. My English is often mistaken to be from Australia or South Africa but that dont say anything about how well I speak it and understod so again; English classes for me :-)

Honestly I have got many good advice here and will use them for my next possible job.

By the way, who did say that I was to fly the gay 22??
Just teasing u R22 guys