Aviation Career Pathways: Real Pilot Advice on Hiring, Networking, and Staying Ready

0:00Before I begin the episode today, I want to render a heartfelt condolence to the families of the two pilots and all those that were affected and the recent incident involving jazz aviation flight 86-46 at La Guardia. It is a reminder that this profession has real risk and danger and we've had more events in the last year that reminded of us of these things. So to the two pilots, tailwinds and fair skies. Hey network, it is I Adam back again with a very different episode than we normally

1:01do. We've been talking a lot about career pathways this month over on TPN Pro. If you're not familiar with TPN Pro is go to the pilotnetwork.com you can see the banner on the top, click on that and it will take you over to the community that we built for our professional members hence the TPN Pro. Actually the reality is any aviator can join you get a free trial you can check it out and then take off if you don't find any value to it but this month I built a very specific piece to help people in the application process called a quick strike checklist that is kind of your pre-submission overview before you hit that button. There's an expanded version as well so for you Air Force guys you know the chapter three you've got your checklist and then you've got your expanded you got to read all that extra stuff of 135 guys really know what I'm talking about. So this is your opportunity go check it out see if it you find value in it and I kind of used a lot of my experiences as I built this out there is updated information on there but do your

2:02own due diligence make sure that it's cross reference I did my cross referencing but you know gouges only is good as the sources that it came from and although I did the research I'm pretty fallible so make sure you double check while you're taking a look through but it should help you at least kind of get that first step forward in creating or finishing your application hitting that submit button. Anyways this month we've been talking a lot about career pathways over on pro how to get where you want to go and what the industry looks like right now the future is kind of tough to tell crystal balls especially mine are not very good at looking forward and how to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of an aviation career instead of bringing on a new guest today I wanted to do something different so I went back into the deep end vault and pulled some of the most impactful timeless and hard-hitting advice we've ever had in the show regarding career progression not just in part 121 aviation and that military transition to it but all facets of aviation how

3:07you can take these little snippets and apply it to your current situation we're going to hear from folks who have seen a ton of stuff we've got the inside scoop from American Airlines who will be at TPNX coming up in May a wild non-traditional career pivot by my friend Ivan over at flexed into fractional flying there will also be at TPNX look at a good friend of mine slim Morgan and the defense contractor side of the house another TPNX attendee and some grounding strategic I can say this and some grounding strategic advice from the guys who literally coach pilots on not only how to write resumes and fellow applications but build careers through career counseling and interview coaching so whether you're a 500 hour CFI trying to figure out your next move a military pilot staring down transition or a regional captain waiting for that phone to ring this episode is a brief blueprint let's get into it first up we're going back to my conversation

4:07with Dina Payne Smith the senior manager of pilot hiring at American Airlines when the hiring wave slows down people start to panic but Dina laid out exactly what American is looking for and more importantly the one mistake too many pilots make when they think they aren't ready yet is there's some pre-qualifying questions that you have to ask in order to be able to complete your application right do you have an understricted ATP the first class medical the right to work in the United States unrestricted so there are some pre-qualifiers most of us can answer that or most of you pilots can answer that if you can get through that part submit your application even if you don't think it's all the way ready for me and a lot of people that I meet are kind of like me sometimes you need that little motivation and what I mean by that is that it's out there and now I can keep it updated sometimes I might be just a little bit of a procrastinator

5:09when it's just sitting on my computer I don't have a deadline there's probably no one else that can look at it so it's just me on my own timeline and I might drag my feet a lot more than I would if I had a little incentive and that is hey it's already out there I have it on my calendar that let me update my application once a month once a quarter whatever you are in your journey but I say submit it particularly if you're coming to a meeting greet because you don't know all that we're looking for and while you may not think that you're ready now if you're too low on the basic minimums you know that you're not ready yeah but you might have what we're looking for but there's nothing we can do Dean is right you have to put yourself out there but what if your path doesn't look like the standard military or part 141 pipeline Ivan Rodriguez is a flexed jet pilot who started out as a paramedic and a nurse he failed his final nursing class by a fraction of a point got kind of

6:14mad drove to the airport and took a discovery flight his story proves that hustle and networking can accelerate your career faster than you may think so I didn't mention while I was a paramedic I also did some meta-back for a company called Griva for a lot of their executive so I went ahead and called them back up and I was like hey like remember me I'm the paramedic you guys I just did a year with them in paramedic so they were like yeah I apply and I was like all right cool so the aviation like section of the company reached out to the medical group and was like hey would you hire this guy back and one of my cool like mentors there Stephanie she was kind of like the paramedic trainer she was like I'll hire this guy in the heartbeat so because of that connection I was able to start flying jets at about 750 hours yeah and this is pre-COVID this is like 2017 or 2018 so low time dude getting picked up all about the networking connection for those of you

7:16who are listening did you see how he did that he put that in there it definitely helped me out so much and so without me knowing I was going to get so much international experience so much experience that people that have been flying for years having gotten just because they've always stuck to domestic so using the hf radio flying into the Caribbean islands flying into like FEMA op-specs because they just got through a nasty storm and there a state of emergency and we're flying supplies in and people out so we were a flying ambulance pretty much yeah cool miss I've even found his niche in the fractional and medevac world but sometimes the best career pathway isn't the traditional part 121 or 135 at all I caught up with my old friend Slim Morgan at TPNX Slim is a retired Air Force KC 135 pilot who was the director of operations from a trade strategic mobility I believe he's moved up over there if you think the airlines are the only place to make a great living listen to this entities they they see the airlines and they think that's

8:16their only route and we I've talked about this numerous times at the conference and on this podcast about we get so one track minded and to go look at the opportunity like this is just so much probably out of somebody's ballpark that they may need some convincing first but then the reality sets and they go oh my gosh this is this is something especially for the tanker guys out there that you're already doing and you can look at you're you're just supplementing you're adding to your experience bag which will make you a better aviator in the long run absolutely and like said we have airline pilots just to fly with us they don't fly when they're on the one-year probation but other than that they come fly with us just because it's fun it's fun yeah it's fun and it's it's not a bad supplemental income no the what you're making it their line so it's I I believe we we start off of a very good wage yeah um you know 15-year captain okay you might make more in their lines but I would I would bet that most people would start off at a higher wage less than they would with their line so we've talked a little bit about where you can go the majors

9:21fractional defense contractors there's a lot more but we only touched on those in this episode but how do you actually build the strategy to get there James O'Neill from Raven Careers has helped thousands of pilots navigate furloughs hiring booms and everything in between he dropped a massive truth bomb about why the most qualified pilots aren't always the one who get the job and so they think that the most qualified person gets a job and I wish that was true because that would be really easy and you actually wouldn't need people like me if that was true but the reality is the person that gets hired as a person that understands the hiring system the best that's it and it's why you see our military folks and our corporate folks and our regional folks getting hired at places before other people are a really great example today I had a literary transition guy and he was asking should he be targeting ultra low cost regionals or majors and I sat down went through his background I explained hey look man I've got

10:23all this data on all these people and let me tell you exactly what's happening and exactly what people like you were doing and so we created a strategy probably about two months ago and you know what the cool thing is yesterday we got somebody else with his exact background in interview to legacy airline which was not possible up until apparently last week and he doesn't know that until I picked up the phone earlier today and called him and said hey man something has changed let me tell you exactly what's going on let me tell you exactly how it happened let me tell you exactly what we did now he has the information six to nine months before anybody's going to see it on the internet yeah you have to pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes and you have to be able to correlate very quickly what does that mean when is it a glitch when is it a trend and then our job is to make sure we push that information down to the folks that need it

11:24before other people are aware of it so they can leverage it that's the whole secret understanding the system is key but what happens when the system breaks down we're going to close this out with a pull from the deep archives back in April of 2020 right when the world was shutting down I talked to Charlie Venima a dear friend of mine and founder of checked and set the industry was in freefall but Charlie's advice on how to view your career versus your identity is something every pilot needs to hear whether hiring is booming or busting and they struggled with that because this job was not what they did it was who they are and when you allow this job to be who you are it becomes perilous you're right and I got to admit that's I was that for a long time right and it took some self-reflection and some time to come to the point to realize that this job is not who I am

12:31it's what I do right and who I am is much bigger and much broader and has contacts and connections and influence far far greater than my company and and I'm talking about my airline right far greater than my airline being an airline pilot and a and a captain is it's what I do it's not who I am and I think once if guys can embrace that right that you are a much greater piece and have much broader capabilities and capacity than just flying airplanes then it helps man it's funny that clip from Charlie it gave me chills when I listened to it that was a different time for a lot of us and I had a lot of memories go through my head as I heard that the job is what I do it's not who I am I still think about that to this day and I remember that episode when I was listening to these clips that one just struck a chord with me for so many different reasons and I think it's maybe the way

13:34he said it to and how much passion he had in his voice so thanks again Charlie for that because it's stuck with me to this day six years later if there's one other takeaway from this career pathway summary is that your career is truly in your hands you have to submit the app like Dina said you have to network and hustle like Ivan you have to keep your aperture open to unique opportunities like Slim's operation of matria and you have to have a strategy not just a logbook like James pointed out the industry will always have its ups and downs but if you build the right foundation you'll be ready for whatever comes next anyways as always hit us up at hey guys of the pilot network that come with comments questions concerns complaints critiques or anything else if you like these kind of episodes let us know that too and doll try to pull some other old beautiful pieces from the archives and bring them to everybody in the digital space this has been a very interesting time that we've seen an aviation and it's really a joy to be able to talk to so

14:34many people about the career pathways that they have decided to embark on I hope we can help you with yours while you're doing that just remember keep the shiny side up greasy side down fly safe everybody you