I am a senior at the University of Illinois. I have been instructing while going through school for the past 7 months and now I have a decision coming up as I am about to graduate. What do I do know? [/i].
Hey, this sounds familiar. I was in the same boat in 1990. After finishing up at SIU, I passed down my beer-bong to my roomies, sent out a bazillion resumes, and headed south to FL, Jimmy Buffet tunes playing in my headset, and sure that a regional job awaited me. After all, I had 600tt and 50 multi, and the graduates from the year before had gotten on with various regionals, like Henson, Great Lakes, Mesaba, Midway Connection, and various others. Some had even hired on at Pan Am as F/E's!
Well, Braniff shut down, Eastern and Midway, and their associated feeders, and no one responded to the over 100 resumes I had sent out. My list of likely suspects was not getting much, other than a couple of words of encouragement here and there amidst the deafening silence and outright rejection- just enough to keep hope alive for a while . . . . The few ads in trade-a-plane, when they appeared, were pretty sad: "Cessna 210 pilot wanted, for 135 check operation. Must have 2500tt" or "Learjet Capt wanted, must have 5000tt, 2000 jet, 500 LR". Pretty sad. Things might be bad right now, but they aren't as bad as they were then, when, in addition to having few job openings, there were over 10,000 121 pilots who were competing with us newbies for the same crappy jobs.
The good news is, times will get better again, and until then, you should concentrate on building your time in a legitimate manner, improving your skills and marketability and contacts, so that as the requirements come back down and your skills go up, they will meet and you will be in a position to be hired.
In the meantime, be realistic. You have what- 350 hours? Buying 250 hours of time at Gulfstream would leave you with 600 hours- still not close to being comptetitive for a regional job right now, and you will still only have 350 hours of PIC time. This does not even include the stigma and debt.
Put your checkbook away- you'll need it later to live on sometime during this career, except you may have a family by then . . . just ask any of the Delta, American or UAl guys who are working at Home Depot right now, or the Comair guys who were on strike last year. If you really want to spend some money, consider getting your A&P or get some aerobatics training- anything to give you more knowlege and extra training or experience like that can make the difference- an edge based on experience, not buying a job.
Get a job flying anything you can right now that is legitimate. Network. Build your skills, move up to multi, then the rest will follow. Consider getting a part-time job at a busy FBO, I know a lot of sharp pilots who ended up in the right seat of a jet because they were bright, sharp, enthusiastic, and THERE.
Above all, don't give up. Also- go to
http://raa.org and look in their membership directory. Check all of the operators that use equipment requiring F/O's. Pick 20 or 30 of the most likely ones, and make a nuisance of yourself on a regular basis. Fax, call and visit the CP every few weeks, and, quite likely, you'll be at the right place at the right time.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes.