Thoughts on being asked to give your resume to employer for a possible customer

DesertDriver

DesertDriver

Well-Known Member
Title says it all pretty much. Our employer has asked us to submit a detailed resume so that a possible customer can review the credentials of instructor pilots at our 141 school. I have my own opinion on this, but what would yours be in this situation?
 
If a company/ organization isn't recognized as a professional entity and needs to send it's employees resume's out to prospective customers (seen this only once before) then you have a great level of dependency and eventually a heavy need to retain the employees who's credentials you shared, in order to keep the customer. While this makes a great negotiation tool for the employees in your business and your customer, I'd perceive it as a sign of utter desperation. The company would appear to be(imho) be at the verge of collapse and I would not wish to stick around.

Reasons:

  1. A resume often tells very very little about an employees commitment to excellence in service and professional attitude. Neither does it necessarily have to be fully accurate. Unless you're in business for yourself (contractor, per Diem, one man show) your customer cannot possibly count on anything submitted to them. Even then, the company either suffers from a bad image or is simply not marketed appropriately. The logical climax of such action could be that your customer walks in and demands to interview certain individuals.
  2. While hiring a 141 flight school based on their instructors resumes might make sense to the customer, it promotes dependency that isn't good for the company. Employees ultimately work for and represent the flight school and are employees of it, NOT the customer. You'd in essence give the customer control over your staff, in such that the customer could select who gets to teach their students. Example: Instructor A,C,D and F can instruct our students, but not B and E. This would interfere with my scheduling/ staffing needs and affect who/ what I can hire down the road. It will ultimately cause conflict and puts the contract at risk in case one of the listed employees quits or simply dies.
Sometimes, certain business is better turned down and not had. I would not expose my instructors credentials for the risk of creating said dependency, but also in recognition that my customer obviously does not trust my professional judgement in selecting and retaining only the best employees. Distrust is rarely a basis for good, healthy business. I'd show the customer the door. I've had customers refusing to be served by female employees (example) and did my best to decline business to such customers. As owner and manager you stand "behind" your employees most of the time - and sometimes you have to stand in front of them, making sure your customer realizes where the buck stops.

Of course that's opinion, yet, I believe that employees must have the chance to opt out in case it is done. In case of interviews, I'd charge the customer triple the normal hourly rate and go hire a marketing professional from the proceeds to fix whatever is wrong in my marketing strategy.

o_O
 
Actually, from the prospective client's point of view, it's a good idea. I know if my son or daughter were to take up flying I would want to interview the CFIs and maybe start with seeing a resume. It's not to say I would start and end with the resume, but it would be a start.
Flight training is not about the school, it is not about the CFI, it is about the student. Any student should be concerned about who their CFI will be. Using the other point of view someone applying to a university would have no right to know who his professors will be. There is too much money and responsibility involved for the "Trust us- we're professionals" response.
 
Even fairly large companies do this when customers ask. Not usually a big deal, though I usually remove the names of places I have worked when employers circulate such things (you never know where it will end up)
 
drunkenbeagle said:
Even fairly large companies do this when customers ask. Not usually a big deal, though I usually remove the names of places I have worked when employers circulate such things (you never know where it will end up)
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Yeah, we often have to send our resumes and credentials to clients and potential clients. No biggy.
 
I don't think I'd include any of the previous places I've worked either. Nothing wrong with any of them.... but. I might not include flight times either, so it'd probably be a piece of paper with my name, contact info and whatnot. Really, I'd be giving them a business card.
 
z987k said:
I don't think I'd include any of the previous places I've worked either. Nothing wrong with any of them.... but. I might not include flight times either, so it'd probably be a piece of paper with my name, contact info and whatnot. Really, I'd be giving them a business card.
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This. Is it really necessary. It's more important that you can have a good relationship with the CFI than it is what they have accomplished.


I'd be a little leary of it, for the simple fact of being under a microscope everytime you had a lesson. It makes the job that much more stressful. There really is no need.
 
I guess a certain amount of how one feels about is dependent upon what they could or couldn't put on the resume as well as how comfortable they are expressing their accomplishments on paper.
 
Houston said:
I guess a certain amount of how one feels about is dependent upon what they could or couldn't put on the resume as well as how comfortable they are expressing their accomplishments on paper.
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Really it would be an issue of intense micro management for me. I don't work well, if at all, under conditions like that.
If you can't trust me to do my job, and do it well, then that would never work out for me.
 
z987k said:
Really it would be an issue of intense micro management for me. I don't work well, if at all, under conditions like that.
If you can't trust me to do my job, and do it well, then that would never work out for me.
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Each of us has to go with our strengths and weaknesses. There are a lot of neat experiences and opportunities I've had in my life where I gave people my bio to publish or read before I was introduced to speak or participate on a panel. Things that wouldn't have gone nearly as well if the introduction had been "and ...... heeeerrrrrr's Houston!" It worked for Johnny Carson, but it would have fallen flat for me. If you take the position that asking for your resume is a sign that you are not trusted, you've set yourself up to miss a lot of good things.
 
mshunter said:
This. Is it really necessary. It's more important that you can have a good relationship with the CFI than it is what they have accomplished.


I'd be a little leary of it, for the simple fact of being under a microscope everytime you had a lesson. It makes the job that much more stressful. There really is no need.
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The more complete your CV is, the more work you are going to get, at least in my experience. When I made mine 6 pages instead of 1, my phone started ringing a lot more. Just sayin' (HR folks don't understand everything on a very technical CV, they do a lot of keyword searches though.)
 
When I used to work in engineering many moons ago, the biggest two companies I worked for required employees to create a one page professional bio that could be supplied to clients that asked for it (and it apparently got asked for a lot). I think the bio was a far better idea than a full resume for many reasons, not the least of which was that the only personal information that appeared on it was my name. I was never asked to provide a bio or a resume as a flight instructor, but I can understand why clients would request it - as Blackhawk mentioned above, "trust us, we're professionals" just doesn't cut it anymore. I did have several situations were a potential student sat down with me before deciding to train and essentially interviewed me, even while I was employed by a Part 141 school. Much more often than not, they turned out to be my most conscientious students. In my opinion they are just trying to get the best service for their money, which sounds smart to me.
 
When my parents and I walked in to meet my flight instructor for the first time he had a prosthetic leg and was wearing an eye patch and a bandana covering his head.

5 years later, I'm still here.
 
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