Re: College Degree needed for Commerical Airline P
[ QUOTE ]
Go to school, deadbeats! Nuff said.
[/ QUOTE ]Thank you!
Arguing about the philosophical value of education, while interesting in and of itself, does not answer the original question. (Anybody remember that?)
This field is INTENSELY, BRUTALLY, FIERCELY competitive. An airline will typically get 10,000 resumes for 100-200 openings. Those odds aren't good to begin with. They're going to sort the pile down. Let's take an example:
200 openings, 10000 resumes. 4000 do not meet some of the mandatory minimum requirements, and are thrown away. 6000 left. 500 have some foolish error on them, like the company name is mis-spelled or the fax machine cut off the applicant's name. Throw those away, 5500 left. Say 2500 are undesirable for another reason (no recency of experience, no acceptable work history, citizen of Mars, whatever). Toss those and you're still left with 3000 resumes for 200 jobs. In other words, only 1 of every 15 remaining resumes will get hired.
So, we have 3000 "acceptable" candidates for 200 positions. Now we look at the "desired" requirements. The "not mandatory but preferred" stuff, like a four-year degree, for example. We now sort these resumes in to two piles ... one which meets the "preferred" requirements and one which doesn't. You, Mr. Lots-of-flight-time-but-no-college-because-its-a-waste-of-money-or-i'm-too-busy-drinking-beer, are in Pile B, along with 1499 compatriots. Mr. Airline HR Dude will now call the 1500 people who are deemed "ideal" candidates. If he can't fill 200 positions from those people (bomb the interview process, fail the background check, turn down the job, lose their medicals, whatever), he might get around to Pile B. But do you think that's likely to happen?? Me either.
THAT, in a nutshell, is why a college degree is a "de facto", if not a "de jure", requirement for this job. *Whether you believe (as I do) that a college education is a critically important step in the lifelong process of personal growth and development, or believe (as some of the other posters do) that a college education is merely a way to be separated from some money and check a box on a job application, the REALITY of the industry is illustrated with crystalline clarity in the foregoing example.*
Plus, in college you can learn that the sentence (and yes, it is ONE sentence) between the *s is in fact grammatically correct!
