I'm going to share what worked for me and a few of my peers: take the road less traveled and having an unusual background.
I was going to post something along these lines in "The Future of JC" thread but I feel it's more appropriate here since someone is actually asking. I feel like in the past few years somewhat of a more defined path has emerged to get to a legacy. Get your ratings, CFI to 1500 hours, go to the regionals, upgrade, and go to a legacy. Some may chose to do it through a "cadet program", a flow program, or just follow the steps off the street. In the post COVID hiring spree you could replace upgrading with doing a year at a ULCC and getting an A320 type. It works pretty well and many people in this industry have followed this exact path. Anecdotally this describes the majority of the very junior FOs I fly with that are not from the military. This is also partially the reason why there's less requests for career mentorship on this site. There's not so much a need to figure it out anymore, the most effective path has already been laid out and proven, and the opportunities are there.
The flipside of this is that the majority of candidates will have either this background, or a military background. Standing in line at job fairs or sitting in interview waiting rooms, almost everybody was either military, or CFI->Regionals. The recruiters and interviewers have probably heard the same story hundreds of time that day already. So coming in with a significantly different background will spark their attention. Me personally I was a career changer coming from an engineering role. Since I had a cushy engineering job I didn't want to leave it until the right flying job came along. With a lot of luck and some networking off the beaten path I got into the corporate and 135 world flying jets at relatively low time, took the first available upgrade with a wet ATP, and was able to find some pretty flying opportunities through word of mouth. Thanks to this strange background I was always able to get jobs way out of my league if you looked at just total time. By the time I arrived at my legacy interview I had lower hours than my peers, but 80% of it was turbine, a bit of turbine PIC, and lots of crazy stories from flying vintage jets all over the world, including places many have never heard of. I was expecting a bit of a confrontational interview from the stories I'd heard, but instead they handed me my logbook with a smile and said "we see you have a lot of interesting experience and would like to hear all about it". When you hear the same stories again and again, something radically different will stand out.
The disclaimer I always make is there's much higher risk associated with finding alternative routes. You risk getting stuck at a place that doesn't fly much and not building flight time. There's higher job volatility, and while you're low time it's hard to find a new job when yours suddenly goes away. There's inherent risks of incidents, violations, and checkride failures flying for sketchy companies. Basically, there's a reason CFI-> Regionals is the most common path. It's the most straightforward, and is designed to do exactly what you're looking for, setting you up for success. But there's many opportunities off the beaten path if you're willing to look and take the risk.
I was going to post something along these lines in "The Future of JC" thread but I feel it's more appropriate here since someone is actually asking. I feel like in the past few years somewhat of a more defined path has emerged to get to a legacy. Get your ratings, CFI to 1500 hours, go to the regionals, upgrade, and go to a legacy. Some may chose to do it through a "cadet program", a flow program, or just follow the steps off the street. In the post COVID hiring spree you could replace upgrading with doing a year at a ULCC and getting an A320 type. It works pretty well and many people in this industry have followed this exact path. Anecdotally this describes the majority of the very junior FOs I fly with that are not from the military. This is also partially the reason why there's less requests for career mentorship on this site. There's not so much a need to figure it out anymore, the most effective path has already been laid out and proven, and the opportunities are there.
The flipside of this is that the majority of candidates will have either this background, or a military background. Standing in line at job fairs or sitting in interview waiting rooms, almost everybody was either military, or CFI->Regionals. The recruiters and interviewers have probably heard the same story hundreds of time that day already. So coming in with a significantly different background will spark their attention. Me personally I was a career changer coming from an engineering role. Since I had a cushy engineering job I didn't want to leave it until the right flying job came along. With a lot of luck and some networking off the beaten path I got into the corporate and 135 world flying jets at relatively low time, took the first available upgrade with a wet ATP, and was able to find some pretty flying opportunities through word of mouth. Thanks to this strange background I was always able to get jobs way out of my league if you looked at just total time. By the time I arrived at my legacy interview I had lower hours than my peers, but 80% of it was turbine, a bit of turbine PIC, and lots of crazy stories from flying vintage jets all over the world, including places many have never heard of. I was expecting a bit of a confrontational interview from the stories I'd heard, but instead they handed me my logbook with a smile and said "we see you have a lot of interesting experience and would like to hear all about it". When you hear the same stories again and again, something radically different will stand out.
The disclaimer I always make is there's much higher risk associated with finding alternative routes. You risk getting stuck at a place that doesn't fly much and not building flight time. There's higher job volatility, and while you're low time it's hard to find a new job when yours suddenly goes away. There's inherent risks of incidents, violations, and checkride failures flying for sketchy companies. Basically, there's a reason CFI-> Regionals is the most common path. It's the most straightforward, and is designed to do exactly what you're looking for, setting you up for success. But there's many opportunities off the beaten path if you're willing to look and take the risk.
