SkyLens Accepting Resumes for the Summer 2019 Season

[pilotbry]

SkyLens Aerial Imaging is now accepting resumes for the Summer 2019 season.

Minimum Requirements for this class:
FAA issued Single AND MultiEngine Engine Land Commercial pilot certificate
OR
Single Engine Land Commercial pilot certificate AND previous experience flying the Pictometry/Eagleview camera system
250 hrs total time. 10 hrs C172

21 years of age or over
Legal to work in US (any immigration or work permit processes must be complete)
IFR rated and competent
Class 2 or 1 Medical Certificate
Able to read, write and speak clear English
Cell phone with texting capability
Portable computer or device capable of running Microsoft Excel
(There are no exceptions to these requirements)

Job basics:
Training starts in May. 7 month contract - No hard time off but plenty of short days and down days for wx and mx. You must be free of any known obligations and be able to remain on the road for the entire length of contract.

Cessna 172 pilot pay: $95 every calendar day. Escalating monthly production bonus based on hours flown each month
Piper Aztec pilot pay: $100 every calendar day. DOUBLE escalating monthly production bonus based on hours flown each month
Top C172 monthly pilot bonus last Summer was $1,591. Top Aztec pilot bonus was $2,700. The more you fly, the more you make.

Company paid single occupancy hotel rooms and rental cars
Health Insurance Reimbursement Program (HIRP): Company reimburses you for a portion of your qualifying health insurance premiums.
$1000 Season completion bonus
Paid as W2 Employee - not 1099 contractor
We are now on a 365 day per year schedule so contract extensions available to make job full-time permanent if desired.

The revenue capture window is very wide in the Summer. You can rack up a LOT of hours, however it can also be grueling, sometimes in the air 10-12 hours per day across three sorties. You need to bring a serious work ethic.

The process:
I do not take phone calls for job inquiries.
Here's the link to our employment page: Pilot Employment

Follow the directions EXACTLY to submit your resume and cover letter or yours could be lost in the black hole of my many email boxes. Qualified candidates will receive an email back from me with a pilot info sheet/ application in MS Excel format, to fill out and return. After the application is reviewed, applicants are separated into hiring tiers based on qualifications and our specific criteria. If I am interested, I will email a copy of our Pilot Operations Guide for your review, and ask you to reply if you are truly interested and able to take such a position. At that point you may receive a phone call for an interview. At the end of that phone call you may be offered the job. We do not fly you to HQ for a final interview or have an “interview contract” Our hiring is done over the phone. We will airline you into New Orleans or Baton Rouge and bring you to Hammond in May for training, at which point the job will be yours to lose. Housing and transportation is company provided during training. Your flying and IFR skills will be evaluated during training. Aztec pilots will be qualified in one of our aircraft with our MEI/DPE. Revenue deployments will be May 15th and June 1st.

Some suggestions:
If your flying skills are rusty, invest in some time with a CFI and get in some landings and Instrument approaches. Review the C172 POH and KNOW THAT AIRCRAFT. If your skills and aeronautical knowledge are not up to par on arrival at training, you will likely be sent home.

Understand that you will likely not see home for 7 months. There is no going home for the holidays, friends' weddings or other personal or professional obligations. Please make sure you have discussed this in depth with family/significant others, before applying.

By the time we are calling you for a phone interview, we are 90% interested. You should have done your homework on this company and be ready to accept.

If you get a call from a 985 area code, you should answer it, or return it when you see it on your caller ID. We will not leave a message.

We take our contracts very seriously and you should too. You will be obligated and fully expected to fly to the end of your contract, not just until you acquire your own personal flight hour goal.

You do not need to be IFR current to be hired but you do need to be rated, comfortable and competent flying instruments. We can get you current during training.

I give special consideration to former military men and women however you must be completely free of ANY obligation for duty for the span of the entire 7 month contract.

Hiring should be complete by early May so this will be happening quickly.

Please ask your questions here in this thread and not with a PM to me. I'm sometimes days between logging on to JC and some of my current and former pilots can likely answer your questions before I do. In fact, I invite any of my former pilots to pipe up here and relay the SkyLens experience to the prospective new pilots or let me know if I left anything out.

Good luck, all!

Bryan Porter
Director of Flight Operations
SkyLens LLC

 

[pilotbry]

All seats for the May class are filled. We are now on a year round contract so we have scheduled classes 4 times per year. Next class is August 19th - submit resumes mid July. Thanks all.

 

[killbilly]

All seats for the May class are filled. We are now on a year round contract so we have scheduled classes 4 times per year. Next class is August 19th - submit resumes mid July. Thanks all.

With the year-round contract is the commitment still 7-9 months?

 

[pilotbry]

With the year-round contract is the commitment still 7-9 months?

We're still trying to sync the rotations up but we plan to have four classes during the year. October, January, May and August.

October class - training the last two weeks of Oct and deploys Nov 1 - is a 7 mo contract
January class - training the last two weeks of January and deploys Feb 1 - is also a 7 mo contract
May class - training the last two weeks in May and deploys June 1 - is a 5 or 8 month contract
August class - training the last two weeks of August and deploys September - is a 5 or 8 month contract

We're going to see how this works. It's a whole new ballgame trying to keep the entire fleet in the air 11 and a half months per year.

 

[killbilly]

We're still trying to sync the rotations up but we plan to have four classes during the year. October, January, May and August.

October class - training the last two weeks of Oct and deploys Nov 1 - is a 7 mo contract
January class - training the last two weeks of January and deploys Feb 1 - is also a 7 mo contract
May class - training the last two weeks in May and deploys June 1 - is a 5 or 8 month contract
August class - training the last two weeks of August and deploys September - is a 5 or 8 month contract

We're going to see how this works. It's a whole new ballgame trying to keep the entire fleet in the air 11 and a half months per year.

I bet - that sounds like a hell of a challenge.

When you say "5 or 8 month" contract - does that mean it's based on the work available, the applicant's choice, or that you're not sure yet whether May and August will be 5 or 8 month contracts?

 

[pilotbry]

I bet - that sounds like a hell of a challenge.

When you say "5 or 8 month" contract - does that mean it's based on the work available, the applicant's choice, or that you're not sure yet whether May and August will be 5 or 8 month contracts?

Candidate may be offered a 5 or 8. It depends on how the next class is shaping up. IOW, I'm trying to meter the number of new seats in a given class based on the the end contract dates of the current crew. It's a bit hard to explain but for example, I had a large number of pilots exiting with a May 31 end date because some pilots extended their contracts which, mixed with the regular season contracts resulted a larger than desired class of new hires and not enough veterans to train them. I could be that I need all 5 months or all 8 months or something in between to balance things out for the next class. I'm still trying to work this thing out.

 

[killbilly]

Candidate may be offered a 5 or 8. It depends on how the next class is shaping up. IOW, I'm trying to meter the number of new seats in a given class based on the the end contract dates of the current crew. It's a bit hard to explain but for example, I had a large number of pilots exiting with a May 31 end date because some pilots extended their contracts which, mixed with the regular season contracts resulted a larger than desired class of new hires and not enough veterans to train them. I could be that I need all 5 months or all 8 months or something in between to balance things out for the next class. I'm still trying to work this thing out.

Appreciate the transparency. On behalf of everyone here, thank you.

I met one of your former pilots the other day; he was at my flight school getting an ATP done and we talked a bit. He spoke VERY highly of you and your organization and the work he did there. Pretty nice to get some independent validation.

 

[Jose Mora]

Bryan can you expand on who gets put into the Aztecs and who gets put into the 172?

For example, I'll have 400+ hours with Commercial Multi (15 in the Seminole) and a season of survey under my belt and I fully intend on applying for your August class. Is it more of as needed basis or do you start everyone off in the 172 and move up from there?

 

[pilotbry]

Almost without exception, everyone goes into the 172 first. In order to insurance qualify, you need 50 multi and 10 in the Aztec - no exceptions. If I'm short on twin pilots, a new hire might be deployed into an Aztec right out of the gate but it would require at least 40 hours of multi when hired. They will still be trained in the 172 first then they will need a checkout in the Aztec to bring them up to the 50/10 qualification. I occasionally get pilots with 30+ hours into dual training in Aztecs to get them more toward qualification. If I see a big deficit in twin pilots on the horizon and a pilot is willing to sign a multi year contract I have, in the past brought a pilot from low multi time, (even right off his multi ticket) up to 50 hours. As you can imagine that is an expensive proposition for me and a breach of the contract would require repayment of that cost by the pilot. With only 15 multi you may or may not make it into the first hiring tier and would be a longshot to get into the Aztec. This last class the average multi time was in the 30s. It would help a lot if you could pad those multi hours another 20-25. If your imaging experience is with the EV/Pictometry system then your low multi time would not be as much of an issue.

 

[crj200/900]

@pilotbry have the August classes all filled up?

 

[Stump]

@pilotbry have the August classes all filled up?

Yes, they posted the opening on their Facebook page back in the middle of the month and had enough resumes after like two or three days.

 

[pilotbry]

@pilotbry have the August classes all filled up?

Actually, I had so many good applications that I filled both the August and October classes. The next class will be January 20, 2020. Submit resumes in early December for that class. Get as many multi hours as you can in the meantime.

 

[TheGeneral]

@pilotbry
I am highly interested in applying for the January class. I’ve been reading your previous Job postings and I would like to Confirm some the things.

Previously you stated that you would hire guys with only a SEL rating. Currently for this season you require a SEL rating with previous picto experience to be considered?

And secondly the job lists 250TT minimum. I want to confirm that is 250 PIC. I’m sitting around 200 PIC with 300TT.

 

[HomerPilot]

@pilotbry

Very interested in getting more insight to the January class. Having read through the Facebook and various other media outlets, I see you recommend applying in December. For myself recently who applied, would you recommend sending an additional application in December along with our initial contact?

 

[pilotbry]

@pilotbry
I am highly interested in applying for the January class. I’ve been reading your previous Job postings and I would like to Confirm some the things.

Previously you stated that you would hire guys with only a SEL rating. Currently for this season you require a SEL rating with previous picto experience to be considered?

And secondly the job lists 250TT minimum. I want to confirm that is 250 PIC. I’m sitting around 200 PIC with 300TT.

So here's the harsh honesty - Having only the SEL with no MEL does not technically disqualify you, However, the fact is, the odds of making it through the hiring process and landing a seat at my company in the current hiring climate are slim to none when applying with the bare minimum requirements. I get so many resumes now that I don't even bother to advertise anymore except on our own FB page. I'm getting about 1000 resumes per year for maybe 30-35 seats. I've hired one SEL-only pilot in the past year and he had a previous pilot job and experience on the exact camera system we use so he required no system training. In the current October class, no one was hired with less than 27 hours multi time and most had 40+. I get hundreds and hundreds of resumes with 250tt and no Multi, no previous Pictometry camera experience and no previous pilot job. They simply are not competitive for this company.

That said, the hiring climate could change at some point. If all of a sudden I stop getting applicants with MELs I'd need to adjust. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

That's 250at controls of airplane. You do not need 250 PIC. For example: your training time counts. Sim time does NOT count.

 

[pilotbry]

@pilotbry

Very interested in getting more insight to the January class. Having read through the Facebook and various other media outlets, I see you recommend applying in December. For myself recently who applied, would you recommend sending an additional application in December along with our initial contact?

Yes. If you have previously sent a resume and received one of our application/pilot info sheets then you are in a good place. Update both and resubmit Dec 1st. Reply to the existing email thread, maintaining the subject line.

 

[TheGeneral]

So here's the harsh honesty - Having only the SEL with no MEL does not technically disqualify you, However, the fact is, the odds of making it through the hiring process and landing a seat at my company in the current hiring climate are slim to none when applying with the bare minimum requirements. I get so many resumes now that I don't even bother to advertise anymore except on our own FB page. I'm getting about 1000 resumes per year for maybe 30-35 seats. I've hired one SEL-only pilot in the past year and he had a previous pilot job and experience on the exact camera system we use so he required no system training. In the current October class, no one was hired with less than 27 hours multi time and most had 40+. I get hundreds and hundreds of resumes with 250tt and no Multi, no previous Pictometry camera experience and no previous pilot job. They simply are not competitive for this company.

That said, the hiring climate could change at some point. If all of a sudden I stop getting applicants with MELs I'd need to adjust. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

That's 250at controls of airplane. You do not need 250 PIC. For example: your training time counts. Sim time does NOT count.

Understood, thank you for your time.

 

[ECMO4]

Will the January class be the first to move back to the 6+ month rotations or will that start later in the year?

 

[pilotbry]

I have cancelled the January class. Almost all of my current pilots extended their contracts through May. I may be hiring again for Summer work. Submit resumes in April for that.

 

[Omar]

That's 250 at controls of airplane. You do not need 250 PIC. For example: your training time counts. Sim time does NOT count.

I understand this is the old thread from last year, but I'm gathering information because I am interested in applying for the next cycle. My question is about that last statement, that our training time counts, does that also apply to Multi-hours? Or does it have to be 40 hours Multi logged after the checkride?

Thanks!