Seeing things that were always there…
It has been almost a month now since my airline employment finished and the end of this week will be the final “pay day”. It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions at times but I have found myself mostly supporting other colleagues who’s boats have needed to be tied together (if you read my last post you’ll know what I’m talking about!)
One of the many things I have been doing is learning how to write a CV!! I haven’t needed one for 11 years and the previous once was so targeted at an airline job that it’s completely inappropriate for industry, not to mention well out of date!!
The standard impression of a pilot is that you’ll know when ones in the room or at a party because “they’ll tell you” – and of course we will!! Flying is awesome and cool but actually we worked really really hard to get our licences and then to maintain them and deliver the highest levels of professionalism every single day of our working lives – I’m definitely going to tell you I’m a pilot and I make no apology for that. For most of us though, that’s where it starts and stops. After that, the skills we use every day to carry out our jobs are just something we do, we don’t sit in the flight deck thinking “I am now going to develop a strategy to multi-task whilst solving this complex problem and communicate with all the relevant stakeholders in order to deliver a solid result”, we just do what we need to in order to get our aircraft and passengers pushed back off stand as close as possible to the allotted time, and then get on with the rest of our day.
So when it comes to writing a CV it doesn’t actually come that naturally to most of us to “sell ourselves” or “big ourselves up” and that’s where it has been amazingly helpful to spend time talking to Mike, the lovely man who has been tasked with spending two sessions with me to help me to navigate my way into whatever comes next – paid for by my airline I should add.
It’s been an eye opener. All this time I thought I was just doing my job to the best of my ability without really thinking about the whole host of transferable skills that I was developing along the way.
In setting up Project Wingman I knew I was pulling people together to help other people, but taking a step back to look at the scale of that operation and the massive success it has been and still is has given me the chance to develop some of those skills even further and that’s not generally something pilots think about in great detail – we think about the systems on board our aircraft and how they all work together to do what we need them to, we think about what our day looks like and then refine that view time and time again when the weather changes, or we pick up a delay, or someone is unwell, and countless other things that reshape how our plan for the day is going to unfold.
We think about our week and hope the schedule doesn’t change because we really want to operate that duty we have been allocated, and we think about our month and in the case of people like me who commute, we think about how we are going to get home at the end of it and hope it all finishes on time, we think about our year and plan our leave sometimes up to 15 months in advance because otherwise it will all be gone, and we think about the person sitting next to us and the people sitting behind us, always making sure we stay on top of our game and have all the facts we can before we make decisions.
So spending some time talking to someone in business about all that is really interesting because they are able to pick out the bits that are useful when trying to explain to someone you have never met, in an industry you have never worked in, why they should consider employing you…..
Of course, I have only just rewritten my CV and I don’t know if it is any good yet so I will keep you posted on it’s success!!
In the meantime, this week has brought two of my favourite things within a few days of each other…walking the dogs with my parents on the beach at high tide a few days ago my mum suddenly stopped and pointed…she had spotted dolphins! They were really close in to the shore and we stood and watched them in awe. The Moray Firth is well known for its dolphin population but in all the years of walking these beaches I have only ever seen them a handful of times before and never this close!
The second treat is something I actively went looking for. We live far enough north to see the Aurora Borealis from our back window, and if it strong, I sometimes go to the beach to get a better look. This weekend was a great weekend for a display and with the sunny days we have been having, we have also had clear nights which meant a strong enough display over the weekend that we could see it with our own eyes! (For anyone who doesn’t know, it is quite unusual to see the northern lights particularly well in the UK without the use of a camera, and when you do, it’s normally pale patches of sky rather than the yellows and greens you see in photos)
It was, of course, amazing as it always is and these two things have been very welcome in a world where sometimes, it’s just nice to focus on something other than the crazy times we are all living through.
There is a link to all of these things. The northern lights have always been there on and off – you just have to learn how to find them and be patient. It’s the same with the dolphins – they have always been here – you just have to look for them in the right places.
The skills we build as aircrew can sometimes seem hidden because we are either not looking for them or don’t know how to – so learning to do this has been quite enlightening! I have a man called Mike to thank for helping me with this, and I’ll let you know if the CV is successful in the future!
