You might be great at taking off, but do you know how to land yourself a pilot position?
You need to create a persuasive resume, of course. One that effectively showcases your skills, flight hours, cockpit experience, and more.
Use our pilot resume example and step-by-step guide to get you off the ground and take your career to new heights.
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Pilot Resume Example
The above Pilot resume example gives you a good steer on how a Pilot resume should look and read.
The information is presented professionally, and the content is well structured to ensure that time-strapped recruiters and managers can spot the important skills and knowledge quickly.
Refer to this example as you write your own resume.
Pilot resume layout and format
When it comes to holding the attention of recruiting managers, the format and layout of your resume play a key role.
Your resume needs to strike a perfect balance between looking awesome, and being easy for recruiters to read (which is not always easy to achieve)
Use the following formatting tips to get started.
Resume formatting tips
- Length: Think that submitting a 10 page resume will impress recruiters? Unfortunately it won’t… Even if you’ve got tons of experience to brag about, recruiters don’t have time to read essays, so keep it brief – around 2 pages is the sweet spot.
- Font and text: Readability is the name of the game when it comes to your resume. Ensure yours is a dream to read by using a simple clear font, and breaking the text up with plenty of bullet points and short paragraphs.
- Design & structure: Hiring managers should be able to skim through your resume easily and pinpoint the information they want quickly. To help them do this, organize the page into clear sections with bold headings and dividing borders. The design should be clutter-free and professional-looking, with a calm color scheme.
- Photos and images: It’s not mandatory to add a photo to your resume in the USA but it if you’re applying to organizations within the creative fields, it can be beneficial.
Quick tip: Formatting a resume to look professional can be difficult and time-consuming. If you want to create an attractive resume quickly, try our quick-and-easy Resume Builder and use one of their eye-catching resume templates.
Resume layout
When you write your resume, include the sections below.
- Name and contact details – Pop these at the very top to ensure recruiters know how to contact you.
- Resume summary – An eye-catching paragraph which summarizes your most valuable attributes – placed near the top of your resume
- Skills section – A bullet pointed list of your most in-demand skills, enabling recruiters to see your suitability from a glance.
- Work experience – List some or all of your previous jobs in reverse chronological order – voluntary work and college placements can be included if you have no paid experience.
- Education – A summary of your professional training and academic qualifications.
- Additional info – An optional section for anything that may boost your application, such as relevant hobbies and interests
Now here’s exactly what you should include in each of these sections in your resume.
Resume Contact Details
Make it easy for hiring managers to contact you by adding your contact details to the top of your resume.
Keep this section small to save space and include the following.
- Name and profession title
- Telephone number – Ideally your cell phone so you can answer quickly.
- Location – Add your general location such as LA or New York
- Email address – Use a professional looking one with no nicknames.
You can add a link to your LinkedIn profile if you have one – you do not need to include personal details like date of birth or marital status.
Pilot Resume Summary
Start your resume with a bang by adding a powerful summary to the top, summarizing your most valuable skills and experience.
This short paragraph is your chance to show recruiters why you are a perfect fit for the job and encourage them to read more of your resume.
Tips for creating an strong resume summary:
- Keep it brief: You only have a few seconds to grab a recruiters’ attention and make them commit to your resume, so keep your summary between 4 – 7 lines.
- Tailor it: Ensure your profile makes an impact by matching it closely to the requirements of the job description, copying as many key terms as possible.
- Avoid cliches: You may be a “team player who always give 110%” but generic phrases don’t tell employers much about you in reality – stick to factual information.
Example resume summary for Pilot
What to include in your Pilot Resume summary?
- Summary of professional experience: What type of organizations have you worked at? What types of roles have you done and what have you contributed to previous employers?
- Relevant skills: Scatter your most in-demand Pilot skills through your summary to ensure they are noticed quickly by hiring managers.
- Essential qualifications: If your job requires any qualifications such as a professional course or a college degree, mention it briefly in your summary.
Quick tip: Choose from hundreds of pre-written summaries across all industries, and add one to your resume with one click in our quick-and-easy Resume Builder. All written by our recruitment experts and easily tailored to suit your unique skillset.
Core skills section
Underneath your summary, write a core skills section to make your most relevant skills jump off the page at readers.
It should be made up of 2-3 columns of bullet points of your relevant skills.
Before you do this, look over the job description and make a list of any specific skills, specialisms or knowledge required.
Then, make sure to use your findings in your list. This will paint you as the perfect match for the role.
Best skills for your Pilot resume
- Aviation operations – Flying the airplane, the control and monitoring of the aircraft by the air traffic management system, and the conduct of airport activities.
- Aircraft systems operation – Use of aircraft systems to operate an aircraft efficiently and safely, and knowing when to continue a planned flight or terminate the flight due to system failures
- Safety protocols – Ensuring all in-, pre- and post-flight safety checks are completed, taking full responsibility for all safety protocols on your aircraft.
- Flight engineering – Monitoring and operating complex aircraft systems and adjusting systems on an ad hoc basis when required.
- Pre- and post-flight inspections – Completing airplane inspections or “walkarounds” to ensure the safety of the aircraft before and after each flight.
Quick tip: Our quick-and-easy Resume Builder contains thousands of in-demand skills for every profession that can be added to your resume in seconds – saving you time and greatly improving your chances of landing job interviews.
Work experience section
So, you’ve grabbed the recruiters’ attention with your summary, now it’s time to show them what you’re really capable of in your work experience section.
List your previous jobs from current to oldest, showing off the impact you made at each organization.
If you have tons of experience, you should just list the most recent an relevant jobs – but if you have little or no experience, add it all and even consider putting in voluntary work.
Structuring your job descriptions
Resume job descriptions contain lots of information, so its crucial to structure them well.
Use the structure below to ensure hiring managers can consume the information easily.
Job outline
Start with a 1-2 sentence outline of the role, summarizing what the goal of your position was, who you reported to (or managed) and the type of organization you worked for.
Key responsibilities
List your notable responsibilities in short sharp bullet points to demonstrate your input and how you contributed to the organization’s success.
Highlight the skills that are most important to the roles you are applying for.
Key achievements
Show employers the value you can bring to them by adding a few achievements to your jobs.
Whether you’ve saved the company money or improved an internal process, let recruiters know
Add some numbers to give readers a real scale of the impact, e.g. “reduced call wait time by 10%”
Example job for Pilot resume
Outline
Working for a leading international airline, based out of LAX. Responsible for completing domestic and international medium and long-haul flights. Communicates with flight crew and air traffic control, conducts pre- and post-flight inspections, creates and registers flight plans, and implements strategies to mitigate risk.
Key Responsibilities
- Create flight plans detailing the altitude for the flight, route to be taken and amount of fuel required, using information on the route, weather, passengers, and aircraft
- Ensure aircraft fuel levels balance safety with economy and supervise the loading and fuelling of the aircraft
- Complete extensive safety checks, ensuring all safety systems are working properly
- Brief the cabin crew before the flight and maintain regular contact with the team throughout the flight
Quick tip: Create impressive job descriptions easily in our quick-and-easy Resume Builder by adding pre-written job phrases for every industry and career stage.
Education resume section
Towards the bottom of your resume, add your education section.
Here you should list your professional qualifications and academic record, such as high school diplomas or college degrees.
If you have lots of work experience, you can keep this section brief (because recruiters will be more interested in your career. If you have little/no experience then you should bulk this section up with plenty of detail.
Additional info for your resume
The additional info section is optional but can be useful if you have anything else to add that could benefit your application.
For example ,you may have some hobbies and interests that are relevant to your job – or you might have awards or publications to shout about.
Writing your Pilot resume
Writing a Pilot resume can be challenging but following the steps above will ensure that you land plenty of interviews.
If you want to speed up the process and use an attractive professional template, try out our quick-and-easy Resume Builder.
Good luck with your job search!