Survey & pipeline hiring season!

May 31st! 🗓

Summer is right around the corner, and it’s when a lot of the hiring for low-time pilots happens. You have a little over a month to position yourself for a job by the end of the year.

Would be cool, right?

This has been the central topic for The Road to 1500 since I started documenting what’s going on in the low-time job market, two years ago.

Give me 4 minutes, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know about:

Because…

Now, instead of trying to cover every operator in detail, I’ll use a few of the well known ones as reference, since it’s pretty similar across the board anyway.

Most companies should start their hiring process in July, going into August - except for a few like JAV Imagery or Northwoods who, historically, have posted job openings online around September.

ProStar should be first to open their application window, for no more than a week. I actually procrastinated on applying last year, and they ended up closing the window early, before I could. There’s no valid excuse to not submit your application the same day it opens to be honest, especially since Dusty (the boss) reviews all the applications that come through.

So just have yours ready as soon as practicable!

Skylens should open their resume acceptance window not long after, for ONE day - likely the last Monday of July. They're the company we know the most about in terms of how their hiring works, and I’ll touch on that next.

But just to quickly go over the timeframe for some of the others:
- Optic’s boss said they’ll be hiring around July or August,
- American Patrols were hiring mid-summer throughout mid-fall last year
- TAFaerial listed a pipeline job in CO early August
- Eagleview has an active listing, but only really go through applications during hiring season

You get the picture: the window of opportunity stretches out for a few months.

The vast majority of the companies will require 500TT or slightly less. But by now you know total time is just a number, so what else matters?

Let’s use the same ones I named before as examples.

Northwoods and JAV are very referral dependent. Unless you know someone to put in a good word for you, your odds of getting the job are slim to none.

ProStar and Skylens are considered the most “online applicant friendly”, because they both do hire “strangers”, but each in their own way:
- one will evaluate candidates based on character
- the other will pick pilots based on quality of hours

I shared in a recent email how there are only 3 types of interview, based on what portion of the process is more important to the interviewer: behavioral VS technical.

Well, initial screening can be interpreted in the same way: referral VS experience.

Obviously, you still need to fit the company’s ideal profile, but if you initially hit the mark on what they value most, your chances of passing the application stage (or in simpler words, getting the call) are much better.

The “referral” method is self-explanatory: you need someone from the inside to vouch for you.

A lot of ways to make that happen really. Most of the pilots I know, who got hired at “referral only” companies, just knew someone from back in the day.
For me, a couple of the calls I got were after someone I initially cold emailed forwarded my application to the chief pilot.

The “experience” method simply means having the experience they want.

And this is where quite a few of the readers got jobs during previous hiring seasons.

The Piper Aztec being a popular survey aircraft, the pilots who decided to build some PA23 time before the summer ultimately got hired. Some actually got job offers from multiple operators.

Once I understood that, I decided to get 2 hours of C182 time and got my 5 jump pilot job offers when the next hiring cycle came.

Again, you need to fit the bill to be offered the job. These methods aren’t cheat codes per se, it’s still a competition.

For instance, if you don’t have the minimum requirements, having a referral is pointless. And how many jobs have you applied for but never heard back even though you did have the hours? like snatched by an internal rec’

But there’s your blueprint in a nutshell: connect with the right people and/or get the “right” kind of hours.

Pipeline patrol and aerial survey are part of what I call the core 4 industries for low-time pilots hiring. Those who miss this window are honestly kind of done for 2026…

Which is why you don’t want to miss it!

So I have one last thing before you go…

I’m offering you discounted access to our premium job board, the Pilot Job Hub, for the duration of the pipeline/survey hiring cycle.

Every day for the next 4 months, I’ll be monitoring all the major pilot job boards and social media, and hand-pick the jobs that require less than 1,000TT. And when I have information about the position, I’ll include it in my job alert.

The focus will be on survey and pipeline, but anything low-time will be sent too.

You could do all of that on your own, but not only is it going to run you about $150 in paid subscriptions (4 months of Climbto350 + Bizjetjobs), you’ll also have to keep an eye on Facebook yourself, where a bunch of the jobs will come from.

Or, you can let someone who’s been through this twice help!

But because we can’t have all 2,000 low-time pilots reading the newsletter join, I’ll put a limit. The access link will automatically deactivate once we reach 100 submissions.

Join today!

Until next time,
— Ivan