January 02, 2006 Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2006 is filled with lots of great aviation jobs, and fun and safe flying. Here are some notices on jobs, news, and some people and chapter updates: HELICOPTER JOB POSTING (We received this email on Dec 20th. Note that Julia who runs The Helicopter Company sent it in, and she's also a WAI member, so the job is current!) We are seeking applicants immediate for full-time employment in Toronto. Commercial Helicopter Pilot Employment We are looking for applicants for full-time position flying here in Toronto. Basic Requirements: - 1000hrs minimum. - Robinson & Bell206 on resume. - Able to reside in Toronto/area - Agreeable to fulltime shiftwork - Good attitude, personality and ability to work in team environment - Comfortable with flying in urban centre. The flight routes will be urban (no bush). - Comfortable with flying into Toronto airports (including Pearson), and Toronto airspace. - Bondable, and legal to fly/travel to the United States. - Reference letter from a Canadian Operator is a real asset. Please direct applicants to apply quickly. Applicant deadline is January 12th, 2006. The Helicopter Company Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Please apply by email to : Kevin Smith, VP & Chief Pilot Kevin@HeliTours.ca Tel: 416-203-3280 Fax: 416-203-3282 Mail: Toronto City Centre Airport, Toronto, ON, M5V 1A1. If you do not qualify, we encourage you to share this request with your colleagues. Please spread the word! Clear Skies, Julia WAI Member Thanks so much Julia for sending that in! Keep the job postings coming in everyone! HELP A PILOT BECOME A FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR - - BUY HER CAR! : ) Taraneh emailed in an advert for her black VW Golf, as she's selling it to pay for her instructor rating. Taraneh's been making her way in the aviation biz for years - she had a flying job for a few years, but after 9/11 the insurance requirements went too high, so she was temporarily out of her career. But, never to be undone, Taraneh took a job as a flight attendant and is really happy about getting all the experience of what it's like to work in the back end of the plane. However, her real love is flying in the front end, so she's made the commitment to become a Flight Instructor. Help her out by passing this advert on to anyone you know who may want a car. Taraneh's a grea, positive person, full of lots of energy, and will do really well in whatever career she chooses: 'It's a 1999 VW Golf, basic model, very well maintained! 5speed, 2.0L engine, 4 door / hatch, includes am/fm radio and cd player, it has an alarm system as well. It's been aircared till 2007 and has new brakes and tires. The total kms is 165,000 because of some roadtrips to Alberta and California. Good times! I'm asking $9,200.00 for it. Email national@cwia.ca if you want more info or if you want to buy my car. I can email you a picture. Taraneh' Good luck with the sale Taraneh, and the new career! GREAT PILOT RESUME ADVICE! Here's some great tips on a good looking pilot resume sent in from Shane Murphy to be shared with everyone. Shane was one of the facilitators during the Toronto Chapter Career Workshop that took place in October. Heed her advice! 'During the past week I have had the chance to review more than 150 resumes from pilots. Some are great. Most are mediocre. The rest are awful. In the interest of humanity, I am going to post a few things that have occurred to me during the past week. Feel free to add or subtract to this post, or to tell me to eat a brick. This is just one person's opinion. But I have put some thought into this post. 1. Use a spell checker. 'I have lived in Saudy Arabia for the past 3 1/2 years. I enjoy Soudy Arabia but would like to come back to Canada' 'I am a perfessional pilot' 'I would very much lik the chanse to meet you in to discuss my application' 'I have a great attentions to detail' And yeah, all of those are from people who use English as a first language. 68 of the 150 resumes I have seen have some sort of spelling error. Take the time to put some polish on it. If you aren't sure how some words are spelled, ask or check online. This is your initial contact with your future employer, so take the time to do it right. Yeah I know flying isn't a spelling bee, but when you have dozens of resumes that would potentially qualify, you start looking at ways to thin the pile. Spelling is an easy one, so don't fall victim. If I used this as an example, I would manage to thin the pile from 150 to 80 right away, and still have 80 qualified people to choose from. 2. Have a table on the front page that lists your flight times. More people are doing this, but some people still bury their flight times in paragraphs of text, or halfway down the second page. Please don't use decimal places, like (Multi: 185.6) It's my pet peeve. Feel free to round up to the nearest hundred hours. Doesn't Multi: 200 sound better anyway? And by the time you get interviewed and/or hired, you'll probably have the extra 14.4 hours. 120 of the 150 resumes had tables on the front. 3 had no mention of flight times at all on the entire resume. 3. Have a contact phone number that works, and that you check on a regular basis. You'd be surprised by how many people put old contact info on a resume, or don't update it when their residences change. 4. Please put your references on your resume. This has been debated before, but I am still of the opinion that I'd prefer to check someone's references in private rather than calling them up and giving them a false sense of hope. Hell, your references will probably call you anyway and let you know they have been contacted. Oh, and if you are going to use someone as a reference, make sure they know you are using them, and make sure they like you. Again, you'd be surprised. I was. 5. Ask yourself, I mean seriously ask yourself, 'Is it worth it to put a picture of myself on my resume'? Maybe it works for some people, but I have yet to see a decent pic of anyone on a resume. It just looks lonely or desperate or something. 6 of the 150 resumes had pictures of the pilots on them. One resume actually came with 5 pics of the pilot standing in front of various aircraft. 6. Keep it short, and keep the non-aviation-related stuff out. You may have been a king or a street sweeper, but neither of those jobs is relevant to aviation. You might like pottery, hunting and non-dairy creamers, but unfortunately it doesn't really matter. Of course if a job requires additional skills on top of being a pilot, please include them in your resume. 7. Don't offer to pay for training. It lowers the standard for us all. Especially don't offer in such a way as this 'I will pay for my own type rating if I get a minimum 2-year contract with a minimum of 400 hours a year'. Yes, that's a quote from an actual recent resume. If we can afford the plane, we can afford to train crew. Of course if someone is already typed we take that into consideration, but there are other factors we use. I'm going to paraphrase a pal of mine now; 'Hire someone 30% based on skill and 70% based on personality. You can change someone's skill set but you can't change their personality'. I agree with that totally. 8. Keep your chin up. This is a very difficult industry and heartbreak and disappointment are par for the course. If you want it bad enough, and if you put work into it and are patient, you will get a good flying job. I was unemployed for nearly 7 months before I got my present job, and I sent out hundreds of resumes and attended 3 interviews before I got hired. On the interviews I was unsuccessful at, I took notes for myself on what I learned from it, and what not to repeat (or what to repeat for sure) on the next interview. Suppose we had a single position to fill. That means that 149 people will be rejected through no fault of their own. That sucks, but that's life. The hiring process is brutal, uncertain and somewhat random, so don't get down if you experience rejection again and again. Believe in yourself and that you have what it takes, and sooner or later someone else will see that too.' Great advice Shane - thanks for taking the time to compile that info, and pass it along to all of us. We appreciate the effort it took! WAI MEMBER UPDATES! Here is some news on what's up with other women in aviation in Canada. What's new with you? Send it in! June Nawrocki (in Toronto) is now June Hughes. Congratulations to June and Mark on their recent marriage. Toronto members continue to climb the career ladder: Lora Yowell has upgraded to a Class 3 Instructor. Amy Weitzel was recently hired as a B727 SO for Cargojet. Dawn Wells has been hired as a pilot for Air Canada. Congratulations to everyone! Eleanor Casson (Vancouver) is now the proud Mom of Jack Casson - and I'm sure she won't mind me including the link to the Newspaper Article written about her recent fight with the government! Very tactful in your interview, Eleanor! http://www.richmond-news.com/issues05/123205/news/123205nn3.html And speaking of babies, Angie Tanton (also Vancouver - I hope it's not in the water out here!) just had a baby boy, named Jackson! No, they didn't set that up ahead of time! He started life at 9lbs 5oz, and by our Christmas party 6 weeks later he was up to 15 pounds! Strong little tyke! Angie, you have your hands full for sure.... WANT TO BUY A CWIA T-SHIRT? Thank you to everyone who has placed orders for CWIA t-shirts. Orders that requested shipping will be mailed, the rest will be picked up at the Toronto WAI chapter meetings. If you would like to order a CWIA shirt for only $20 you're not too late. We are compiling a second order which will be placed when we have a minimum of 20 shirts ordered. Please see www.cwia.ca/toronto.htm for all of the details - there are dozens of colours, and you get a choice of logos! Check it out, and some of the funds go to help fundraise for the Toronto WAI chapter. (PS - they fit a bit snug, so the good advice is to order a size bigger, just in case) NEED LIFE INSURANCE? Don't you hate getting those annoying letters in the snail mail from your credit card companies and banks asking if you want life insurance? I think they have ulterior motives, to make sure they get paid! Anyway - it's a fact of life (or the alternative actually!) and we just finally got insurance last year for each other. Oh sure, through our jobs my hubby and I are both covered, unless we're 'operating as crew in an aircraft' in which case our life insurance is void! We don't have kids, but I'd like to know that in our highly leveraged existance that if one of us goes, the other can pay off the condo and not be saddled with a lot of debt. Although I haven't checked out his website, I'm passing along an email from Bruce Sinclair, who is in the business of life insurance for pilots. I especially like that he mentions in his email that the premiums women pilots pay are lower than for men (!). Here's what he sent in: 'Hello Everyone at CWIA: You may recall that you emailed some information out on the Professional Pilot Insurance Plan and our pilot group life insurance plan way back when we started in 2002. Since then the plan has continued to grow. In fact other groups liked it so much that we set up similar group plans for them. We are now representing ALPA for all of their pilots in Canada and the Canadian Federal Pilots Association which represents all of the civilian pilots that fly for the Government of Canada, such as Air Carrier Inspectors, Coast Guard pilots. We represent lots of female pilots which include several married pilot couples. I think they appreciate the fact that they don't have to subsidize male pilots and therefore pay lower rates! We recently revised our website at www.ppip.ca so I hope that all of the members of CWIA will check it out! By the way, the cloud photo was taken by me from the flight deck of the King Air B-200 that I fly for Adlair on a medevac from Kugluktuk, Nunavut to Yellowknife NWT. Regards, Bruce Sinclair Professional Pilot Insurance Plan' If anyone else has an aviation business they'd like us to tell the WAI membership in Canada about, please send it in! Good information should be shared. 2006 WAI CONFERENCE It's coming up, near the end of March 2006, at the Opryland hotel in Nashville Tennessee! Should be a great time! Last time the WAI conference was there in Nashville, a bunch of us Canadians stayed in a hotel a mile away, with free shuttle bus service to the Opryland hotel where the conference was being held. A heck of a lot cheaper, and convenient bus service, so check the internet as there could still be some good deals out there! CHAPTER UPDATES ALBERTA Rocky Mountain High Chapter You're in time to join us at our annual Christmas Party! In addition to our monthly meeting (3rd Wedesday of the month, 1900h at the Aerospace Museum), our chapter will be holding a Christmas party at the Telus World of Science (the old Science Center) at 1800 on Jan 15, 2006. Come celebrate, now that we're all relaxed and have time to enjoy ourselves! Also - We will also be hosting three guide badge events in the near future: January 11, February 7 and April 8. Please email the chapter for more information on any of these events at armhc33@yahoo.com VANCOUVER What a great time we had at the December Meeting/Potluck/Christmas craft night! 2 new babies brought their Moms (Jack and Jackson - see note above for details on Moms) and there were over a dozen of us there. Thanks again to Angie Haywood for all her work in bringing the crafts, and helping those of us with black thumbs put the greenery together for nice looking Centrepieces! We looked like pro's, and I even remember not to let the candle in my centrepiece burn down to the foliage, thereby avoiding a nasty disaster! Thanks for the safety tip Angie! This Thursday is a bit rushed for our chapter meeting, so we'll have our first meeting of 2006 on the SECOND Thursday in January, on Thursday January 12th. More info to follow in a separate email! TORONTO Upper Canada Chapter ROCK CLIMBING Saturday January 7, 2006 at 1:00 pm. Toronto Climbing Academy www.climbingacademy.com They're located at 100a Broadview Avenue, just south of Queen Street. Lots of Free Parking! The price is $37 which includes a beginner lesson, equipment and full day of climbing. Please also bring your $1 chapter due. Fun, fitness and excitement. Climbing in the controlled environment of a gym is how more and more people are getting their first taste of rock climbing. It is the safest way to enjoy this sport and the weather is always perfect. Please RSVP to cwiayyz@hotmail.com if you plan on joining us. Clothing and toiletry donations will be accepted on behalf of Nellie's woman shelter and we are also accepting non-perishable food items for the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank. OTHER WAI CHAPTERS IN CANADA If you live near any of our other WAI chapters, or prospective chapters, and you're not getting any email info from them, let us know by reply email so we can make sure you're on their chapter list in the database! QUOTE: Here's a post-Christmas-gift-giving-mania quote for you from the Dalai Lama: 'There are 2 ways to create happiness. The first is external. By obtaining better shelter, better clothes, and better friends we can find a certain measure of happiness and satisfaction. The second is through mental development, which yields inner happiness. These 2 approaches are not equal. External happiness can not last long without its counterpart. If something is lacking in your perspective - if something is missing in your heart - then despite the most luxurious surroundings, you cannot be happy. However, if you have peace of mind, you can find happiness even under the most difficult circumstances.' ~ The Dalai Lama, from his book 'How to Practice. The Way to a Meaningful Life' Your Chapter (and prospective chapter) Presidents, Marcia Strang in Vancouver (#6092) Katie Childerhose in Winnipeg (#9160) Michelle Bentzen in Calgary (#6037) Lisa Graham in Toronto (#8030) Lianne Boileau in Ottawa-Gatineau (#10827) as well as Newly Forming Prospective Chapters: Rosella Bjornson in Edmonton (#4771) Toni Duguay (#14386) in Montreal ~ If you ever wish to not receive these emails again, please let us know and we can take you off the list no problemo! ~ What's your chapter up to? Find out at www.cwia.ca ~ Haven't joined WAI yet? Do so online at www.wai.org and mention your chapter and your chapter president's name and number above.