Pilot CV Maker

Two readers open your CV, and only one of them is human. At a large airline the file is usually parsed by an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a person ever sees it, and the human first pass is fast: name, licence, total hours, type rating, medical and right to work, read in seconds. If the software garbles your hours because they sat in a fancy table, or a recruiter cannot find your type rating in the first glance, you can be filtered out before anyone reads a sentence.

This builder is designed for both readers. It defaults to a clean single-column layout, keeps your headline credentials near the top, and exports real, selectable text rather than a picture of text, so the parser and the person both get what they need.

Big carriers run applications through applicant tracking systems. Ryanair has used Taleo, easyJet and British Airways use Workday, and the Lufthansa Group and Wizz Air use SuccessFactors. These are widely reported conventions rather than guarantees, and platforms change, so always follow each airline's stated file requirements. What these systems share is a parser that reads top to bottom and struggles with multi-column layouts, text boxes, images and content stuffed into headers and footers.

A single column, standard section headings and genuine text give the parser the best chance of reading you correctly. When you export from this tool you get a PDF of real text. The quickest self-test: open the saved PDF and try to highlight the words with your cursor. If they select, an ATS can read them.

European logbooks and airline forms use specific terms, and using them correctly signals that you know the trade. P1 (or PIC) is pilot-in-command. P2 is co-pilot. PICUS is pilot-in-command under supervision, command time flown under a commander's supervision and logged separately. Dual is instructional time received. Keep these as distinct columns and do not fold PICUS into PIC: most European carriers exclude PICUS from their operational PIC minima, so merging it can read as if you are overstating command time.

Keep simulator time out of your flight hours entirely. Full flight simulator and FNPT hours matter, but they never belong in your flight-hour totals, and mixing them in is a genuine red flag. This tool gives synthetic time its own table, and the health check flags a simulator type that slips into the flight grid.

The builder auto-totals every column and prints a plain-text summary line, for example Total 3,400 h | PIC 980 h | P2 2,100 h. That line exists so an ATS can pick up your headline numbers straight from the grid, and so a recruiter can read your profile at a glance.

Convention varies by region and it matters. In the UK and Ireland the norm is no photo and no date of birth, partly to reduce bias and partly because most ATS ignore images anyway. Across much of continental Europe a photo and date of birth are common but not required. Gulf carriers often expect a passport-style photo (35 x 45 mm framing) and a date of birth. The builder handles this with region presets: pick where you are applying and the photo and date-of-birth fields appear or disappear to match the local convention, without deleting anything you typed.

The two templates split the job between them. The ATS template stays deliberately photo-free for maximum parser compatibility, whatever the preset. The European Classic template, a designed two-column layout for direct and email applications, is the only one that renders a photo, and only under a preset whose convention allows one. A photo you add is resized on your device and stored in your browser; like everything else here, it is never uploaded.

The health check in this builder catches most of these automatically. They are the errors that most often push a strong pilot into the reject pile.

1. 01Burying total hours and type rating below a long history. Put licence, hours and type near the top.
2. 02Two-column or heavily designed layouts that ATS parsers scramble.
3. 03A photo on a CV heading into an airline portal that ignores or mis-reads images.
4. 04Simulator hours mixed into flight totals.
5. 05Hours that do not add up, where P1, PICUS, P2 and dual do not reconcile with the total. Recruiters spot it instantly.
6. 06Folding PICUS into PIC and overstating command time.
7. 07Leaving recency (last 12 months and last 90 days) blank instead of entering 0.
8. 08Filler wording such as "responsible for", "duties included" and "team player". Lead with an action and a number.
9. 09An expired or nearly expired medical or ICAO English shown on the CV.
10. 10No clear right-to-work statement, so a recruiter has to guess your eligibility.
11. 11Unexplained employment gaps of more than a few months.
12. 12A cadet CV spilling onto a second page. Keep it to one tight page.
13. 13Listing "References available upon request", which is outdated. Name referees or leave the section off.
14. 14Inconsistent date formats and fonts, or a decorative font an ATS cannot read.
15. 15Sending one generic CV to every airline instead of tailoring the summary and order to the role.

Condensed versions of the two CVs recruiters see most, with the reasoning that makes each one work. Load the full First Officer example inside the builder with the "Load example" button.