In some hiring practices, especially for airlines and for jobs that require security clearances when flying for federal agencies, details like where you have lived are important. You may find yourself being asked to document “what DAY you graduated from high school”, the “day you moved in and out of every residence you have had,” or even need to provide “a reference for a neighbor who can be interviewed who knew you when you lived at _____.”

If you didn’t write those things down somewhere, they can get exceedingly hard to come up with as life goes on.

I encourage pilots who are going to go through a career path to make some sort of a log of life events that they might need to provide answers about in some hiring process.

What are some of the things that you should be keeping track of? Well, let’s list a few here:

• Addresses at which you have lived and the date you moved in and out of each location
• Dates you graduated high school, college, a masters degree, etc.
• Start and stop dates of employment at EVERY job you have ever had
• Date got married (have documentation to back this up especially if a name change took place)
• Date became a U.S. citizen

Certainly have dates for any unfortunate events in life such as:

• If you got convicted of a DUI, Minors in Possession, drug charges, got out of jail, etc.
• Filed a bankruptcy and had it cleared
• Finalized a divorce

Some of these may not necessarily be disqualifiers for becoming a pilot or even having a pilot career. For example, drug and/or alcohol convictions may have a “wait period” from a conviction, but a would-be pilot may be able to pass that time and if they keep their record clean going forward proceed in a career path.

I am sure there are others, but you gethe gist. If it is a major life event that may affect employment, keep a record of it. If you can, keep documentation that validates and backs up those events.

One of my favorites I have seen asked in security related questions is, “Give me 2 or 3 contacts, neighbors or people in the community, who knew you when you lived at every address where you lived.” In some cases, background checking will actually go out an interview these people! This is something that can be hard to come up with if you didn’t live somewhere very long or weren’t close to people in the community. Having made this list as you lived there and moved on would make coming back to this much easier at a later date.

How should I log this type of information you might be thinking?

Well, I can tell you how I do it first. I keep it simple.

I have a simply Microsoft Word document that I save in my Dropbox account that lists my major events and information. If I have a computer die, it still lives in the cloud. If the cloud dies, it is saved to my local computer.

You might choose to keep a note in your iPhone/Android phone that saves to OneDrive or GoogleDocs, a notebook you keep in a safe, or anywhere else that lets you keep the information and have it safe from easily being lost.

The point is to have a list and keep it in a place where all that information is unlikely to get lost. Some of the information may also be of very personal nature and you wound’t want to have it out there floating around for potential identify thieves either. Be smart about it, but have it backed up so you won’t lose it either.

It is a really good practice to get into starting a document that you keep that lists all the addresses at which you have lived, when you moved in and out, and some other major life events. Dates of graduation from college or high school, employment history and the dates of work for employers, and references can be really good things to keep track of instead of having to dig them up at the last minute for an application or hiring practice.

Starting early creating a “life log” of major events can help you make questions about those events easily able to be answered if they come up. It will expedite hiring processes, make it much easier to get security clearances completed if you find yourself in a job field where that is a factor, and even potenitlaly keep options open for employment that might not be able to proceed if you don’t have some of this information.

Get a life log going today if you haven’t already started doing so. If you are a young adult reading this, start now and keep it going throughout your career. Should you find yourself a little older and reading this and have not done it already, start collecting whatever information you can and fill in the gaps as time goes on. Starting today will always make you ahead of where you would be if you waited until tomorrow to do so.