The six-second scan
Recruiters triage hundreds of CVs by scanning four things: total hours, licence state, ratings, and current role. Put exactly that in a header block at the top — "CPL/IR (frozen ATPL) · 410 TT · 60 multi · MCC/APS complete · Class 1" — so the scan succeeds in one glance. If they have to hunt for your hours, you've already lost.
One page. Really.
At under 1,500 hours you do not have two pages of relevant material, and padding signals poor judgement — a quality airlines actively screen against. Structure: header block, a tight hours table (total, PIC, multi, IFR, night, last 90 days), training history with first-series pass rates if they're good, employment, then two lines of genuinely interesting other-life. Clean single-column layout, no photos unless the airline's culture expects one, no skills bars, no "passionate about aviation".
What to do with a thin logbook
Reframe non-flying experience through airline competencies. Led a shift at a restaurant? That's workload management and conflict resolution. Taught anything to anyone? Communication and instruction. Don't claim these are flying skills — present them as evidence you'll absorb CRM training fast. And keep flying visibly current: three hours a month and a recent flight on the CV beats 50 hours that ended fourteen months ago.
The mistakes that get CVs binned
In rough order of fatality: wrong airline name in the cover note (mass-mailing exposed), hour totals that don't reconcile between sections, unexplained training gaps, listing a type rating without hours on type as if it were experience, three pages, and email addresses that were funny in school. Have one pilot and one non-pilot proofread it — they catch different things.