Are you always looking for good people?

	For a number of years now the industry has grown increasingly concerned about the growing shortage of talent. The effects are being felt in all sizes of companies, in all business sectors and in most career fields. Has this affected your hiring?
	Fewer young people are being drawn into the industry in most areas. This has been particularly evident in the engineering and aircraft maintenance areas, but other skills exhibit the problem as well. In an era when a person can make as much money managing a fast food restaurant with six months’ experience as they can as a licensed mechanic with 5 years experience, it is no wonder that such a problem exists.
	Senior people who have comprised the backbone of the industry for the last few decades are retiring. During the cost cutting 90’s the idea of offering enhanced retirement packages to employees seemed like an effective way to reduce costs. What wasn’t noticed at the time was that shrinking career opportunities combined with the knowledge exodus was creating a knowledge vacuum that will take years, perhaps decades to fill.
	Many mid-level people are leaving for the glamour and fortune promised by the dot-com industry. Whether in software development, hardware design, production or servicing the information/communication industries are offering more exiting opportunities and far more enticing rewards than aerospace.
	This series of Questions for Good Business will focus on the growing problem of obtaining and keeping good people in aerospace. Unlike previous questions in this series, the questions that face us here are often ones which cannot be resolved through individual action alone. To address these questions, it will be important to look both at the efforts we make individually and at the ones we make as an industry.

Where have all the bright young minds gone?

	Young people grow up and make their choices based on many factors. Career choices are driven by the influences of their parents, their friends, their teachers and by preferences and choices that they make regarding their self image and personal desires. Increasingly we are seeing that these choices are leading people away from aviation as a career field. Particularly in the technical areas, the number and caliber of people coming into aviation is declining. Competition from more lucrative and more attractive industries is the primary culprit.
	At a time when even a premier name company like Boeing sees a work force in which 93% of its employees are over 30 considerations like job quality become critical. At the same time, a company like Southwest Airlines, renown as one of the best places to work in the country has difficulty finding qualified candidates.
	Have you evaluated how well you pay your employees relative to what they could make elsewhere? We regularly compare our compensation packages with our competitors and other related businesses. But as the disparity between what this industry offers and what others do increases, the real threat to recruiting lies in completely different industries, particularly the high tech areas of communications and computing.
	Do you actively promote the image of our industry to the general public? Aviation is no longer a glamour industry. As a result, it is at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to recruiting bright young people. Industry wide efforts are needed to improve the image of aviation and make it once again an exciting and desirable career choice. Are you supporting greater efforts on the part of industry associations to improve our public image?

Where have all the experts gone?

	Historically it has seemed that once people got into aerospace they stayed there. On the face of it this may sound good, but is it really? Part of the reason for this is the unique knowledge base that aviation requires. A lack of understanding of aviation’s uniqueness can make it difficult for people from other industries to enter in mid to upper level positions. Often times, our own attitudes about the uniqueness of aviation makes it virtually impossible for fresh talent from other industries to enter.
	Talented people continue to leave aviation for careers in other fields. Some may be disenchanted with the opportunities they see, others are lured by greater earnings. They are not being replaced by experienced people from other industries. Because aviation doesn’t offer the attraction it once did, because its extensive initial and recurrent training requirements are prohibitive and because it discourages importing outside talent, the resources are not available.
	Increasingly, industry experts are moving out on their own. Aviation has always had a large contingent of transient people. The job shoppers who have populated engineering and technical fields have been around for decades. More recently, the downsizing and restructuring that the industry underwent created many new opportunities for talented personnel to offer a wider range of services to former and prospective employers. The result is a consultant corps that possesses much of the industry’s collective talent.
	Do you look outside of the industry for new talent? Do you cultivate the talent that you currently have? Do you use the industry’s knowledge base, its consultants, to both supplement the abilities and develop the talents of the people you have? These are the keys to maintaining a competitive edge.

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