As Seen On NBAA: NICHOLAS AIR shares insights on hiring, retention, and building strong aviation teams in today’s competitive talent market

Winning the Talent Race to Hire and Retain Top Talent

Industry experts share valuable guidance for optimizing hiring and retention to drive operational success, both now and in the future.

Business aviation, as well as the wider aviation industry, faces a challenging workforce environment that poses significant hurdles for attracting and retaining the right people. Large numbers of seasoned veterans are reaching retirement age and departing the industry, leaving important gaps in staffing and institutional knowledge. At the same time, new technologies are changing the way organizations operate, making traditional skillsets obsolete in many positions.

To achieve operational excellence now and moving forward, organizations need to be sure they’re approaching hiring and retention as effectively as possible, by connecting with and nurturing talent, and by treating people right when they apply for a job and after they’ve joined your team.

Best Practices for Hiring

High performance starts with finding the right people: professionals with the right skills and cultural fit to drive your organization’s operational excellence. Experts point to the following best practices in sourcing and hiring top talent:

• Competitive compensation: You won’t get top performers if your compensation isn’t at least aligned with those of your competitors. Fortunately, there are a number of valuable compensation benchmarking tools available, like the NBAA Compensation Survey and the AirComp Calculator.
• Referral bonuses: Employee referrals can reduce hiring costs, as referred talent will typically have more understanding of your organization than the average applicant. Referred talent is also more likely to get hired. “More than two-thirds of our hires are referred by current flight ops and maintenance employees,” said Nicholas Correnti, founder and CEO of business jet membership and jet card program provider NICHOLAS AIR. “To encourage referrals, we offer bonuses that vest over the time the referred new hire spends on our team. The referring employee gets a small payout when the new hire has been on board for a year, with additional payouts after additional time on the job.”
• An accelerated hiring process: The most successful business aviation organizations understand that they need to give job seekers the same level of attention they give to customers. That means streamlining the hiring process. And it means having a plan for integrating new hires into your team.

  “One of my clients has been in the hiring process with a business aviation organization for four months now,” said Jenny Showalter, founder and chief motivational officer at Showalter Business Aviation Career Coaching. “I can’t even count the number of interviews they’ve had on two hands. This puts an excessive amount of responsibility on the job seeker.”

• Talent outreach: One of the best steps business aviation organizations can take to nurture a pipeline of talent is to participate in industry events like NBAA-BACE, in college and university recruiting events and in regional and local aviation events.

  “We probably go to an event every month,” said Correnti. “Most of them aren’t for finding immediate hires, but for pollinating the younger workforce with exposure to our company.”

• Internships can be a particularly great way to develop talent. Even if interns aren’t yet qualified to be hired into permanent positions, they might become qualified in the future, and a good internship experience will give you a significant leg up when it comes to hiring them.

Keys to Retention

High-performing organizations are typically places where folks stay around for a while. Less successful operations are likely to experience more frequent employee turnover – incurring additional hiring and training costs. So, once you’ve sent the offer letter, it’s time to start working on retaining that new employee. Here’s how:

• Begin mentoring immediately. Onboarding starts with the job offer, continues through any negotiation about the offer then goes through the initial days, weeks and months of the new employee’s time with the organization, including training and integration into the team. Having a mentor, whether that’s a leader, a manager or a coworker, can help the new employee understand the culture and the job expectations.
• Professional development: “People want to grow in their careers,” noted Showalter. “They don’t want to stagnate. Stagnation leads to burnout.” So, it’s important to give your people ample opportunities to learn new skills and explore new career paths, whether via formal training or via new responsibilities that stretch people in their job.
• Scheduling for quality of life: Rotation scheduling helps flight crews to keep doing their best work over the long haul by giving them significant chunks of personal time. Examples of rotation schedules include 5-3-5-4 (a cadence of five days on call, three days off, then five days on, four days off), 8/6 (eight days on call, six days off) and 15/13 (15 days on call, 13 days off).
• Financial incentives: Smart companies understand that offering the right incentives can improve operational performance while driving employee retention. For example, NICHOLAS AIR provides pilots with a personalized $13,000 Rolex watch after five consecutive years at the company and is the first and only known operator to offer a five-hour jet card after 10 years; maintenance technicians get to keep $30,000 in Snap-on tools if they stay on the job for five years. And that’s just the start of the incentives the company offers.
• Leadership and culture: Probably more than anything else, today’s workforce wants transparency from leadership. They want to know how the team is doing, and how they’re doing. And the best leaders walk the walk – they show their team that they’ll be there for them when the going gets tough. “We work hard to give our people ownership over what they do, and to make them feel connected and appreciated,” said Correnti. “For example, I try to shake hands with everyone in our maintenance facility once a week.”

Design a Strategic Approach

To consistently attract and keep top talent, and optimize your organization’s performance, you can’t just take a slapdash, ad-hoc approach. You need to understand that how you treat job seekers and how you treat employees both contribute to your recruitment brand, and in a tight-knit community like business aviation, word gets around fast. It’s imperative to approach hiring and retention intentionally and strategically, by taking the following steps:

• Understand that your approach to hiring and retention colors your recruitment brand. Your recruitment brand is your reputation and attractiveness among job seekers. Business aviation is a small, highly networked community. Campus outreach, the hiring process, onboarding, compensation and financial incentives, culture: Word gets around about what it’s like to apply for a job at and work for your organization, and that impacts demand for your open positions.
• Hire for future needs, as well as present-day. It can be easy for employers to overlook the fact that you want to be hiring for the future, not just for today. Showalter explained, “I had a client who was hired into an opportunity because he had experience in an airframe that the employer didn’t currently have, because the employer was planning a fleet transition a couple of years from now. Looking at future needs and identifying looming skills gaps like this will help this organization make the transition more smoothly and confidently.”
• Don’t get complacent about hiring when times are good. According to Showalter, there’s currently an employer’s market for business aviation talent. But these things run in cycles, and those who stay sharp and on their game in their approach will be at a distinct advantage when the job-market pendulum swings and job seekers become the ones who can pick and choose.