Airline Hiring: Three Ways to Fix the Flight Attendant Recruiting Process
April 1st, 2010 by Louis P. Kadetsky, CPC
What makes the flight attendant talent market unique? Well, you have a large pool from which to recruit – for both entry level and experienced hires. And, demand is high for a relatively small number of positions, despite the fact that compensation is fairly low. As a result, every open req involves a large group of highly motivated candidates, some willing to chase up to 18 positions before finally getting an offer. For the airlines, this means having to sift through an enormous amount of candidate information and navigate slight differences in candidates in order to find the handful who will eventually be invited to don the uniform.
Needless to say, the opportunities to improve are substantial, and I would probably change just about everything. In fact, the integrated suite of KGTiger services was made for the flight attendant hiring challenge that the airlines face.
1. Lay of the land
Since the number of potential candidates – and those who actually apply – is so large, the value of developing targeted talent pools is significant. By narrowing the field to the most desirable applicants, the airlines could strip an enormous amount of waste out of the flight attendant recruiting and hiring process. With STREAM from KGTiger, the airlines could quickly cut through the masses to the candidates that are most important by turning large talent pools into small concentrations of the highest-value applicants.
2. Candidate volume
An open req translates to a flood of applications, and just sorting through them can be overwhelming. There must be a considerable amount of labor expended on just looking at candidate information. Sure, there are several screening methods used (e.g., levels of experience attained and whether the candidate has a college degree), but the effort is still substantial. KGTiger’s BYTE service focuses on turning large amounts of rote and administrative work into usable results for a seasoned corporate recruiting professional.
3. The right decisions
The market changes, and it will continue to do so. With KGTiger’s TMR service, airline corporate recruiters can use carefully conducted market research efforts to understand the future composition of the flight attendant talent market and make the appropriate adjustments to its talent acquisition and management strategy These insights can be used to reduce turnover, ensure that compensation is competitive without being too costly and that talent shortfalls do not occur because of a swift (or gradual) change in the market – always a risk in a profession where competition is fierce for positions with fairly low compensation.
Of course, these principles aren’t limited to the flight attendant talent market. They apply to any business that sees a surge in applications for only a handful of open positions. There are tools available to KGTiger to turn even the most vexing candidate qualification and recruiting process into a smooth, cost-effective operation.