Jobs in Aviation Series: Airbus Senior Vice President Ken McKenzie

In the latest installment of our Jobs in Aviation video series, Airbus’ Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development Ken McKenzie offers insight into the hiring practices of one of the industry’s biggest companies. In North America alone, Airbus employs approximately 5,300 people, but that’s just a small piece of the pie, as the company has a global force of 134,000 people.

So, what does it take for someone who has no background in aviation to join that global force? “We look specifically, at a given time, at certain qualities and classifications,” he told Rod McDermott of McDermott & Bull at AirVenture 2017. More simply put, the company looks for people with backgrounds in human resources, IT, finance and accounting, and procurement, among others.

More than anything, right now, Airbus has a hiring emphasis on IT and big data analytics, and specifically “the folks who can take big information and crunch it down into something our customers can use.” Additionally, as we learned in Oshkosh, Airbus Aerial is looking for people with backgrounds in unmanned drones to help this new venture grow.

Check out the entire video for all of McKenzie’s insight into what it takes to join a company like Airbus.