How to get Aviation Position - Engineer/Business

Dave,

It doesn't hurt to keep looking while maintaining your current job.
Aviation can be a decent career choice. It has been for me. Personally,
I'd be miserable working in any other field -- OK, sometimes I'm miserable
anyway, but it's the aviation that keeps me going.

I've been around aviation all my life. Aero degree, USAF career, then into
civilian avionics. Small company (took a pay cut, but it was a fun job),
bought by bigger company (better pay and benefits). They eventually got out
of aviation.

Ended up at Rockwell Collins, where a year later I was promoted to an
engineering manager position. Still there 5 years later, and the pay and
benefits are pretty good (my opinion, others may differ).

Lessons?

Aviation is a small community. Getting in and established is the hard part.
Once in, it's easy to stay employed if you're decent at networking.

Don't try to get the perfect job from day one. It's a mobile industry. Get
your foot in the door and then move laterally (or up, or over). Fact is,
most of the management, marketing, etc. type jobs are filled internally (or
from competitors.)

One bit of reality. Aviation is a cyclical business. It's ramping up these
days after a few bad years. It'll get better, and it'll probably get worse.
The ones that love it, survive the bad times. The ones that don't, get out
of aviation as soon as things start to get rough.

Tips? Well, we do all our recruiting thru the web. A listing on our web is
for one position only. Applying for a position sends your resume/app
directly to the hiring manager. It won't get you considered for any other
position. You have to apply for each one. It's a little more work for you,
but it is more likely to pay off. You can tailor your resume to each
specific job, and it won't get lost on some HR recruiter's desk. Other
companies may be different and smaller companies are more likely to be
flexible.

If you think they won't take chances with your chip background, it's not
that they lack imagination. It's quite likely they got a few primo
candidates who've been doing exactly what they want. Maybe you need to be
creative. Rather than go for marketing, try for that industrial engineer or
test engineer job. You did process control and automated testing in the
chip business, didn't you?

I (and most managers) hire for skills and work ethic/motivation. You need
both. If I don't get any candidates with the skills I want, I'll fall back
to fundamental engineering skills and motivation, figuring a motivated
person with good basic skills can learn what I need. It comes down to
finding someone who can be productive very quickly.

Good luck. Life's to short to spend it doing something you don't like.

Gerry


"Dave Jacobowitz" wrote in message
om...
Dean,

Wow, your experience is definitely an eye opener. I think both your
and Toly's response are both good ones, and point out the wisdom of
not getting involved in aviation. And in fact, it had occurred to me
that the guy from Boeing was doing me a favor, even if it was a
disappointing one.

What to do for a career a tricky question, one that I continue to
struggle with. In the meantime, I have a career, the pay is good, but
I don't have the passion for it that I'd like.

I think the idea of finding something that I really did care about
will always hold some allure for me, and I probably will be willing to
work for "a little" less -- though I may be kidding myself about how
big a little might be!

And then there is always the dream of somehow having my own succesful
aviation-related company. It's hard to kill, even though I know that
"the easiest way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with
a large one."

You guys have injected a valuable note of sobriety into the
conversation, though.

-- dave

(Dean Wilkinson) wrote in message
om...
Be careful what you wish for...

I left a good EE design job at HP in Feb 2002 to work for a
Boise-based avionics company. I designed an interface box for their
EFIS system doing all of the system design, schematic design, board
layout, firmware, DO-178B design documentation, build and integration,
and test management solo. The box I designed was granted TSO approval
in October 2003.

I was underpaid, had no 401k, was poorly treated by my management, and
generally un-appreciated. While I was there, two of my co-workers in
the marketing department died in a plane crash, and my boss who was
the sole survivor and was not the PIC was forced out of the company by
his partners two weeks after the accident while he was still
recovering from surgery on his leg.

These same "nice guys" who back-stabbed their partner made my life
hell starting in January 2003. I would have left sooner if I hadn't
had a mortgage and a family to support, but I finally landed a job
back at HP in September of 2003.

I started my career at Boeing and had worked there for 8 years. My
Boeing experience working on the 777 was one of my best working
experiences, while the time I spent working at this other avionics
company was the absolute worst of my career.

Just because it looks like fun doesn't mean it is the best thing for
you to do. Be careful and do due-diligence before you jump into an
aviation company just because you think it will be fun. Odds are that
they won't compensate you as well as a commercial electronics company
because they consider it a "privilege" to work on aviation related
products and will try to take advantage of your enthusiasm. That
isn't to say that all of the companies in this industry are that way,
but I think that you will find that they aren't rare either...

Best Regards,

Dean

Hi Gerry,

I have some friends working at Collins, as well as at Honeywell.

If I were to work in aviation again, I would definitely focus on the
larger, more established companies like Collins and Honeywell (who I
dealt with while working at Boeing), rather than a small startup like
the C-word company that I worked for in Idaho. I'm sure you can guess
who they are...

The problem is that I just don't want to relocated from Idaho. That
limits my options, so I have to accept working for a consumer
electronics company rather than an avionics company.

I was on the LCD Technology team at Boeing, and then on the AIMS
Display System project team for the 777. I worked on Field Emission
Displays at Micron, and Laser Printers at HP before deciding to work
for our local avionics company, but quickly discovered that they were
a dysfunctional organization. Back to Laser Printers for now...

Best Regards,

Dean Wilkinson

"Gerry Caron" wrote in message m...
Dave,

It doesn't hurt to keep looking while maintaining your current job.
Aviation can be a decent career choice. It has been for me. Personally,
I'd be miserable working in any other field -- OK, sometimes I'm miserable
anyway, but it's the aviation that keeps me going.

I've been around aviation all my life. Aero degree, USAF career, then into
civilian avionics. Small company (took a pay cut, but it was a fun job),
bought by bigger company (better pay and benefits). They eventually got out
of aviation.

Ended up at Rockwell Collins, where a year later I was promoted to an
engineering manager position. Still there 5 years later, and the pay and
benefits are pretty good (my opinion, others may differ).

Lessons?

Aviation is a small community. Getting in and established is the hard part.
Once in, it's easy to stay employed if you're decent at networking.

Don't try to get the perfect job from day one. It's a mobile industry. Get
your foot in the door and then move laterally (or up, or over). Fact is,
most of the management, marketing, etc. type jobs are filled internally (or
from competitors.)

One bit of reality. Aviation is a cyclical business. It's ramping up these
days after a few bad years. It'll get better, and it'll probably get worse.
The ones that love it, survive the bad times. The ones that don't, get out
of aviation as soon as things start to get rough.

Tips? Well, we do all our recruiting thru the web. A listing on our web is
for one position only. Applying for a position sends your resume/app
directly to the hiring manager. It won't get you considered for any other
position. You have to apply for each one. It's a little more work for you,
but it is more likely to pay off. You can tailor your resume to each
specific job, and it won't get lost on some HR recruiter's desk. Other
companies may be different and smaller companies are more likely to be
flexible.

If you think they won't take chances with your chip background, it's not
that they lack imagination. It's quite likely they got a few primo
candidates who've been doing exactly what they want. Maybe you need to be
creative. Rather than go for marketing, try for that industrial engineer or
test engineer job. You did process control and automated testing in the
chip business, didn't you?

I (and most managers) hire for skills and work ethic/motivation. You need
both. If I don't get any candidates with the skills I want, I'll fall back
to fundamental engineering skills and motivation, figuring a motivated
person with good basic skills can learn what I need. It comes down to
finding someone who can be productive very quickly.

Good luck. Life's to short to spend it doing something you don't like.

Gerry


"Dave Jacobowitz" wrote in message
om...
Dean,

Wow, your experience is definitely an eye opener. I think both your
and Toly's response are both good ones, and point out the wisdom of
not getting involved in aviation. And in fact, it had occurred to me
that the guy from Boeing was doing me a favor, even if it was a
disappointing one.

What to do for a career a tricky question, one that I continue to
struggle with. In the meantime, I have a career, the pay is good, but
I don't have the passion for it that I'd like.

I think the idea of finding something that I really did care about
will always hold some allure for me, and I probably will be willing to
work for "a little" less -- though I may be kidding myself about how
big a little might be!

And then there is always the dream of somehow having my own succesful
aviation-related company. It's hard to kill, even though I know that
"the easiest way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with
a large one."

You guys have injected a valuable note of sobriety into the
conversation, though.

-- dave

(Dean Wilkinson) wrote in message
om...
Be careful what you wish for...

I left a good EE design job at HP in Feb 2002 to work for a
Boise-based avionics company. I designed an interface box for their
EFIS system doing all of the system design, schematic design, board
layout, firmware, DO-178B design documentation, build and integration,
and test management solo. The box I designed was granted TSO approval
in October 2003.

I was underpaid, had no 401k, was poorly treated by my management, and
generally un-appreciated. While I was there, two of my co-workers in
the marketing department died in a plane crash, and my boss who was
the sole survivor and was not the PIC was forced out of the company by
his partners two weeks after the accident while he was still
recovering from surgery on his leg.

These same "nice guys" who back-stabbed their partner made my life
hell starting in January 2003. I would have left sooner if I hadn't
had a mortgage and a family to support, but I finally landed a job
back at HP in September of 2003.

I started my career at Boeing and had worked there for 8 years. My
Boeing experience working on the 777 was one of my best working
experiences, while the time I spent working at this other avionics
company was the absolute worst of my career.

Just because it looks like fun doesn't mean it is the best thing for
you to do. Be careful and do due-diligence before you jump into an
aviation company just because you think it will be fun. Odds are that
they won't compensate you as well as a commercial electronics company
because they consider it a "privilege" to work on aviation related
products and will try to take advantage of your enthusiasm. That
isn't to say that all of the companies in this industry are that way,
but I think that you will find that they aren't rare either...

Best Regards,

Dean