From Factory to Flightline: The Talent Strategy for the Future of Flight
By KC Dell and Coach Mike Igoe, in partnership with the Advanced Air Mobility Institute
Advanced Air Mobility: The Human Challenge
As Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) accelerates from vision to reality, one of the most pressing challenges facing the industry is no longer just technical — it's human. Who gets hired, how teams are structured, and how organizations support talent will directly shape whether this industry reaches its full potential.
At KC Dell and Coach Igoe, we've seen this challenge firsthand through our work supporting professionals transitioning into emerging mobility roles. In partnership with the Advanced Air Mobility Institute (AAMI), we're expanding that perspective through ongoing research and direct conversations with hiring leaders at companies like Vertical Aerospace and Anduril. Together, we're focused on uncovering and sharing what works, offering actionable insights that help AAM employers build stronger, more adaptable teams, and equipping job seekers with the guidance they need to thrive in this evolving field.
The Talent Landscape Is Evolving — And Fast
Diverse Hiring Needs
AAM's rapid evolution demands an incredibly diverse talent pool, spanning highly specialized technical domains and critical operational areas. This creates unique sourcing and integration challenges for hiring teams.
Candidate Alignment Gap
While job postings increase, the supply of qualified candidates isn't keeping pace due to the industry's novelty and lack of specialized training. This leads to fierce competition for talent and a critical need for innovative acquisition strategies.
Beyond Technical Skills
In this nascent landscape, roles are often created, not just filled. Success depends on recruiting pioneers with the foresight and initiative to shape their roles and the industry, embodying a visionary and proactive mindset.
In a space defined by rapid change and unprecedented innovation, successful hires must possess more than just technical prowess. They need to embody a trio of critical qualities:
Collaborative
The AAM industry is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring seamless integration across engineering, operations, policy, and user experience. Individuals who thrive here actively seek input, share knowledge, and build bridges across teams, ensuring complex problems are tackled with a holistic perspective. This collaborative spirit accelerates innovation and mitigates risks in a highly regulated and rapidly evolving environment.
Flexible
Unlike mature industries, AAM roles are constantly evolving. Job descriptions may shift, new challenges emerge daily, and unforeseen obstacles demand agile responses. Flexible hires embrace ambiguity, adapt quickly to new technologies and processes, and are eager to learn and reskill as needed. This adaptability is crucial for maintaining momentum and pivoting effectively in a landscape where the only constant is change.
Mission Alignment
AAM is more than just a business; it's a vision for the future of transportation. Successful team members are genuinely passionate about this mission, understanding the profound impact their work can have on urban mobility, sustainability, and accessibility. This intrinsic motivation fuels resilience, commitment, and a proactive approach to problem-solving, driving individuals to go above and beyond for a cause they truly believe in.
Together, these qualities foster a cohesive, resilient, and forward-thinking workforce. Collaborative teams leverage diverse expertise to overcome complex hurdles, flexible individuals navigate uncertainty with ease, and mission-aligned professionals are deeply invested in seeing the industry's transformative potential realized. Cultivating these traits is paramount for any organization aiming to build a truly successful and sustainable presence in AAM.
What Leading AAM Companies Are Doing Differently
At the forefront, companies like Vertical Aerospace and Anduril are rethinking how teams are built. Their approach reflects what we believe is a defining characteristic of future-ready teams in AAM: intentional, collaborative, and designed to scale with the mission.
Prioritizing Cross-Functional Collaboration
Engineers are expected to work fluidly with program managers, regulators, and field operations.
Hiring for Agility and Adaptability
Success increasingly depends on candidates who can thrive in ambiguity and wear multiple hats.
Building Integrated Teams
Rather than defaulting to siloed roles, they design teams around shared outcomes and systems-level thinking.
These shifts reflect more than just hiring preferences — they reveal a deeper evolution in how AAM companies are designing teams from the ground up, with transferable skills and adaptability built into their foundations.
How AAM Companies Are Rethinking Team Design
In both interviews and broader research, one insight stood out: leading AAM companies are designing their teams around adaptability and versatility. Rather than hiring for narrowly defined roles, they are assembling teams that integrate deep expertise with cross-disciplinary strengths. This means intentionally recruiting professionals with transferable skills who may come from outside traditional aerospace pipelines.
Transferable Skills: The Hidden Superpower in AAM Hiring
Based on our interviews and independent research, we've identified several transferable capabilities that consistently stand out in high-performing AAM teams:
Systems Thinking
The ability to understand how individual components interact within larger systems — whether in engineering, software, operations, or infrastructure. In AAM, where vehicles, airspace, and ground logistics must work in sync, systems thinkers help teams anticipate downstream impacts and design for scale from the outset.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Experience working across departments, disciplines, or stakeholder groups to solve complex problems. High-impact AAM hires are comfortable navigating between technical, regulatory, and business domains, making them essential bridge-builders in a field that thrives on integration.
Regulatory and Safety-Critical Fluency
Familiarity with operating in regulated environments (e.g., aerospace, defense, energy, automotive) where precision, documentation, and compliance are non-negotiable. These professionals understand how to balance speed with safety — a key advantage as AAM evolves under active regulatory oversight.
Operational Scaling Experience
Insight into how to move from prototype to production, often gained in startup, automotive, or hardware environments. These candidates know how to translate big ideas into efficient, repeatable processes, which is a must as AAM companies transition from design to delivery.
Mission-Driven Orientation
A strong sense of purpose and commitment to broader goals, often found in veterans, public sector innovators, or those with nonprofit or sustainability backgrounds. In AAM, where companies are shaping the future of transportation, mission-aligned talent brings long-term thinking and cultural cohesion.
These skills are more than optional qualifications. They are quickly becoming the foundation of how AAM teams are structured, not only to meet current demands but to evolve as roles and challenges shift over time. When hiring teams recognize and prioritize these capabilities early in the process, they open the door to new talent pipelines, build stronger and more adaptable teams, and stay ahead in an industry shaped by complexity and rapid change.
How Employers Can Hire Smarter for Transferable Skills
To effectively bring in cross-industry talent, hiring teams must rethink not only where they search for candidates but also how they define success and assess potential. This means moving away from traditional hiring models that emphasize credentials, and instead adopting forward-looking practices that focus on how someone can contribute in a dynamic, evolving environment.
Here are three core strategies that support this shift:
1
Translate the Role
Rather than relying on rigid lists of qualifications, center your job descriptions on what success looks like in the first six to twelve months. Define the outcomes the role needs to deliver, the challenges it addresses, and the key collaborators involved. Emphasize the capabilities and behaviors that matter most—such as systems thinking, regulatory awareness, or cross-functional communication—instead of using job titles or industry pedigree as a stand-in for actual fit.
2
Structure Interviews Around Adaptability
Use interviews to explore how candidates think, learn, and respond to change. Scenario-based questions can help reveal how someone navigates complexity, collaborates across teams, or adjusts when faced with shifting priorities. Bring in a range of interviewers to assess communication and learning agility across disciplines. Focus less on culture "fit" and more on alignment with values, curiosity, and ability to contribute to diverse teams.
3
Align Onboarding with Expectations
Bringing in cross-industry talent requires more than a welcome packet. Set clear expectations, create role-specific learning plans, and provide structured support through mentors or cross-functional buddies. Onboarding should help new hires close any knowledge gaps while helping existing teams understand how to support and integrate nontraditional experience. It's not just about getting someone up to speed, it's about creating shared momentum and trust from the beginning.
As we heard throughout our research and interviews, the best teams in AAM are built around people who can think across boundaries rather than simply follow roadmaps. Companies that embrace this approach are not only broadening their talent pool but also building teams with the agility and resilience to grow alongside the industry.
Conclusion: The Future of Flight Needs Future-Ready Teams
In an industry where the pace of innovation rivals the complexity of execution, the future of flight depends on how we build our teams today. The most successful AAM companies will be those that hire with intention, evaluate potential through a broader lens, and design roles and processes to support long-term growth.
The AAMI Careers Initiative, in collaboration with KC Dell and Coach Igoe, provides hiring teams with the resources to meet this challenge. From identifying transferable talent to designing inclusive job descriptions, interview frameworks, and onboarding systems, we are helping companies build resilient, mission-aligned teams ready for the dynamic road ahead.
By moving beyond legacy hiring models and embracing the strategies outlined here, AAM employers can strengthen their workforce, broaden access to meaningful careers, and ensure their teams are equipped to meet the moment and whatever comes next.
The AAMI Careers Initiative: Supporting the Ecosystem
The AAMI Careers Initiative is actively evolving to serve both job seekers and hiring teams across the advanced air mobility industry. For employers, it offers a growing set of tools and advisory resources designed to help teams identify critical transferable skills, structure inclusive and outcome-focused hiring processes, and scale with clarity and intention. Resources include role design templates, interview rubrics, onboarding guides, and modular training content focused on evaluating and integrating talent from outside traditional aerospace pipelines.
As implementation partners, KC Dell and Coach Igoe support this work by providing hands-on talent acquisition consulting and employer coaching. We help companies rewrite job descriptions to emphasize outcomes over credentials, guide hiring managers through scenario-based interview practices, and build onboarding systems that set up nontraditional talent for success. We also partner on hiring audits and DEIB-focused process reviews to ensure companies are not only finding talent but fostering environments where diverse backgrounds can thrive.
Together with AAMI, we are building a sustained knowledge platform — one that helps companies make smarter hiring decisions, equips job seekers to confidently pursue AAM careers, and strengthens the connective tissue between innovation and workforce readiness.
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