Hiring Trends

As we look forward to 2021, we thought it would be useful to provide our clients with some analysis of our observations on the hiring trends within the aircraft leasing sector over the past year.  There has predictably been dramatic change and the below analysis is based on roles that Peak Performance Recruitment actively worked on in 2020. 

Sudden Impact

After a great start to the year, the direct impact of the pandemic caused active jobs to fall off by 70% by the end of March.  Many of the affected roles were at an advanced stage and indeed some were under offer. By the end of the year, relative to 2019, the total number of job searches had reduced by almost 50%. 

The greatest impact was to sales, marketing and trading positions, as a result of an environment with very limited trading activity. In addition, many salespeople were tasked with a new responsibility to renegotiate existing leases with airlines from early Spring and throughout 2020. 

What areas continued to hire? 

 

 

Hiring continues to move forward in the areas of technical (mid to lower level), deal analysis (pricing, credit risk and investment underwriting) and transactional legal positions. The majority of the searches we have undertaken were at VP level and below as companies needed hands-on people to cover the high touch tasks. 

Widespread and simultaneous pressure from airlines to renegotiate lease terms brought unprecedented stress to lean aircraft lessors and their teams. In some cases, companies that had experienced rapid growth were caught short in some departments and needed to restructure to create dedicated teams or positions that focused purely on restructuring. In many cases this was a re-allocation of internal staff. 

Locations: 

 

Ireland, as a location, continued to be a focus for many lessors. We believe this is partly due to continued pressure to meet tax substance requirements with technical and legal skills being the most sought after. 

In the US, analytical roles were in highest demand, followed closely by technical and legal. In Asia, technical talent was, by far, in highest demand. Many clients discussed the need to have more technical people in region to meet the demand of their growing airline customers locally.  

Redundancies

Many lessors run lean organisations and throughout the crisis, teams have been at their busiest managing assets and customers. There were a small number of redundancies in 2020, however, compared with the airline sector, the leasing community is relatively unscathed so far. Many are predicting casualties to come, but this remains to be seen.

Salaries

The majority of candidates offered positions through Peak Performance received an increase on their existing package and we did not see anyone take a step back in compensation. 

Where bonuses are concerned, at the time of writing, many employers are keeping their cards close. From our conversations with employees, it is anticipated that shareholders may find it difficult to make pay-outs in loss making times and many are not expecting bonuses at 2019 levels. We expect key employee retention strategies will cause bonuses to remain strong in many cases, as lessors will want to reward increased workloads and will need their best people as the turmoil unfolds. 

2021 Crystal Ball

What will be the hiring trends for 2021? 

In the first instance, we believe that transactional roles will continue to be in highest demand. This includes technical, legal and analytical positions. Like in 2020, these will be at VP and lower levels to meet the transactional needs of leasing companies. 

Although we are receiving more enquires from potential job seekers during this time of turmoil, many are placing high levels of importance on long term company stability. The same scenario existed just after the 2008 financial crisis.

Good talent is still in demand, particularly in Ireland and other leasing hubs. Unless we see a flood of talent onto the market, we expect salaries to remain at current levels. 

Recent announcements have seen new equity move into the aircraft leasing industry and, like in 2009/2010, we expect more new lessors and distressed investors to enter the market to take advantage of the downturn, as Jackson Square, Avolon and others did after the last financial crisis. We expect to see increased demand for aircraft trading and airline marketing experience from new entrants later in the year.

In our experience, start-up lessors do not necessarily seek the most experienced managerial talent and are often not willing to pay higher levels of compensation at their early growth stage.  They prefer to seek out strong transactional people who show promise and can build teams as the organisation grows. 

We have recently updated our global salary benchmarking for the aircraft leasing industry. If you wish to discuss benchmarking or hiring needs as part of your future planning, please contact a member of the team.

Wishing you and your business every success in 2021 and we look forward to shaking hands in the not-too-distant future.

 

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