Aviation Hiring Intake Checklist: 10 Details to Give Your Recruiter

For aviation employers · Hiring & recruiting

Before an aviation recruiter starts a search, give them a clear picture of the work, the qualifications that are essential, the compensation and schedule, and how your team will make a hiring decision. A job title and an old job description rarely answer all of those questions.

An aviation hiring intake checklist brings those details into one brief. It gives your recruiter a practical starting point for finding people whose experience fits the assignment—and helps your hiring team agree on what it will evaluate.

Whether you are adding a maintenance technician, replacing a production supervisor, or expanding a flight department, use these ten points to prepare for the first recruiting conversation.

Define the assignment

1. Explain why the position is open

Start with the business need. Is this a replacement, an additional shift, a new capability, or a leadership position created as the operation grows?

Then describe what the person should help accomplish. “We need another technician” gives the recruiter less direction than “We need additional troubleshooting capability on our evening maintenance team.”

Share the approved headcount, reporting relationship, and whether the search is confidential. If the position is replacing someone, agree on what can be disclosed to candidates. The recruiter needs enough context to explain the opportunity accurately.

2. Describe the day-to-day work

List the responsibilities that will occupy most of the person's time. Distinguish hands-on technical work from supervision, planning, inspection, customer coordination, or documentation.

For a maintenance role, explain whether the work centers on scheduled maintenance, troubleshooting, component repair, or a mix. For a manufacturing role, distinguish production, setup, inspection, and process improvement. A management title also needs clarity about team size and decision-making authority.

Identify what a successful first few months would look like. Keep the expectations realistic for your training and onboarding process.

This approach follows a basic job-analysis principle: connect the work people perform to the competencies it requires. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management's job-analysis guidance explains that relationship.

3. Specify the operating environment

Give the recruiter the context behind the experience requirement. Relevant details might include aircraft or engine families, maintenance setting, production processes, materials, inspection methods, or software used in the role.

Explain how closely prior experience must match. If adjacent experience could transfer with training, say which backgrounds your technical team would consider and what it would need to assess.

Avoid relying on “aviation experience” as a complete specification. Someone may know the industry well while having worked with a different product, workflow, or level of responsibility.

Set clear hiring boundaries

4. Separate essential requirements from preferences

Sort the qualifications into three groups:

• Essential at entry: The person must meet this requirement to take on the defined role. Explain why it is necessary and how it will be verified.
• Preferred: This experience adds value, but its absence does not automatically rule someone out.
• Can be developed: The organization has a realistic way to teach or build this capability after hiring.

Have the relevant technical or compliance owner confirm any role-specific certificate, authorization, or training requirement. Do not leave the recruiter to infer it from the job title.

Be equally specific about experience. If you request a certain number of years, explain the level of work or judgment you expect that experience to support. A number alone does not show what someone has actually done.

5. Confirm the compensation package

Share the approved base-pay range, how pay within that range will be determined, and any relevant shift differential, incentive, relocation assistance, or benefit information.

Separate approved terms from possibilities that still require sign-off. If relocation support may be available only in certain circumstances, identify the decision-maker and the information needed to approve it.

Give the recruiter enough detail to explain the offer consistently. An intake conversation is also the time to flag a mismatch between the requested experience and the compensation the organization can support, so the team can decide what to reconsider.

6. Make location, schedule, and travel concrete

Specify the actual worksite and working pattern. Include the shift, rotation, weekend expectations, travel, and any on-call responsibilities that apply.

Describe what “flexible schedule” or “some travel” means in practice. If the pattern varies, explain the range of possibilities and what remains undecided.

For a role requiring relocation, clarify when the employee needs to be on site. For remote or hybrid work, describe which tasks require attendance and who sets that expectation. These details give candidates something concrete to evaluate early.

7. Identify the start-date dependencies

Distinguish the date you would like someone to start from the steps that must happen first. Those might include internal approval, interviews, notice to a current employer, relocation, or your organization's required onboarding process.

Assign an owner to unresolved items. If the team cannot interview until a particular week, include that in the plan instead of describing the search as immediately ready.

The goal is a realistic sequence. A recruiter should be able to explain the anticipated next steps without promising a start date the hiring team has not confirmed.

Agree on evidence and decisions

8. Decide what a useful candidate submission contains

Tell the recruiter what information will help your team decide whether to interview. A useful submission might summarize:

• Relevant aircraft, equipment, systems, or process experience.
• The responsibilities the candidate actually held.
• Evidence against the essential requirements.
• Confirmed interest in the location, schedule, and compensation range.
• Questions or gaps the technical interview should explore.

Distinguish candidate-reported information from facts already verified. Agree on who completes any further checks.

Give the recruiter job-related questions that reveal experience. For example: “Describe a troubleshooting problem you handled, the information you used, and when you involved someone else.” Your technical team should define what it would look for in an answer.

9. Name the decision-makers and interview steps

Identify who reviews submissions, who assesses technical experience, and who approves an offer. Give the recruiter one person who can resolve conflicting feedback.

Agree on the interview stages and a workable feedback target. If the hiring manager rejects a profile, record the specific requirement or evidence behind the decision. That gives the next search adjustment a clear basis.

Use consistent core questions and criteria when comparing candidates for the same role. OPM's structured-interview guidance describes assessing job-related competencies through questions about past experience or hypothetical situations.

10. Prepare an accurate message about the opportunity

Explain why someone might want this particular role. Useful details include the work they will do, the team they will join, available training, and a credible development path.

Be specific about what is available now. A planned training program should not be presented as an established benefit, and a possible promotion should not sound like a promise.

Agree on the company information the recruiter can share, especially for a confidential search. The candidate message should match the actual role, compensation, schedule, and expectations in the brief.

Put the brief into practice

Consider this hypothetical maintenance-hiring example. It illustrates how to clarify a brief; it is not a TAS client case or an open position.

The starting request: “Find an experienced technician who can do everything and work any shift.”

The clarified assignment: “The immediate need is troubleshooting and scheduled-maintenance support on the evening team. The technical lead will identify which aircraft experience and qualifications are essential, which related backgrounds can transfer, and what training is available. The recruiter will confirm interest in the stated shift and approved pay range before submission.”

The second version leaves room for the technical team to establish the right requirements while giving the recruiter a defined assignment. It also exposes decisions the employer still needs to make.

When reviewing the first submissions, return to the brief. If a new requirement emerges, document the change and explain it to the recruiter. If the same requirement repeatedly excludes otherwise relevant people, revisit whether it is essential, preferred, or trainable.

Your pre-search checklist

Use this checklist during your intake meeting. Check an item when the hiring team has agreed on the answer, not merely discussed it.

In the interactive version, selections are temporary and are not submitted. Keep the completed hiring brief in your team's normal recruiting records.

Common questions