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INDUSTRY OUTLOOK 24 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY Finding talent can oen be a time-consuming 'seat-of-the-pants' navigation by employers siing through innumerable talent markets across the country. Industry and academia are working together on a solution. By Dr. Tim Welsh NEAR THE AIRPORT, IN ANTHONY, KS, sit the remains of a concrete arrow and a beacon tower. They remind us of what was once a network of 'Beacon-Towers' stretching from New York to San Francisco. It was the 'next generation' of aviation navigation. Before then, pilots navigated primarily by pilotage: looking out their windows for familiar landmarks. Nearly 1,500 installations in total, the Beacon Tower system was launched in 1924 by the U.S. Postal Service. It was unlike any system anywhere in the world. The network was a big deal. It helped pilots find what they were look- ing for more quickly and reliably and, more importantly, at night. Innovations in navigation have undoubtedly driven industry growth. Early methods — pilot- age, non-directional radio beacons — have given way to today's satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS). GPS raised the bar for the entire industry. Safety and service efficien- cies are insured with reliable informa- tion. Navigation became more precise, enabling closer spacing of planes. Expanded route capacities created value and industry growth. NAVIGATING AVIATION'S TALENT MARKETS: NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH Today, aviation industry growth depends on other factors. Talent management — the business of finding, recruiting, and developing a reliable workforce — is now foundational to sustaining indus- try growth. Compared with innovations in aviation navigation, though, many industry talent management practices still appear to be at the 'pilotage' stage of their evolution. Demand planning methods vary greatly. The use of predictive analytics to understand which job will succeed and why is uneven. Design and adminis- tration of skills assessments of incoming talent are often imprecise and uneven. As a result, to borrow a factory floor metric, costs of 'talent rework' can be high. "According to the U.S. Department of Labor, it costs one-third of a new hire's annual salary to replace him or her." — Workforce Institute Step One in managing talent — find- ing it — can often be a time-consuming