Thoughts on Careers

This set of notes is for young people who are considering working in the aerospace or aviation industries.

There you are, minding your own business, living your life, hanging out with your friends, when all of a sudden, high school is over, and people are starting to ask you annoying questions:

• "So, what are you going to study?"

• "So, where are you off to next year?"

• "Your friend X is doing Y; why aren't you doing Y like your friend X?"

• "Oh, you didn't get into XYZ program? I heard that if you don't get into XYZ program, your life is over."

You mumble a response to deflect the unwanted interrogation, but it's met with a furrowed brow, a smug smirk, or a look of concern; or worse, a follow-up question: "And what are you going to do with that?"

How on Earth should you know? You haven't even been on the planet for twenty years, and most of the time you've been stuck in a classroom!

General Thoughts

Your guidance counsellor hands you a set of glossy brochures from some post-secondary colleges and universities. The students and teachers in the pictures look too happy and you suspect they may be paid models. You look at the fees in the fine print and break out in a cold sweat. Now what?

Don't panic. The main thing to keep in mind is this: in order to keep a roof over your head, have some food to eat, and take a vacation to a nice place every now and then, you need to sell some goods or services. To figure out what you can bring to the table, consider three questions:

1. What goods or services are there demand for?

2. What am I good at?

3. What do I enjoy doing?

If you figure out a way to balance these three points, congratulations, you will have attained career Nirvana! 

Do I have to worry about my marks?

Yes and no. 

In every country, there are hundreds of thousands of students that finish high school each year. The way the institutions decide who gets first pick for programs is mostly based on marks. Now, it may seem a bit unfair that there's so much riding on these little numbers you get on your exams and assignments, but if you think about it, think about how long it would take to thoroughly interview and evaluate each candidate to determine who is best suited for each program. It would be completely impossible. So marks are used for rankings. Marks can roughly indicate some things: a willingness to complete prescribed work, and an ability to read, write, and reason. 

But of course, in the real world, there is a lot more at play. Personality, humor, physical coordination, judgement, decision making, leadership, creativity – none of these things can really be scored with marks. So if your marks didn't make the cut for the program you wanted to get into, don't worry about it, just find another program and keep moving yourself forward.

Wait, isn't university supposed to be about the pure intellectual pursuit of the Arts and Sciences?

In an ideal world, we could pursue knowledge purely for its own sake. But in our world, which some would say is a Fallen world, universities also serve the function of being credential gatekeepers. They also cost a lot of money to keep running.

How to get started in aerospace and aviation

Here is the best piece of advice I can give you. In whatever country you are in, it's likely that your government and the heads of the aerospace industry get together every once in a while to discuss how the sector is performing, and try to figure out, with varying degrees of success,  strategies to keep the sector competitive and healthy. They even pay people to dig into the details and write up reports summarizing their findings. You, as a taxpayer and citizen, are likely allowed free access to these reports. They are packed with useful data summaries and infographics, and talk about all the things you are wondering about: what kind of jobs are in demand, what kind of skills are needed, what training institutions exist, and what cities the jobs are concentrated in. 

In Canada, I can point you to two such reports: 

• The first is published by the AIAC (Aerospace Industries Association of Canada)

• The second is published by the Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace (CCAA)

If you are swamped with assignments and homework, ask your parents, a guidance counsellor or a teacher to help you read through the material and give you a summary. They will probably be happy to do so. 

These reports will give you some concrete information to make your decisions on, which is much better than just going off some random Reddit threads or that information you heard from your friend's cousin who knows a guy whose in-law works in aviation.

Finding a career path that suits you

Job variety

The first thing to realize is that there's a huge variety of job types in aerospace and aviation. I'm just going to list out a bunch of examples to give you an idea:

• ground operations at airports: fuelers, push tug drivers, de-icers, falcon trainers, snow plow operators, and marshallers, infrastructure technicians, civil engineers, electricians, mechanics

• airspace management: air traffic controllers, procedure designers, airspace designers, traffic data analysts

• airline operations: dispatchers, pilots, performance engineers, fleet analysts 

• design, manufacturing, maintenance, repair and overhaul: mechanics, technicians, engineers

• government oversight: regulators, inspectors, investigators

• information, navigation and communications systems: technicians, software engineers, IT experts, geospatial experts, flight planning experts

These are just jobs that came first to my mind, and I haven't even touched the space or military sides of the industry, nor the business and financial aspects. The element that unites all these jobs is being detail-oriented, safety-oriented, and having a low tolerance for dishonesty. You may be able to bluff your way through a career in politics or economics (sorry to pick on these fields), but in the aerospace world bad work is very much frowned upon. 

Qualifications

Based on the variety of jobs listed above, you may correctly guess that there's a variety of possible paths for training and education. Some jobs require university degrees, some require multiple university degrees, some require college training, some require apprenticeships, and some just require you to have certain aptitudes and nothing else. I will illustrate the two ends of the spectrum with two examples. 

Example 1:

In the above image, consider the two operators working the push tug. The plane they are pushing is likely worth more than $100 million USD, and the tug itself is probably another million USD. You don't need an advanced physics degree to do this job; you need hand-eye coordination, good communications skills, and nerves of steel. Their career path was likely something along these lines: they started working at the ground operations company doing entry level tasks, then over several years they proved themselves through successive rounds of more advanced tasks and on-the-job training, until they were selected and qualified to drive the tug for pushbacks and then towing. The guy doing the job probably feels proud of his work, and his talent is hard to replace. Not a bad way to earn a living. 

Example 2:

I will illustrate the other side of my point with a second example. Consider the image below:

It could be that in school you are a shy and introverted student. You keep to yourself and tend to always be deep in thought. You can read for hours and prefer to spend your weekends in the library. Maybe the other kids think you are weird because you don't go to parties, and you score really high in math and science. If this describes you, don't be surprised if ten years after high school, you hold an advanced math degree and an aerospace engineering company is begging you to come help their design department figure out a really hard aerodynamics problem.

My point with all of the above is just to illustrate that if you really want to work in the aerospace and aviation industries, there's probably a job for you, it's just a matter of figuring out what your talents are and finding a way to put them to use. If the first path you try doesn't work out, try another approach.