Aerospace industry aims to attract millennial generation

SmartPlanet (Hernandez) - How can the aerospace industry keep talented new recruits in its workforce pool? Offer flexible job assignments and a variety of projects, according to the “2009 Survey of Aerospace Student Attitudes.”

The survey culled the attitudes last spring of 600 aerospace engineering sophomores and seniors at 23 schools across the country. An overwhelming majority of the respondents were male (80 percent), U.S. citizens (96 percent) and Caucasian (73 percent). Among the survey’s findings...

• The students selected salary, excitement, location and work/life balance as the four most important job attributes. While they felt that the aerospace industry compared more favorably on aspects of salary and excitement, they felt it compared less favorably on location and work/life balance.
• Students expect significant mobility, moving jobs and even changing careers as often as every year or two.
• 47 percent of students expect to gain new engineering responsibility every year or less.
• Over 70 percent of students want to work for different companies or organizations over the course of their careers.