While finding skilled workers is difficult for many manufacturers, it can be especially challenging for the aerospace industry. Employees must have highly technical skills in mechanical, electrical, computer, and robotics engineering and uphold the rigorous quality and safety standards customers demand.
Since 2010, Nocti Business Solutions has worked with one of the largest aerospace companies and manufacturers of commercial jetliners, defense, space, and security systems. We provide pre-employment assessments customized to specific technical positions. We also maintain and update the assessments as needed. These workforce solutions have helped our client standardize and streamline their hiring process, expand their talent pool, and build a safer, more skilled workforce.
Customized Assessments and Ongoing Support
Like many other industries hiring for technical positions, our client needed a way to ensure new hires had the right skills to safely and successfully perform the work. Together, we created about a dozen customized skills assessments to measure skills and knowledge specific to each job.
NBS follows a rigorous development and validation process when developing all customized assessments.
- A team of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) perform a job and task analysis and develop an assessment blueprint. Each task is properly assessed based on a weighting and rating process conducted by the NBS psychometrician with the SME team.
- After the SMEs and psychometrician finalize the test questions, the assessment is pilot tested with a group of employees currently performing the job to establish benchmark data.
- After extensive psychometric analysis, the data is used with the SME team to set the passing score.
When our client incorporated skills assessments into their hiring process, they could be sure new employees had the foundational skills needed for these highly technical positions. Over the last decade, we’ve updated the assessments to stay current with changing technology and work environments.
Solving Workforce Challenges
Incorporating skills assessments into the hiring process has benefited the aerospace manufacturer in three key areas.
Streamlined Hiring
The positions the company needs to fill are typically for higher-level roles. Candidates have 10+ years of experience in the industry and have worked for other large aerospace companies. It can be difficult to know from a one or two-page resume if a candidate has the specific skills needed for the job.
But, if a candidate completes a skills assessment prior to the interview, hiring managers can spend the interview time talking through the interviewee’s specific experience instead of trying to establish their level of foundational knowledge. Using skills assessments has helped create a standardized hiring process that’s the same for every candidate and provides hiring managers with a reliable way to measure a potential employee’s technical skills.
Growing Talent Pool
In addition to custom assessments, our client also uses the mechatronics assessment from AMTEC (another one of NBS’s industry partners) to help fill lower-level positions. This standardized assessment has enabled this aerospace manufacturer to grow their talent pool.
Mechatronics is an interdisciplinary engineering branch that combines mechanical, electrical, computer, and robotics engineering. Candidates applying for a mechatronics position have usually just completed a two-year mechatronics program or need more hands-on experience. Our client has had a great success rate bringing candidates with mechatronics skills into the company and having them learn on the job. These employees then qualify for more experienced positions within the company.
A Safer Workplace
Utilizing skills assessments from NBS also helps the aerospace manufacturer ensure new hires have the relevant skills to stay safe on the job. Employees without the proper skills or training are a danger to themselves and the entire workplace.
Safety is a core competency in every NBS skills assessment. For the mechatronics assessment, candidates must demonstrate knowledge of mechanical equipment, hydraulic equipment, predictive maintenance, blueprint reading, safety principles, and more.
Building a Skilled Workforce
NBS is proud to provide workforce solutions and ongoing support, not only to our aerospace client, but to all our clients that continue innovating for the future and living the core values of safety, quality, and integrity.
We’ve been helping companies solve their workforce challenges for over 20 years. Whether closing skills gaps or overcoming hiring challenges, we’ve worked with companies in every industry to overcome their hiring challenges and build a skilled and competent workforce. We can help you, too—whether through standardized pre-employment testing or with a fully customized solution. Contact us to learn more about our services!
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