Frequently asked questions

• What does the typical recruitment process look like?

  We don’t believe in a ‘one size fits all’ approach so our recruitment process is tailored to the particular skillset we are looking for. What you can expect, however, is that in all our recruitment and employment practices we are guided by the principles of fairness, equality, diversity and inclusion and those principles will be manifested in how we recruit our people. At the very least you can expect the following:

  • Two stages in the interview process, delivered virtually or face-to-face, where you will be asked to showcase your technical skills and aptitude and demonstrate that you are generally a good match for the company.
  • That you will be assessed in terms of your alignment with our company values and behaviours, which are at the core of everything that we do.
  • We aspire to grow a strong team of open-minded, creative and flexible individuals from diverse backgrounds, respectful of and valuing individual differences to maximise our ability to innovate and deliver better business outcomes. Sometimes this may mean more than your prior experience.

• What does the onboarding process look like?

  We are in the process of rolling out a new induction programme that ensures that our new recruits become comfortable and effective quickly. The programme is:

  • Spread over six months to maximise the learning experience.
  • Semi-structured with some fixed learning opportunities and placing responsibility on individuals to be proactive in their learning.

  We do not have a probation period - we trust in our recruitment process and our decisions, we hire our people for a reason and our starting position is to make the relationship work and not to test it.

• What are HAV's growth plans and career opportunities?

  Our team is currently around 60 people, and we will build over the first year of the production aircraft programme to over 200, and on to many hundreds more. Initially, our main focus will be on rapidly building the Engineering Team to support the early aircraft design work, followed by growing our Production Team ahead of the aircraft build phase and finally we will be looking for test support staff to support the early ground and flight testing. Naturally, we will be recruiting in all other areas of the business across all phases to support our growth.

  As is typical for organisations with plans to grow significantly over a relatively short period of time, career opportunities, progression and development paths will be an important feature of employment with us.

• Why join HAV?

  Each person joining our team in the future will have their own reason for working with us; however, what lies at the core for everyone working at HAV now, is the common objective of bringing Airlander to market to deliver the future of zero emissions aviation with the ability to change people's lives, creating a sustainable way to travel by air. We want to maintain that ethos and attract the best people to play their part in meeting this goal. Particularly for those that join early, there is the unique opportunity to be part of the whole design/test/operate cycle on a complete and groundbreaking aircraft.

• How will the engineering team be structured?

  Once we launch our production aircraft programme, we aim to implement an Integrated Product Team (IPT) Structure. The IPTs will comprise the necessary mix of mechanical, electrical and stress engineers to deliver major items of aircraft hardware, be that our payload module (flight deck and cabin), propulsion units, tail fins, etc., as complete and fully ground tested assemblies. This approach worked extremely well on the prototype aircraft programme back in 2015-2017.