Part 2 of our series with VHR Technical Recruiter Matthew Jasper, recorded ahead of MRO Americas 2026, Orlando, 21–23 April.

Missed Part 1? Read Where Are the Biggest Capacity Gaps in Aviation Technician Teams?

About VHR

VHR is a global technical recruitment specialist with deep roots in aviation, aerospace and defence. Operating across North America, Europe, the Middle East and beyond, VHR partners with airlines, MROs and OEMs to source, place and develop high-quality technical talent at every level, from certified A&P mechanics and AME technicians to senior operations and quality leadership. In a sector where a staffing gap is never just an HR problem, it's a compliance risk, a revenue event, and in some cases a safety concern, VHR's value lies not just in finding candidates, but in understanding the regulatory environments, endorsement landscapes and workforce dynamics that shape every hire.

The Question – "How important are behavioural attributes such as attitude, communication and adaptability when assessing candidates?"

In an industry defined by technical precision, licensing requirements and regulatory compliance, it might seem counterintuitive to argue that how someone behaves matters more than what they know. But that is exactly Matthew's position, and the reasoning behind it is harder to argue with than it might first appear.

Aviation maintenance is one of the most safety-critical working environments on earth. The consequences of a missed check, a poorly communicated handover or a technician who cuts corners under time pressure are not abstract. They are operational, regulatory and, at the extreme end, catastrophic. That context is why the conversation around behavioural fit in aviation recruitment is not soft or secondary. It is foundational.

In our first blog in this series, Matthew laid out the structural labour shortages, endorsement bottlenecks and demographic pressures defining the North American market right now. But as he explains here, finding someone with the right licence is only ever the starting point. The harder, more important question is whether they are the right person.

 

 

Matthew's Answer

Matthew's opening position is clear and deliberate.

"Behavioural attributes are absolutely critical, and in many cases, they're an even better predictor of long-term success than technical skills."

He is careful to frame this properly. This isn't an argument against technical competence, which remains non-negotiable in a safety-regulated environment. It's an argument about what actually differentiates a technician who performs well and stays from one who doesn't.

"My own recruitment approach has always been behaviour first and then skill second. You can work out skills from a CV. But when it comes to the interview process, the key thing is assessing behavioural attributes."

 

Soft Skills With Hard Consequences

The language Matthew uses is deliberate: "soft skills have hard operational consequences." In aviation maintenance, this is not a metaphor.

A technician can hold every certification in the book and still become a safety risk if they have poor communication habits, resist feedback or take shortcuts under pressure. The behaviours that actually protect airworthiness, strong documentation practices, respect for SOPs, openness to supervision, careful and thorough shift handovers, are not taught through type ratings. They are shaped by character, culture and the way someone approaches their work at a fundamental level.

For MROs and airlines operating under FAA Part 145 certification, this has direct compliance implications. Documentation errors, inspection shortcuts and communication breakdowns are precisely the kinds of control failures that attract regulatory findings, and none of them show up on a licence. For a deeper look at what daily life actually looks like for an aircraft maintenance technician, and the breadth of behavioural demands the role places on people, see our piece: A Day in the Life of an Aircraft Maintenance Technician.

 

The Training Asymmetry

One of Matthew's most important points is practical rather than philosophical, and it comes from years of direct experience in internal HR and recruitment.

"I've always held the belief that you can train skill issues a lot more easily than you can train behavioural issues."

This matters enormously for how organisations approach the talent shortage problem. If you can find someone with the right attitude, a genuine openness to learning and a collaborative mindset, you can teach them new aircraft systems, new documentation processes, your specific safety culture, and your way of working. You can mould them. But if the behavioural foundation isn't there, if they struggle within a team culture, resist correction or don't naturally buy into safety-first thinking, no amount of technical upskilling will fix it.

"If they lack those kind of skills, they're going to struggle within a culture. And unfortunately, no amount of training can fix that either."

This asymmetry has a direct bearing on the endorsement-building strategies Matthew described in Part 1, where operators are increasingly sponsoring technicians through type ratings rather than waiting for the perfect candidate to materialise. If you're investing in someone's development over 12 to 24 months, the behavioural assessment isn't a nice-to-have. It's the entire basis on which that investment is justified.

 

Adaptability and the Technology Curve

The second dimension of behaviour Matthew highlights is adaptability, and the argument here is forward-looking as much as it is operational.

Modern fleets are transforming rapidly. The A350 and 787 brought avionics, digital diagnostics, composite materials and systems complexity that had no direct precedent in the maintenance world. Predictive maintenance, now incorporating AI, is advancing quickly and reshaping what the technician role actually requires. The eVTOL era is approaching, bringing entirely new propulsion and electrical systems that today's workforce has minimal exposure to. Even modifications that might appear incremental, such as the wave of in-flight connectivity upgrades now sweeping commercial fleets, demand technicians who can absorb new system architectures, work alongside avionics specialists, and adapt to modification programmes that sit well outside routine line maintenance. As we explored recently, aircraft Wi-Fi modifications have risen to the top of airline priorities in 2026, placing new demands on the maintenance workforce at precisely the moment when experienced avionics-capable technicians are hardest to find.

"You need technicians who can thrive and learn new systems, adapt to new procedures, and embrace continuous training."

Critically, Matthew pushes back on the assumption that adaptability is a generational trait. "That doesn't need to be an age thing. You can have those capabilities and personality behaviours at any age." The risk, in a market where operators often default to experience-first hiring, is that adaptability goes unassessed entirely, and organisations end up with technically experienced people who can't keep pace with where the industry is going.

This is why the most in-demand aviation skills in the US right now include not just technical competencies but digital literacy and the capacity to operate in data-driven maintenance environments. The hiring lens needs to reflect that.

Staffing an aircraft Wi-Fi modification programme? VHR works with airlines and MROs to source avionics and modification-specialist engineers at speed, with full compliance support. Explore our aircraft Wi-Fi modification staffing solutions →

 

The AI CV Problem - And Why Technical Testing Still Matters

Matthew is clear that none of this means that technical assessment can be dropped. In fact, in the current environment, he argues it has become more important, not less.

The reason is AI-generated CVs. As large language models make it trivially easy to produce a polished, role-specific CV from a basic set of inputs, the traditional first-filter function of the CV is quietly breaking down. High-quality AI-written CVs can slip through initial screening and misrepresent operational readiness in ways that would have been much harder to sustain before. This is no longer an edge case, the Willo Hiring Trends Report 2026, which surveyed hiring leaders across major global organisations, found that 41% of employers are now actively moving away from CV-first hiring, with a further 10% having largely replaced CVs with skills-based and scenario-driven assessments entirely. As Willo's CEO put it: "The CV used to tell a story of effort, experience, and aptitude, now it often tells us how well someone can prompt a large language model." In safety-critical environments like aviation maintenance, where the consequences of a misrepresented candidate are measured not just in operational disruption but in airworthiness risk, this shift is not optional.

"That's why it's more important than ever to validate technical ability through structured questions and hands-on assessments, because skills can be tested."

There's a secondary benefit to in-person technical assessment that Matthew highlights: it also reveals behaviour. How a candidate responds under the pressure of a practical test, whether they communicate clearly, how they handle uncertainty, whether they approach problems methodically or cut corners, tells you as much about who they are as the outcome of the assessment itself.

The Intelligence That Doesn't Appear in Interviews

Beyond formal assessment, Matthew describes two practices that he has consistently deployed throughout his recruitment career, and that he considers essential for building a full picture of a candidate.

The first is direct network intelligence. "I always use my network to speak with people who have worked directly with a candidate. You can learn a lot more about how someone behaves day-to-day from a former colleague than you ever could from reading a CV." The qualities that matter most in aviation maintenance, teamwork under pressure, communication style, attitude when things go wrong, and how someone handles a difficult shift handover, are exactly the things that rarely surface cleanly in a formal interview, but come through immediately in a candid conversation with someone who has worked alongside them.

The second is situational questioning. Rather than focusing on what candidates have done, Matthew builds his interviews around what they would do and how they think.

"Tell me about a time you had to challenge someone on a safety concern. How do you handle shift handovers under time pressure? Describe a situation where a colleague made a mistake, and how you addressed it?"

The value of open, scenario-based questions is that they don't have a single right answer. When a question allows multiple valid responses, the candidate's thought process becomes visible, and that reveals far more about how they'll operate in a real-world environment than a well-rehearsed competency answer.

 

Behavioural Profiling: The Fuller Picture

Matthew's final layer is pre-interview behavioural profiling, used not as a standalone filter, but as a tool that adds depth when read alongside everything else.

"You can't rely on them alone, but when you compare them with how someone responds to the questions you're asking in an interview, it gives you a more filled-out, fuller picture of how they'll operate in a work setting and their overall personality."

Profiling assessments serve a dual function. For candidates who perform strongly across all other dimensions, they can surface specific behavioural tendencies or potential development areas that might not otherwise be visible, allowing organisations to address those proactively in the onboarding plan rather than discovering them six months later. It's a point that links directly to the next topic in this series: where organisations most underestimate the importance of onboarding investment.

 

VHR in Action: When the Brief Goes Beyond the CV

The approach Matthew describes, structured behavioural assessment layered with network intelligence, situational interviewing and profiling, is embedded in how VHR approaches executive and specialist searches.

When a European company expanding into the US needed a single critical hire capable of stepping first into a client-facing sales and account management role before transitioning to General Manager and leading their entire US operation, the assignment demanded far more than a CV match. VHR conducted an in-depth headhunting process, worked closely with the client to define and refine selection criteria, and facilitated a structured interview and assessment framework designed to evaluate candidates against both their immediate brief and their long-term leadership potential. The hire was placed, transitioned seamlessly into the GM role, and successfully launched US operations.

In a longer-running partnership, VHR served as the sole recruitment partner for a world-leading international airline and engineering group over more than 13 years, permanently seconding staff to the airline, acting as an extension of their HR function, implementing bespoke training programmes, and placing over 1,300 contract and permanent personnel. The client reported 200% cost savings on technicians sourced through VHR. Recruitment at that scale, over that duration, is only possible when the partner genuinely understands what the organisation needs behaviourally as well as technically.

Want to see how VHR approaches complex, quality-critical recruitment across aviation and MRO? Explore VHR's MRO recruitment practice →

 

What This Means for Hiring Managers

The practical implication of everything Matthew outlines is that assessment processes in aviation maintenance recruitment need to be restructured, not just made longer or more rigorous, but fundamentally reoriented around behaviour.

That means designing interview stages that go beyond competency checklists and into scenario-based thinking. It means investing in network intelligence rather than relying entirely on what a candidate presents. It means using profiling tools as context rather than filters. And it means treating the question of cultural and behavioural fit with the same seriousness that gets applied to licence verification, because in a safety-critical, compliance-heavy environment, the cost of getting it wrong is just as high.

As Matthew puts it: "A strong technical foundation is vital. But adaptability determines whether someone will actually keep pace in the industry, and have longevity with your organisation too."

 

What This Means for Hiring Managers

In Part 3, Matthew turns to role design, how organisations can better align responsibilities, expectations and career progression to retain the people they've worked hard to hire. It's a conversation that picks up directly from where this one ends.

Read Part 1: Where Are the Biggest Capacity Gaps in Aviation Technician Teams?

 

Talk to Our Specialist Team

Whether you're building a structured assessment process for a critical hire, navigating a large-scale MRO staffing challenge, or planning your workforce strategy ahead of MRO Americas 2026 in Orlando, VHR's specialist aviation recruitment team is ready to help.

Ready to discuss your workforce challenges? Book a call with our specialist team →