Europe’s MRO labor market is experiencing tight competition as companies boost salaries to recruit qualified talent.
In the face of this challenging hiring environment, Magnetic Line has partnered with industry recruitment and executive search firm Oaklands Global to meet its workforce demand at several line stations in Europe.
According to Erik Stegeman, Magnetic Line’s director of operations, the company was experiencing challenges filling 15 engineer positions at one of its bigger line stations, and its human resources department did not have the time or experience required to dedicate to talent recruitment.
Concurrently, Oaklands Global set a goal at the beginning of the year to establish a strategic partnership with an MRO in Europe. “We really wanted to get into the granular detail with a business and understand their culture and working environment so we could accurately promote that to the industry,” says MD William Finden.
“The war for talent in MRO is at an all-time high,” Finden says. “It’s a real gun-for-hire type of environment because, quite rightly so, the salaries are so aggressively increasing that people can’t help but get caught up in the situation [where] they’re happily employed and working for a lovely business, but there’s often opportunity to earn 40-50% more, in some cases, within other organizations.”
Finden says Oaklands Global began courting an exclusive arrangement with Magnetic Group at the beginning of the year, formalizing an agreement with the company in April through the end of 2025, “with a view to extend to 2026.” He says the exclusive nature of the partnership is beneficial because “any good head-hunting company shouldn’t be head-hunting from clients, so we’ve kind of got carte blanche outside of Magnetic Line to go after all those other organizations and appeal to the talent within them.”
Oaklands Global started by looking for licensed aircraft engineers to join Magnetic Line’s team, “but they very quickly realized that our network and experience covered a much broader range of skill sets, so we’ve delivered into management level now, and we also supported them in CAMO [continuing airworthiness management organization], quality and technical services,” he says.
Since the partnership began, Magnetic Line has extended Oaklands Global’s support to two additional line stations. Stegeman says the company currently needs around 30 engineers in Europe, spread over several line stations.
Finden says the hiring environment in Europe’s MRO market is moving very fast. “I think businesses need to have a very defined recruitment process that also acknowledges the ecosystem and the speed at which you need to move if you want to secure good talent. I think there’s a balance between being competitive but not going bust. And you need to understand, as a business, what you can and can’t afford,” he says.
For instance, he says Oaklands Global is seeing third-party maintenance organizations that hold long-term contracts with large airlines being forced to increase salaries to attract talent, but their clients do not want to pay more, so “profit margins are getting pinched or they’re not able to pay what they need to pay, and they’re not getting the quality of engineer they need to deliver on the contract.”
Another crucial element in the labor market, says Finden, is employee engagement and retention. “If people are walking into a very busy maintenance environment, they may well be capable, but that doesn’t mean they’re up to speed with your processes and policies, so attention to detail with onboarding is quite important now,” he says.
Finden also notes that he has seen a significant amount of middle management burnout in the MRO industry since COVID-19, which may be impacting retention. “There are a lot of roles that didn’t really get backfilled, or they were condensed into middle management, and from a compensation perspective, I don’t think it accurately is now reflective of the additional responsibility that those individuals have in comparison to a licensed engineer who has a very clear, defined list of responsibilities,” he says.
“In my opinion, there is a shortage of good quality middle management,” he adds. “Whereas before you would be progressing and developing engineers through the ranks, now you don’t want to take those people off the tools because, as a business, you need them, which is then having a knock-on effect on people with ambition, because they’re not able to progress as quickly as they might like.”
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