Mark Cromptom, Global Head of Employment Branding @ Airbus

Welcome, um, everybody. Uh, today is a very special day. Um, I'm your host, Ingmar, for this episode. And we have Mark with us. Mark is the global head of employment and employer branding. I hope I said that title correctly.

Employer marketing or talent attraction or yeah, anything to recruit the best talent, basically. Yeah. Amazing.

It's a pleasure to have you here. We can learn so much about Airbus, but also about your personal story. I have to admit, it happens rarely when I look someone up on LinkedIn before and do my preparation that I only see one company on the whole history. And that's Airbus for you. Over 17 years now. Did you ever think of leaving?

No, not once. Not once, no. Yeah, I've been with Airbus man and boy. I joined in 2006 straight from my A-levels, and it was an opportunity to do an apprenticeship, a technical apprenticeship, what we would call now a degree apprenticeship. And it was really quite a rare thing back then. I think a lot of my friends had gone off to university, they were going all over the place, and I said to them, I'm going to stay here in Bristol and I'm going to do a degree apprenticeship, and they all thought I was crazy. But it was the best decision I could have made.

You started doing that, I think, at the University of Plymouth, is that correct?

Yeah, so we partnered, or Airbus still partner with with kind of colleges and universities where we do a little bit of university course, like one day a week, and then the rest of the time was in work. So you get a really good balance of kind of industrial experience and what it's like to really work in an office, and that was a really valuable part of the program, and yeah, it's just grown and grown since then.

It has grown really. I think it's a huge trend. We see it in the US as well. Homeschooling, for example, has risen incredibly over the last 10 years, mostly also because people don't want to have student debt anymore. They don't want to go to university and have this debt. And I think last time I checked, like apprenticeships in the UK are growing crazy as well. And Airbus has been doing this for some time. Have you seen growth as well?

Oh, enormous growth. I think Over the last 15 years, I think we've brought through around 4,000 apprentices. In the UK specifically, when it comes to degree apprentices, when I joined in 2006, there was 11 of us. Last year, 115 degree apprentices, 50% of which are engineering degree apprentices as well. So enormous growth, you know, it's grown 10 times in the last 16, 17 years. And I think we're just going to see that continual growth as students look at other opportunities, look at the, oh my God, how much debt am I going to come out of university with? And think, well, actually, maybe there is a different way I can get that degree education and get industry experience and be debt-free. Yeah.

And we'll look at that later as well. We'll zoom a bit into those different options. Yeah. But for now, because you started out with mechanical engineering in the beginning, and then within the company you—

Yeah, yeah, so it's a strange journey when you look at it from one end to the other. You say mechanical engineering apprentice, head of employment marketing, how did you kind of get here? So I finished my apprenticeship in 2010, I think it was, and I went into an engineering role, so it was an early careers role in structural test, so really design engineering, and then that kind of grew into project management of design engineers and design engineering projects, but very engineering heavy. And then I think it was 2011, there was an opportunity to run a bigger test in in Toulouse, and I think I was 20 or 22 at the time, and I kind of had this real urge to do something international. I was kind of like, okay, I'm 22, if I don't do it now, I might never do it. So, I spoke to my girlfriend at the time and said, I'd like to go out to Toulouse, would you like to come with me? And she said, yeah, which is great.

Okay, wow. Did you speak French at the time?

Not one word. Okay. Not one word. I think I was doing Duolingo I think every day at breakfast for about 6 months before I left. And yeah, flew out to Toulouse, and then I spent 18 months working on slightly larger projects, engineering projects. And there was kind of a, maybe a bit of an epiphany that I thought, first off, I love being here, I love being in Toulouse, it was Airbus City, you have customers There you've got aircraft flying in and out all the time, there's testing, there's every possible job you could imagine here.

A little ecosystem.

Yeah, yeah, and it was a wonderful place to be, but then I think maybe the hardest thing in my career journey was when I kind of said to myself, am I enjoying actually being an engineer? Is this answering kind of what I love and what I'm good at and what I enjoy. And I found a lot more enjoyment working on projects and more importantly kind of communication. And I thought, could I take that and transfer that into another role? And the answer is yeah. So, I went from being pure engineering, which quite honestly I found quite hard. I was not, I was not able to keep up with my peers, and that was— I felt a little bit of anxiety there, and I thought, okay, well, I'll try something else. And I went into our customer services team where I was doing customer services engineering, so it was kind of more communication-led with an engineering background, so it kind of flipped the dynamic. And then from customer services engineering, I transferred more into communication for for customers, and then communication for customers became marketing for products and marketing for services. Um, and then after doing that for about 5 years, I thought, I've done B2B marketing, I've done products, I've done services, I've not done people. And I really wanted to see if the things that we had learned in that, or things I had learned in that journey, particularly using kind of maths and my engineering knowledge that I'd applied to marketing, could it also apply to the way we market to people?

Interesting.

So yeah, two polar extremes, they're quite different, but the journey's been quite fluid, and I think that's the best thing about working at Airbus is that you don't just have a job, you don't just come off your grad scheme, be it procurement, finance, engineering, manufacturing, and that's your job. You have multiple jobs and you have multiple careers throughout your whole life. And that's why I've been there so long.

I think it's quite powerful if an organization can create the structures for people to flexibly test out, hey, this would be maybe a different environment for me and grow within the company. Yeah, that is very powerful. Um, maybe if you can reflect on that now, when you first noticed maybe that hardcore engineering is not right for me and I want something more client-facing, Do you think you could have made that realization earlier, maybe already during your degree apprenticeship, during your studies, or do you think that's just something that usually happens naturally and it's a journey people go through and you just realize it on the job and then you move into a different role?

Maybe it's, it's a great question. And I think you, I think everybody battles head over heart all the time. You know, your head's telling you I should be an engineer because that's what I studied, and it would be strange, wouldn't it, if I suddenly went to a totally different industry or a totally different job. But I think if your heart's telling you this isn't the best thing that's keeping you happy, you need to follow your heart, as gaudy as that sounds. I think when you find something that you are truly passionate about, that you stop working in a way, because it becomes a hobby. There's an Orson Welles quote which I really like. He doesn't like the word professional. I'm going to ad-lib the quote, but he says he doesn't like the word professional, he prefers the word amateur. Amateur comes from the word amour, to love and to have passion. And I completely believe that. It's the passion for something that drives you rather than necessarily what you've learned.

And you'd also say that this is a process of try and error. You have to experience different things and really get yourself out there to understand, hey, this is something for me. Or do you think you could plan this in your head, say maybe, okay, you know, I'm that kind of personality, I'd probably not prosper in this role, I might prosper more in that role?

So, I think there's two ways of doing it, you know, you can say, you know, I want to get out there, I want to try an international role, I want to go to a different country, I want to try different functions, and you can do that. At Airbus, we also kind of have a framework for that, so for every graduate that joins Airbus, they go on a rotational placement experience, so they spend 3 months in different business functions where they can explore the business. The idea is that they expand their network, they expand their knowledge, they expand their skills, and then at the end of that, they bring that back into their home function. So let's say you were hired as a landing gear graduate, you could then go into employment marketing, or you could go into finance, but ultimately we want you to come back to where you started and bring all of that knowledge and experience that you've learned along the way and transfer that into your new team effectively as well. So, yeah, there's a couple of ways we can do that.

Amazing. I'd also be interested in how you discovered that there was something like this degree apprenticeship or foundational program. How did you come across that? Because it was not that popular back in the days. And why did you decide to go for it?

Yeah, funny story. So, I was actually studying law. I was at St. Brendan's College just outside of Bristol. Big shout out to any St. Brendan's alumni. And I was studying law, and in my head I actually had that I was going to do law. I was really enjoying— I was really enjoying my Law A-level, and I was absolutely convinced I was doing law. So I had applied, I think I applied to Bristol, Cardiff, and I think Oxford Brookes. I wasn't the best student, I was never going to get into a Russell Group university, but I think I—

Can you disclose your grades?

I think I was probably a C-grade student.

And now you're Global Head of Climate, so—

So yeah, I had in my head I was going to do law, and during one of our law classes they a recruiter from Airbus came in and handed out these physical bits of A4 paper, black and white, clearly been photocopied 100 times, and they said there was a— I don't think it was a QR code then, I think it was a URL— where you could apply to their engineering, or I think it was called Hire Engineering Apprenticeship at the time, and I took it home And I think my dad saw it and said, "What's this?" And I said, "Some recruiter brought it in to school today." He's like, "Oh, why didn't you apply?" And I said, "Oh, I'm going to do law at university next year." And he said, "Well, you've got a year, you're having a gap year, why don't you apply for the apprenticeship? If you get it, great, you can do it for a year and then you can go off to university." And I thought, "Oh, actually, no, that's quite a good idea." I thought, I've got nothing to lose, I apply. 'If I get the job, I've worked for a year and I've got, you know, improved my education and skills a little bit, and then, you know, 9 months from now, if I wasn't enjoying it, well, I've still got my university placement, I can still go.' And I think after about 6 months, I gave up law. I gave up the entire thought of law. I was having such a great time that I didn't— I just cancelled my my university placement there and then carried on and then not looked back since.

I think that's very interesting because a lot of young people, I believe, now feel this urge of they need to have figured everything out in their final year, at least know exactly which career path they're going and also know which companies they're going to apply to. But in your case, this seemed more like a story, hey, there was actually a push from a company. You're like, hey, this is an intriguing offer. Yeah, actually not that bad. Let's try it out. And now you've been with the company for 17 years. Yeah. With Airbus, are you today doing it still? Are you still handing out—

Well, I think it's a great question. I think we've tried to be a little bit more digital today. We work with and partner with an organization called Handshake. Big shout out to Handshake, who are—

We know them, yeah.

They are fantastic, and they really have helped us revolutionize our outreach so that we're going to student populations in year 1, in year 2, in year 3, and we're having those personal conversations with them, and we're able to provide roles that are not just generic, "Oh, you might like this," but really, "Hey, Imar, I know you studied this, you've got this background, I know you're working on a final year project around this, we really think this job would be the most suitable for you." And we've seen a huge success in partnering with them and working with them, particularly accessing underrepresented elements in society. Gender diversity is quite a hot topic for us, and we'd really like to get a more equitable balance in terms of male/female populations inside Airbus, and Handshake have been a really great partner to help us do that.

I love the shoutouts, and with Fazl, we're in the same space, we're competing with Handshake as well. But we love handshake as a company. They're amazing. That's super interesting. Let me get back to this one topic that we discussed on the popularity of degree apprenticeships. Now, I have a few stats that I wanted to share as well. So the number of homeschooled children in the US has soared by 51% in the last 6 years. Higher apprenticeships starts increased by 9% for 2023-2024 in the UK. So just those apprenticeship schemes. And then foundational degrees have been growing fivefold between 2011 and 2021. So now they're— in 2011, there were around 670 courses offered. Now there are around 3,700 courses.

Wow.

How do you see this kind of development? Maybe just extrapolate that in the next 10 years. Do you have any views on that?

I think we'll see more opportunities for different types of degree apprenticeships. I don't know the stat off the top of my head of exactly how many we offer, but I can definitely come back to you on that. But when I started, I think there were two. I think it was engineering and what we call craft, or kind of manufacturing engineering. And I think we've definitely seen a surge in the volumes of different types of vocational training programs that are on offer in the market and how many we could offer. And I do see that continuing to grow. And, and I think we'll see, um, a huge amount of growth, particularly over the, over the next 10 years, um, as I think AI becomes quite a dominant player in the market and how that will kind of help change and augment the, the kind of the landscape for learning, which I think will be very, very different.

Interesting. Do you have a number, um, in your head how many people Airbus, for example, hires through apprenticeship schemes or similar versus the ones that come out of university?

Uh, great question.

Or percentage, maybe.

Great question. On, um, I would say higher, on higher level, so like tertiary level education. So yeah, we had 115 degree apprentices join us in the UK, uh, last year, uh, and around 250 graduates, uh, that's, that's globally. For the UK, it's probably not far off, it's probably comparable, maybe 130 or something like that. And yeah, two different routes, you can come in as a graduate or you can come in a little bit younger and, you know, and you can be schooled and educated by Airbus or you can come in with a classical route.

Okay, amazing. And I'd also be interested in your role today as Head of Employment Marketing.

Yeah.

What is a day-to-day, the day in the life of—

Oh, wow, okay.

You look like?

Maybe you should ask my teams. So, I have nearly 30 people, I think over 30 people now, spread over our 4 main markets, which is UK, Germany, Spain, and France. I also have another team dedicated to longer-term academic partnerships. So, we have a range of universities around the world where we try to build longer-term pipelines, more than, kind of, like 3, 5, 10 years out.

Interesting, yep.

And we also have somebody responsible for our employee advocacy program working for me and a central marketing team. So, I think my day-to-day job is really commander-in-chief, so to speak, of the team.

Come in with your coffee, tell people what to do.

And helping the teams grow themselves, but also running all of our employment campaigns, which are kind of at different frequencies because the academic years are not quite the same in different countries, and we have different opportunities, like the VIE program that is in France doesn't exist in other countries as well, so the kind of phasing of them is slightly different.

When you usually wake up?

When I usually wake up. So the first thing I see when I wake up is my 4-year-old son. Okay. Right in my face. I don't have an alarm clock anymore.

So your actual full-time job.

Yeah, yeah. My 4-year-old son wakes me up every day. He's like a Swiss train, 6:30 on the dot, no question. Helping get the family out the door. Having a really good work-life balance is really important to me, and my wife also works at Airbus as well, so we both have full-time jobs, and so we try to balance the kind of the caregiving responsibilities quite evenly. So if she's doing school drop-off in the morning, I'll do the pickup in the evening, and that's quite important to us as a family dynamic, and it's really important that that kind of value is cascaded across Airbus. I think it's It's so important that we have a really good work-life balance and that we can, you can be a senior leader and still have responsibility and say, guys, I can't take this meeting at 5 o'clock, I'm really sorry, but I've gotta go and pick up my kids.

Cool. That's a trend that I would say we've also seen.

Yeah.

I mean, London is very known and kind of typical for students wanting to go into banking, finance, consulting, where you have, you basically, you know that it's a trade-off. Yeah. I'm going to invest 70 hours a week now into this job, maybe for a few years. Usually when I talk to students, they have this mapped out strategically. They want to join a bank for 1 or 2 years and then do something else. But we've seen the trend that more and more people actually value their time now as well, they're being young, much more over the money. Because if you then, you know, you arrive at the hourly pay, if you work for one of those banks, usually come, maybe you arrive at the same pay that you get with Airbus, for example. So I'd be interested, how does Airbus— because you talked about work-life balance— how does it look like when I join you as a graduate right now in an entry-level kind of role? What can I expect in terms of—

So standard working is 35 hours here in the UK. For graduate roles, we typically finish around lunchtime on a Friday, which is great. And I've always loved having that Friday afternoon. When my son goes to school in September, I am really, really looking forward to having that Friday afternoon back. So yeah, we have 35 hours over that week and a very flexible working and hybrid model. So we offer 60% in office and 40% at home, and that 60% is not fixed, so it can be flexible. Some teams decide with their management, we want to be here on a Tuesday because everyone's here on Tuesday, but it's really, really flexible. Absolutely flexibility in terms of those days, there's no restrictions on that, which I think is really, really valuable, particularly if you've got caregiving responsibilities or you have other things that you have on certain days, you've got that flex to be able to do that.

Yeah. And I mean, for people who are actually interested in applying to Airbus or who have considered that, From your perspective, what are some core values that you look for when it comes to new hires? What are the core values that they should share?

We spoke about this just before the podcast started, actually, but yeah, teamwork. Teamwork is a really big value. Airbus aircraft, or aircraft generally, are very complex with complex supply chains and parts coming from different countries. So if we look to the UK, Our wings are produced in North Wales, then we have the fuselage created in France, the empennage, the tail section, is in Spain, and then everything comes together again back in Toulouse, in Toulouse and other sites, but our final assembly line. So that involves international teamwork to be able to make that happen, and so being able to work as a team, being able to demonstrate teamwork and and have that kind of mindset is really, really, really key. So I think teamwork is the main one. Another value that we look for is integrity, really being, you know, that is a really key value. It's a really supportive culture, and you'll see that as a graduate coming in or someone who's applying for a job on platforms like Handshake, the people who are coming back to you are going to be year 1 grads or year 2 grads because they want to help other grads come into the, into the business as well. So there is a kind of culture and philosophy of helping one another and connecting one another. We're an incredibly international community, and I think we speak nearly 140 languages as one company. So there's a— it's a really dynamic place to work.

Amazing. In terms of your hiring strategy, do you have any target universities or locations that usually look at?

Here in the UK or globally?

Maybe for both, maybe in the UK and then also.

So we work quite closely with Cranfield University. They're a huge aerospace hub here in the UK and I don't know when this is going out, but yesterday they just signed a £69 million, or they've got £69 million worth of funding to help develop their hydrogen research program and that is That's going to be really important for us as we try to transition into new propulsion technologies, moving away from what we use today into hydrogen technology and having a more sustainable aviation system in the future. So Cranfield's a big partner. We also work with a range of different universities and schools around around the UK, and then most recently we launched something more for primary school children, but in schools around Stevenage, where we have our defence and space sites, a program called We Build It Better, which you guys are probably too young to have had this, but when I was younger, we didn't have a library at our school.

Okay.

And a and a bookmobile used to arrive. No way! A truck with a library on it. And it was the most exciting thing as a child to have a library suddenly appear, like a magic truck full of books.

Wasn't an ice cream truck more exciting?

I didn't— as a kid, yeah, I actually, I think I found the library— the novelty of this incredible truck arriving with all these books. And what we've tried to do is in schools that maybe are a little bit more disadvantaged and don't don't have access to design and technology tools and equipment, we partner with an organization called We Build It Better who bring in a kind of a toolbox of engineering experiences for children to be able to build and get an understanding of STEM.

Amazing.

And that outreach at that level is helping them make choices when they go to university to say, oh, actually, no, I can I can do an engineering degree, I could do a chemical engineering degree, I could do a degree in cryogenics that perhaps they wouldn't have considered before.

Usually that's the case.

Yeah. And particularly in areas where it's a little bit more— there's more disadvantaged economically or socially, then we were trying to correct that and fix that misalignment. Yeah.

Interesting. Well, look, our producer is telling us to come to an end. It's been so fun to talk to you because I usually, you know, I have my questions mapped out and structured, but we dove straight into just the conversation. Is there anything else you'd like to share about Airbus that could be exciting for current students or graduates maybe who are looking at that company?

Watch out September, our new cohort for our new graduate program opens. So keep your eyes peeled in Handshake. We'll be reaching out to you then. A lot of opportunities this year, a lot of growth and a lot of international opportunities as well.

Cool. Amazing. Well, it was great talking to you, Mark. Thanks so much. And maybe I'll see you in Toulouse on the Airbus site one day.

Brilliant. Thank you so much.

Cheers.