Careers in Aviation with Tim Genc

In this episode, Pierre Michiels interviews Tim Genc, an Associate Professor of Aviation at the College of DuPage. Tim shares his unique journey into aviation and his experience building the college’s aviation program. In the interview, they discuss the wide range of career paths within aviation beyond piloting, common misconceptions about entering the field, the skills and mindset needed for success, and how students can gain exposure through networking, events, and hands-on learning opportunities. They also highlight how the program prepares students for both flying and non-flying roles while emphasizing career readiness and industry connections. After listening to this episode, we hope you have a better understanding of the diverse opportunities and pathways available within the aviation industry. 

Full episode transcript can be found on the episode page. Below is a general timestamp summary.  

00:00 – 03:00 | Introduction & Guest Background 
Pierre introduces the episode and welcomes Tim, who shares his unconventional path into aviation, transitioning from discovering a passion for flying to a long career in instruction and eventually higher education. 

03:00 – 06:00 | Breaking Into Aviation 
The conversation explores common misconceptions about entering aviation, including the belief that military experience is required, and highlights how the field is becoming more accessible through civilian pathways and education programs.  

06:00 – 08:30 | Career Paths in Aviation 
Tim outlines the wide variety of roles in aviation—beyond pilots—including maintenance, air traffic control, and business roles, while emphasizing the growing global demand for aviation professionals. 

08:30 – 12:00 | Skills & Getting Involved 
They discuss key traits for success, such as discipline, teamwork, and strong study habits, along with actionable ways to explore the field through organizations, events, and networking opportunities.  

12:00 – 18:00 | Program Overview & Student Preparation 
Tim explains how the College of DuPage aviation program prepares students through hands-on learning, exposure to multiple career tracks, and professional skill development including interviewing and networking.  

18:00 – 24:00 | Career Readiness & Final Advice 
The episode concludes with advice on building connections, exploring different pathways, and starting early engagement in aviation, reinforcing the importance of persistence and curiosity in career development. 

Resources Discussed: 

• College of DuPage Aviation Program 
• Contact Tim Genc: genct@cod.edu 

Listeners in the College of DuPage community can visit our website. All other listeners are encouraged to view the resources of their local community college, WIOA training programs, or other local support centers.

Send us YOUR Listener Questions at careerpodcast@cod.edu

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to the Career Ready podcast. Learn about resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn, interviewing, and all things you need to be career ready with the Career Service Center at College of DuPage. I'm your host, Pierre Michiels, for today's episode. In addition to learning about resources and the job search process. Important part of being career ready is understanding career paths to help us explore the field of aviation. I have Tim Genc with me, who works as an associate professor in aviation here at College of DuPage. Tim, thanks for joining me for today's episode. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you because the aviation programs a little bit newer. I'm not too familiar with it. Sure. So I'm going to be learning with our listeners here. Perfect. Awesome. Well, I'm going to be talking all about it. So this is going to be it's going to work well together. But before we get into the program, I want to get to know you a little bit more. So can you just start off with a quick introduction or as we like to call it, your elevator pitch? Sure. Absolutely. You're asking a pilot to talk about being a pilot. There's there's no shortage of words. You know, I kind of got into aviation on an accident. I, I there's no one on my family who was a professional pilot. I didn't grow up wanting to be a professional pilot. I literally tripped into it and found that was an industry that I absolutely loved. So my goal was to one day go to the airlines, but I the more time I spent building my experience to become an airline pilot, the more I realized the teaching side of aviation was more interesting to me. So I ended up spending about 20 years in flight training, working as an instructor, and as kind of a higher level instructor, and then running various offices and getting people into aviation. I liked it. I finally did go to the airlines in about 2016, 2017, not to fly, but to run the pilot recruiting department for one of the United Express carriers. I learned more about the airlines, started working for a career consultancy company, helping pilots find jobs and talking to young people about getting into aviation. And I love that. And in January of 2022, the opportunity presented itself to come here to the College of DuPage and put the aviation program together. So it's it was accident after accident after accident. If you had told me ten years ago, you're going to be an aviation college professor, I don't think that would have made a lot of sense. But but here I am I am is my career. It's my vocation. It's what I love. But I'm a I'm a strange individual that loves aviation from outside a cockpit. And I'm completely happy being in front of a classroom. Okay, well, I'm excited you're here. Not just on this episode, but here at College of DuPage building up this program as you were telling your story. Create a question I have for you because you said that you're a little bit of an oddball. You got into this despite not having family or connections to it. So I'm just curious, does this tend to be a field where families like get into it or it does? There are a lot of people that, you know, grandpa was a pilot. Uncle Jimmy was a pilot. You know, dad is a pilot. Mom is a pilot. Sister as a pilot. It's it's one of those industries that we touch it on a daily basis. Anyone that's ever ordered on Amazon, I think there's three packages on my porch right now has experienced aviation yet. It's one of those weird ones that how do you get into it is still kind of elusive. Still tons of myths out there. Everyone thinks that it has to be the military. It doesn't. So for that reason, we do see a lot of people getting into it who already have a connection. Our program, we've actually seen the opposite a lot. We've seen a lot of the people that have started in this program. They are first time aviators, not not in their family. They didn't know anyone. We've got some people that the first time they were ever in an airplane period was their first flight training lesson. So it is traditionally something where someone's following in someone else's footsteps okay. And that makes sense. I'm sure we'll get into this, but the field itself I think has a lot of barriers to entry. So if you have people to guide you, I've always heard, oh, you know, go into the Air Force, you know, do the military route and then you'll be able to become a pilot. Right. But, you know, through this program we're breaking down some of those barriers. We are. And if we look at the the airline industry 30 years ago, 80% of all the people that enter it were military trained, because that was just the way that it happened. And it's not to say the military is not a good way. It's just it's no longer the only and no longer what people refer to as the best way. Again, not a bad way. Now we're looking at about 85% of the people entering the industry are not military trained. So military does not have to be the way you do it. Again, you can, but the, the, the civilian route or what we call the general aviation route is still something that makes a lot of sense. And it's it's more available than some people would think. If you could find someone to translate everything you Google into English. I often will tell people, if you Google, how do I become a pilot and you survive that process? That's about 80% of the battle. Just finding all the information that's out there can be goofy. Yeah, well, as we're talking about it, it makes it sound like aviation is a pilot, but I'm sure that there's plenty more paths there. So absolutely. Yeah. On that I definitely can I mean, the I think the most visible part of aviation are the pilots. But the first thing to keep in mind is every airline or aviation business, whether it's private and business, aviation or charter and charters, kind of like the Uber of aviation, all of them are businesses. So there are tons of non aviation folk that work in the aviation industry. But apart from that, again pilots are one thing and pilots for airlines are also just one thing. There's private aviation. There's you being the personal pilot for a high net worth individual. There's you flying a charter aircraft, which again is kind of like Uber. And then as we get away from manned aviation, there's drone flying, there's air traffic control, there's maintenance. The people that really like to work with their hands, pilots break airplanes. That is one of our goals. So we need people to go ahead and fix those airplanes. The need for pilots right now globally is, is pretty big. Over the next 20 years, we need about 700,000 pilots to meet the the the needs in the industry to put that big number into perspective, there's currently 675,000 pilots in the FAS database. So in the next 20 years, we need to more than duplicate the entire pilot population. We need more maintenance personnel than we do pilots. Over the next 20 years, that number is closer to about 800,000 cabin crew. We need close to a million over the next 20 years to meet the needs for aviation air traffic controllers. Right now there forecast is 2000 and north per year for a long time. So whatever you want to do, if there's a cool factor to aviation, you can probably find something that is right up your alley that isn't flying an airplane for the airlines, that says, I work in the aviation industry. And there's one course that we offer on campus, Intro to Aviation, where that's the whole point of the course, day one. We say, here are all the different flying jobs that are out there. Day two, we say, here are the non-flying jobs that are out there to show people it is more than just flying airplanes for the airlines. Yeah, well, it's good to know that there is such a variety of ways to be working in the field. So just kind of thinking of that, right? We're looking at a broad scope here, of course, but just as our students or people are getting set to enter the field, do you identify or see common skills, strengths that they would have to be successful in the field and through the program? You know, yes. No. And maybe if we're talking specifically about the pilot side of things, there's this idea out there that aviation is Stem and it doesn't have to be. You do not have to be a math genius to be a pilot. You do not have to be a science genius to be a pilot. My background is theater, and I went into aviation. So while you don't have to be really good at math or science, you do have to be a good student to be successful in aviation there, especially on the flight side of things, there is a lot of discipline that goes into it, especially in our program. There's teamwork that goes into it. The people that we see who are successful in our program are the ones that, on day one, form study groups with the people that are around them and work together. They they're there all the time. They're seeking every free amount of help or education or training or tutoring they can, because while the information isn't difficult, it's remembering all of it right now when there's so many other things that are going on. So the people that are successful are the people that are one, they're good students and whatever it is a good mythology student, a good show choir student, a good band student, a good science student, someone who has good study skills is going to do good in aviation, someone that is going to do whatever it takes to get it done is a good student. Someone once told me, if you really want something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. An excuse. Don't go very far in aviation. So people really have to push to to be successful in aviation because it's different and peoples lives quite literally are on the line. Yeah. No, I think that's great to hear that. You could have so many different backgrounds that lead towards this. Right. And that, you know, obviously we're talking about aviation, but I think that's important for someone to think about for anything. Right. You know, theater. You've could have gone so many different routes outside of theater. Right. But you found something that you were passionate about. And being a good student, you were able to push yourself towards it. Definitely. It's it's a lot, but it's one of the things that I would say to get into aviation, there's got to be something a little wrong with you and it doesn't matter what it is, but there's there's a tiny little thing about you that's weird and that's goofy because aviation itself is is a strange, weird sort of profession. But I love it. Yeah. Well, as we talk about entering this strange world profession here, we have to think about getting exposure to it. Right. So what are different experiences, opportunities that you would recommend people seek out if they're thinking about getting into aviation, if they're in the program to better prepare themselves for that future next step? Sure. I'm going to answer it in kind of a backward, weird, very obvious way. How do you get involved in aviation? Get involved in aviation? There are tons of aviation special interest groups that are out there. Some of them are made around a particular demographic, but that doesn't mean that that is who you have to be to join it. Organizations like OBP, the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, Why Women in Aviation International, the 99 and other Women in Aviation group, NPA, National Gay Pilots Association, Pop, a professional Asian Pilots Association LPA Latino Professionals in Aerospace, AOPA aircraft known as Pilots Association, and so on and so on. I could we could alphabet soup the you know, into we're blue in the face. But there's tons of these organizations that sometimes they have very local, tiny social gatherings, and just about all of them have a huge annual expo. The next one that we've got coming up is in June. Professional Asian Pilots Association has their annual expo down in in Las Vegas, where you do not have to be a pilot and you do not have to be evasion or Pacific Islander descent to show up and just walk around. Everyone will be there. Just about every airline, every small airline, different companies, different schools, just to see what aviation is all about. Later in the summer up and we've got the largest aviation event in the World Experimental Aircraft Association. They're called EAA AirVenture. Most people just call it. But 650,000 people will go there over the course of a week. About 15,000 people will fly their personal aircraft in for it. But it's enormous. Get involved in aviation just to start learning how it works, and start talking to people that have been in aviation and get their help. There's a there's a joke in aviation. How do you know if there's a pilot at a party? And the answer is, don't worry, they'll tell you. And while that's a little bit of maybe a dig at pilots for maybe in a little bit arrogant, I think it speaks more to the passion they have for it. Pilots love talking to other people about getting into aviation. Every person out there probably is about two degrees away from meeting a pilot, a neighbor, a friend, their uncle's golf partner or something. And if you tell them I'm interested in some aspect of aviation pilot, air traffic control or otherwise, they will tell you all about it and they will tell you how they did it and how it was awesome. Or they will tell you how they did it and how it was the dumbest way they could have thought. And don't do it like I did it, but start talking to people. In aviation, we're in the electronic age. So many companies out there have Facebook pages and and LinkedIn pages, and there are different groups. There are aviation maintenance groups on social media. Just start getting involved somewhere. Go to your local small general aviation airport and just say, I'm interested in this. Where would I go? If you try to jump the fence, that's a problem. But going into the front door of anyone and talking to a receptionist at the desk, he or she will probably put you in touch with someone. But start learning what this is because it's more than flying airplanes. It's more than fixing airplanes. It's more than air traffic control. And there's no shortage of information that you can get from talking to people that have been there and done that. And just to clarify, right, as you're talking about this, you're not talking about, oh, they have to be a student to participate in these organizations, these events. You're just not at all doing it because of interest. Yes, absolutely. There are there are 12 and 13 year old kids that will go to this event with mom and dad. There are retired people that will go to this event. There are people that because it might be on their backyard, this is their version of the county fair. They just happen to have airplanes there. You don't have to be young to get involved into aviation. Some of them have retirement ages that are a little bit lower. But I think the oldest person I ever hired at the airlines was 62. After training, you have to retire at 65 as an airline pilot. After training, he had two years and it was the greatest two years of his life. Tons of career changers want to get into this, so there's no you don't have to be a student. You don't have to be an adult. You don't have to be a pilot. You don't have to want to be a pilot just to say, what? Tell me about this aviation thing. Whatever it is. Good. Good to know that there's a lot of ways to just be learning about it, be getting involved, becoming aware. But let's talk about okay, I've made the commitment. I want to be studying this. Right. So what are you doing? The program here at Cod to prepare students for the field. So the regardless of which direction you go, the flying track or the non-flying track were exposing you to the industry and to the knowledge and teaching you some of the things that you need with the pilot program. When you graduate, you are ready for an entry level position and aviation, which probably means flight instructor. To start building the hours you need to make application to the airlines. In the non-flying track, we're exposing you to a bunch of different aviation careers. I often say that this is an exploratory degree. At the end of the degree, you now know what you really want to do and you seek that direct schooling. So that's one of the things the I talked a little bit about the intro to aviation class, that while it doesn't have to be done in the first semester, I recommend that it is. And we've got people that just do that class. It's a one credit our class. It's a weird one because instead of me talking for 15 minutes a week for 16 weeks, we do it in the first two days of the semester, the first Friday 8 to 3, second Friday 8 to 3. And that course is done. And the whole purpose of it is this is this huge world called aviation. So we start there. Some of the other stuff we do is the we start treating them like industry professionals on day one, whether you are a mechanic or an air traffic controller or a pilot or a flight attendant, attendance and tardiness are huge things. People have to show up to our class, and some people that's a little bit of a learning curve, but this is what's going to be expected of them once they move on. So we start instilling that pretty quickly. Let's say one of the last things we do in the final semester, maybe the second to final semester of the program, there's of course, that's aviation career preparation. We teach them how to create an aviation resume, which is different from a normal resume. We teach them how to interview. We teach them how to dress for the interview. They have to wear their outfit. In a couple of classes ago, I brought in an iron and showed people how to iron a shirt. Because some of these skills aren't aren't as relevant anymore. Everyone's got wrinkle free shirts. The final in this course is they do an actual interview via zoom with an actual aviation recruiter in a field. It's in zoom. They're sitting at the front looking at that person, and everyone else in the class is watching it. So not only does every person experience one interview, everyone else in the class sees an interview from somebody else in there. So some of them go great, some of them don't go great, but that's fine. That doesn't depend on their they're great on the course or that as an influence. They're great in the course. But they get to see what is an aviation interview like. That's that's probably those are the things that we do is just try to expose them and encouraging them to get involved in aviation. Kind of like we mentioned before, join something, go to a meeting, go to a fly in and start talking to people. There was an event that was last Friday for a group that had a pilot job fair in the Chicago area, and we had a couple of our students show up. They're not ready to apply for a pilot job yet, but just to start talking to airlines, what are you looking for? What sets me apart? Why should I go into airline or why should I go private or business aviation? So we really try to expose them to as much as possible. So not only do they know what they want to do in aviation, they are best prepared for it. Yeah, no, I love hearing all of that because obviously you're an academic program. You're teaching them content about the field, but what you were just talking about went far beyond the content of the field, right? It's the exposure to the field, creating connections, networking that goes a long way outside of aviation. I'm sure it's true within aviation, but every program person I talk to, it's about the networking, building those connections. It is. It's huge. I mean, yes, it depends on what you know. You have to be a safe and competent pilot, but I've had friends that have come home from work on a Sunday from their job, and one of their former students says, send me your resume right now. And those that have done that three days later may have a job flying a jet. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny industry. And so networking and knowing people and being prepared for when that opportunity shows up is a huge part of being successful in it. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that that is a core part of the program is making them prepared for that next step, because a lot of times we don't think about the next step as part of the academic side. We just think of, okay, we're going to give you that knowledge and then you're going to have to go out and take that next step. But the program that you're building here, the aviation program at Cod, really incorporates the next step right into it. It does. It's got to it's an expensive program. So when they finish, we want them to know exactly where they're going and have a pretty good path to to moving into it. Yeah. So is there any other recommendations you would have for students, young professionals as they're just preparing for the field? I am going to maybe repeat some of the stuff we said before, which is get involved, find something, do a Google search on aviation events near me. Cavalcade of airplanes is kind of like a weekend flying event they have at Clough Airport at some point in the summer. Oshkosh, Wisconsin a couple of hours away. Just go go to the airport and walk into again a place that you're not restricted from, but walk in and say, tell me about this. Just start learning about it and know that there's so much information that's out there. I wish there was only one way to get into aviation, because that would make life so much easier. But it can be frustrating because there is not. Which means you have to look at all of these different options to figure out what it is you want to do. None of them are great for everyone. None of them are awful for everyone. Some of them are better for individuals, but aviation is kind of like going to a baseball game door. 1st May be better for you because you're in parking lot. A door 2nd May be better for somebody else because that's by the escalator. Door 3rd May be by the best hotdog place, but all of those doors give you the ability to enjoy the same great game. So there's so many ways to get into it. It doesn't have to happen right away. It's just at some point. But start looking and talking to people that have been there and done that and learn from them. Well, let's go ahead and land the plane on this one. Right. I see what you did there. So talking to people, right? Yes. People are maybe going to want to talk to you. So how can interested listeners contact you? Reach out to the program to learn more. Yes. You can call me right here at College of DuPage. 630933 2457 is my extension. You can email me. I'm going to pilot spell on my email address for you. Golf echo November Charlie Tango at cadet. You could email me usually, especially during the school year. I don't think we've set any up for the summer just yet, but like the second Monday or something of every month, we'll have an info session that we have. People come in, I'll talk a little bit about the program, but then I will just answer questions. I don't know what that schedule will be during the summer. I am actively teaching over the summer, so reach out to me and we will. We'll get together and we'll talk a little bit about it, whether that's on campus or whether that's at a local airport or something like that. And I'm happy just to talk about the program because, again, everyone is a little bit different and everyone's got different concerns, whether it's medical history or whether it's background or medications that they're on or the cost that goes into it, or I'm not a US citizen, is there a way that I can do this? I've lived all different ways of that. I've never been a military pilot, but I've been in the college aviation world. I've been in the outside college aviation world. I've been in the airline world. I'm not saying I'm smart about it. I'm just saying I've done a lot and can share a little bit of all that experience to try to start wading through the minutia on the swamp water. Well, I'm glad that you're here as a resource. You make yourself very accessible. We'll put the contact information in the show notes. So listeners look there for that information as well. Fantastic. I, I love having the chance to do it again. I love aviation not from the airplane. So the ability to talk to people about it and and help them. Great. And if that means telling them the college route is not for them. Absolutely. Because it isn't for everyone. There's there's a couple different ways to do it in every way. It's got its pros and cons, and I'd love to talk to everyone about that. All right. Well, thank you, Tim, for sharing all this great information. Not a problem. Thank you very much for having me. Like I said, talking about aviation, you do not have to ask me twice. Something I love doing. All right. Well, it was a great conversation. And for our listeners, there was no question in today's episode, however, if you have a question, you can submit it to Career Podcast at all on our social media at Career Center and you may hear answered in a future episode. Thank you to all our listeners, and special thanks to Tim for joining the Career Ready. We hope you now have a better understanding of the aviation field.