Aerospace Firm Pratt & Whitney To Hire 250 More Employees in SG
Updated: Oct 13, 2021
American aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney recently announced that it would hire an additional 250 employees in Singapore, with more roles becoming available in 2022.
The company said on 11 October 2021 that the job openings are part of its efforts to prepare itself to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the aviation industry.
Most of the job openings consist of workforce technicians and production associates like maintenance technicians, repair technicians and inspectors. There are also white-collar jobs in the mix, such as engineers, material handlers and supervisors.
Tim Cormier, Pratt & Whitney's vice president of aftermarket operations in the Asia-Pacific region, said that the company started hiring people about two months ago with walk-in interviews and recruitment fairs. He also said that the company also reached out to various universities and institutions of higher learning to recruit students who are graduating this year directly.
Cormier also added that Pratt & Whitney would be stepping up its recruitment drive in China to add more staff in its engine centre in Shanghai, but claimed that its largest hiring strength is currently in Singapore.
Pratt & Whitney was reported to have laid off at least 400 employees at most of its Singaporean facilities in August 2020 to cut costs and staffing as global air travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company said at the time that they considered the retrenchment of its employees as a last resort but ultimately found it necessary to do so, despite the difficulty of giving such an announcement. It hoped that it could recover as soon as possible to hire back its employees.
Cormier said that the recruits would be filling up the roles left by the retrenched employees and taking on new roles in the company. He also added that the company has to do some volume-related hiring, "which would lend itself to bringing back some of the employees, or at the very least, some of the same skill sets that we have".
When asked if the layoffs in 2020 was a hasty decision since the company was looking to hire again this year, Cormier answered that it wasn't, saying that the company was acting on "the best forecasts" it had in that time period while citing the industry's 80% decline in 2020.
"And when we look at the overall recovery, we're still on the same trajectory that overall as a company and overall as an industry we've been on all along, which is a recovery to pre-pandemic utilisation by 2024," Cormier added.
The recruitment drive of Pratt & Whitney may be part of the overall recruitment drive of aerospace companies in Singapore.
Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng recently said that various aerospace companies in the country are looking to recruit around 1,000 positions over the next two years, which would fall in many areas concerning digital services, autonomous technologies.
Aside from Pratt & Whitney, GE Aviation has announced that it has 200 job openings in 2021 and is looking to recruit people to fill these positions. Singapore Aero Engine Services is also looking for new employees for its growing maintenance, repair and overhaul operations, with 170 openings available.
Written by John Paul Joaquin