Clay Lacy Aviation

Christina Baker is Director of Talent Acquisition at Clay Lacy Aviation, bringing experience in recruitment, relationship management, and workforce strategy. With a background spanning entertainment and aviation, she focuses on building strong teams through meaningful candidate experiences, talent development, and human-centered hiring practices.

I came up through the entertainment industry in roles where relationship management, discretion, and delivering exceptional experiences weren’t niceto-haves. They were the job. That world taught me something I’ve carried ever since: people, trust, and reputation are often a company’s most valuable assets. Eventually, I realized those same instincts translated directly into talent acquisition.

When I moved into aviation, first commercial, then private, the stakes became even clearer. In private aviation, every hire touches operational performance, safety, client experience, and company reputation. Whether you’re placing a pilot, a maintenance technician, or a cabin attendant, technical qualifications and human fit both matter. There’s no faking it in this industry.

My approach has shifted a lot over the years. Early on, I was focused on speed. Fill the role, support the operation, move on. Speed still matters, but it’s one variable now, not the whole equation. At some point, I had to learn how to have a different conversation with leadership. The pressure to fill fast is real and I understand it. But when speed is the only metric on the table, organizations end up making expensive mistakes and restarting the process six months later. The real conversation is about quality of hire, retention, and what it actually costs to get it wrong. Time to fill is a lagging indicator. It tells you how fast you moved, not whether you moved in the right direction. The leaders who understand that shift tend to make better decisions about where to invest in their hiring infrastructure, and they stop being surprised when a fast hire becomes a fast exit.

“Candidates who don’t get the job still remember how the conversation went. Candidate experience is not just a hiring metric, it becomes part of your employer brand.”

Workforce planning, candidate experience, employer brand, retention… these aren’t separate concerns. They’re all in motion at the same time, and the best talent acquisition leaders hold all of it without dropping any of it.

The candidates we’re trying to reach have changed too. Compensation is table stakes. People are evaluating leadership, culture, flexibility, and whether a company actually invests in its people. They’re forming those opinions before they ever accept an offer, based on how they were treated during the process. Candidates who don’t get the job still remember how the conversation went. That’s not a soft concern. That’s brand. And in niche industries like aviation, word travels fast. These communities are smaller than people think, and a poor candidate experience doesn’t stay private for long. The same pilots, technicians, and specialists you passed on today are talking to the ones you want to hire tomorrow. I’ve seen companies unknowingly close doors they didn’t even know were open because no one was paying attention to what the experience felt like from the other side. A simple audit of your candidate touchpoints, where communication goes silent, where the process drags, where rejections feel like disappearing acts, will tell you more about your employer brand than any engagement survey.

Consistency and communication matter more than most organizations realize, especially in fast- moving operational environments. Aviation doesn’t slow down for hiring. Without structure and clear accountability, you lose candidates, frustrate hiring managers, and create confusion that’s hard to walk back. At the same time, rigidity doesn’t work either because no two situations are exactly alike. The goal is a process that’s consistent enough to be trusted and flexible enough to be useful.

I’ve also seen firsthand what happens when organizations genuinely invest in internal mobility and mentorship. People don’t just want a job. They want to feel seen, supported, and given room to grow. Some of the most meaningful moments in my career have come from recognizing potential in someone that a resume alone never would have surfaced. A resume is a record of what someone has already done, usually within constraints they didn’t choose. It doesn’t always show you what someone is capable of when they’re given the right environment and the right support. The talent acquisition leaders and hiring managers who have learned to look past the document and into the person tend to build stronger, more loyal teams. That instinct is a skill, and it’s one worth developing intentionally.

The organizations that will win on talent are the ones that resist the temptation to let technology do all the heavy lifting. AI will keep streamlining the administrative side of recruiting, and that’s genuinely useful. But in industries built on trust and specialized expertise, whether you’re sourcing crew in Los Angeles or building ops teams across multiple continents, the human connection still closes the deal. The future belongs to teams that can do both.