Talent Management

From cockpit to corporate: How this commercial pilot charted a path to HR leadership

December 17, 2025
www.ETHRWorld.com
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Satyajit M Menon, Global Head - People Experience, Innovaccer /> From navigating the skies as a commercial pilot to steering organisational culture, <a href=”https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/trends/leadership/from-cockpit-to-corporate-how-this-commercial-pilot-charted-a-path-to-hr-leadership/captionrendered=”1″ data-src=”https://etimg.etb2bimg.com/photo/125288150.cms” height=”442″ https:=”” loading=”eager” src=”https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/images/default.jpg” width=”590″></img>Satyajit M Menon, Global Head – People Experience, Innovaccer, brought a unique blend of adventure, vision and expertise into his corporate role when he shifted his career to HR. Over the course of his over 20-year HR career, Menon has worked at PeopleStrong, Snapdeal, Fidelity International, Lehman Brothers Services India and GE Capital.</p> <p>Aviation taught Menon to take calculated risks and back them up with contingency plans. He says one of the most underrated features of aviation is overcommunicating. “There is no room for assumptions while flying the planes. You can’t say ‘I understood’ when the air traffic controller reads you the instructions. You have to read back all those instructions without any errors and confirm. I always apply this learning in my corporate life too. I make sure that everybody is on the same page in terms of understanding aspects. Also, if I was not clear about something, I had no shame in telling people that, “I didn’t understand this. Can you please teach this?” he shares.</p> <p>“A fear of failure and a general hesitation are completely out of my DNA. When I try to experiment with something new in the corporate world, I have never had this general fear that I might risk losing my job if this initiative fails. Because here it’s not a matter of ‘life or death.’ Whereas in flying it was. Any sort of failure can lead to the crashing of the plane and my death. Anything before that was always experimental,” Menon says.</p> <p>“Precision, preparation, communication and integrity are very important in aviation. You can hear these terms in the corporate world as well. In fact, the corporate world has borrowed a lot of terminology used in aviation. You even hear startups saying, ‘We are that kind of company where we are building a plane and we’re flying it,” he adds.</p> <p>Menon started flying commercial planes at the age of 18, upon receiving the pilot’s license. “I got to do a lot of aerobatics, perform manoeuvres and stunts at a very young age. It’s so ironic that I could fly a plane before I learned to drive a car or ride a bike. During my academy days, I would be dependent on somebody to take me around on the road, whereas the sky was completely okay for me!” he says.</p> <p>It was the 1986 Tom Cruise film ‘Top Gun’ that gave wings to Menon’s dream of becoming a pilot. Nine-year-old Menon was captivated by the depiction of Air Force heroism and aviation prowess in the movie, which inspired him to join the Flying Club in Indore after his twelfth grade. Elaborating on his preparation to join the club, he shares, “First, you need to get a student pilot license, fly a stipulated number of hours, qualify for written exams to get trained for a private pilot license, and finally, pursue a commercial pilot license.”</p> <p>Menon wasn’t much interested in flying passenger planes. It was the terrain that excited him to fly. He loved flying above valleys and jungles. He flew for short documentaries, ferrying politicians for election campaigns, and performing stunt sequences for the movies. At times, even a cameraman would accompany me on the flight to take shots, as there were no drones in those days. “In the case of commercial flying, contracts are signed with companies for a six-month period to take up short-term projects,” he says.</p> <p><b>Flying adventures</b></p> <p>Menon’s flying experiences were filled with adventures. One time, he had to do an unexpected landing when just the left wheel of the plane was rolling away on the runway! It came off from the undercarriage of the plane, while the rest of the wheels were locked. Another day, a few buffalo walked onto the runway at the time of landing. “That was my first night flight. The airport was partially shut by then. As it wasn’t a prominent airport, even the checking wasn’t foolproof. Adding to that, the plane I flew had limited light projection. If I hadn’t paid proper attention, I would have easily run into the buffalo or skidded the plane into a ditch. Thankfully, none of that happened, and I could safely land the plane without much damage,” Menon shares.</p> <p>According to Menon, flying is about compliance and doing the right thing. “Your integrity is probably the aspect that comes first. You cannot fudge numbers or give out wrong readings. Back then, you had to share a flight plan (on where you go, at what speed, and height) and submit it to the Air traffic controllers in the tower a day before the flight. Now, there are flight dispatchers to manage those things. There were no elevators, and you had to climb 12 floors, get the plan cleared, and come back. The right research is important because even one mistake could cancel the flight. You cannot just randomly say, ‘I’m flying somewhere between 100 kilometres and 150 kilometres per hour. You have to accurately convey the exact spot in the direction that you’re flying,” he says.</p> <p>“You have to be multitasking all the time. We had a flight computer, which was basically a dial with a scale, and it had to be operated with both hands. That would help you calculate the direction, temperature, wind speed, and flight speed (It’s all computerised today). In those times, you were just provided a physical map, which was twice the size of a regular map. I would place the map on my lap to cross-check the locations while flying. Most times, the lakes or rivers that you would be looking for might have dried up because of the summer. As a young pilot, you can get confused. At the same time, you’ll be communicating with the ATC and answering their questions. Now, there are GPS and digital maps to manage those things,” he adds.</p> <p>He further shares that you’re not supposed to show tension on your face. “My instructor used to sit on my right side, and if he saw any bit of stress on my face, he would get absolutely angry. I had to make sure that I was calm under pressure, and I knew what I was doing. It’s not that easy for a 16-to-17-year-old boy,” Menon says.</p> <p><b>What led him to leave flying behind?</b></p> <p>Menon was into flying for about six years before transitioning into a management profile. It was the market breakdown that urged Menon to leave his flying career. “While the aviation sector boomed in the ’90s, rising maintenance costs were gradually affecting the commercial flying industry. That prompted me to explore a different career path,” he says.</p> <p><b>Exploring random jobs initially</b></p> <p>Menon attempted a bunch of jobs before becoming an HR professional, which is not even in his CV! He believes in the dignity of any labour. “You can either accept that it’s fate and continue believing that your career is finished, or you can try and figure out your own capacity on what all you can do. All I had was the ability to communicate, lots of ideas, and I was passionate about my work, and it could be any work,” he says.</p> <p>While living in his native town, Kochi, Menon happened to see a random advertisement and went to the interview venue. “I had a horrible CV as I had never written a CV in my entire life. Looking at my CV, they said, ‘You have a completely different background. Why are you even applying here?’ I gave them the story that the market is really bad, and I wanted to pivot to something else. They said they could offer me the role of a call centre executive, as my communication skills were good,” he says.</p> <p>“I didn’t know what that meant. I asked them, “What do I have to do?” They explained that I won’t be called Satya in the role, and my job was to talk to American customers (either on the credit card process or sales process). Though I agreed to sign up, I didn’t hear back from them even after three months. When I enquired, they told me, “Sorry, we can’t shortlist you as you are overqualified for the role.” I asked them, “What do you mean by overqualified? I don’t even have a graduation.” They replied, “No, you are a trained pilot. So, transitioning to a call-centre job is really odd. But we have an opening for the HR role. If you want, you can apply for that,” Menon adds.</p> <p>Hearing that, Menon packed his bags, told his parents, and headed to Hyderabad. Later on, he had picked some random sales jobs where he sold SIM cards and corporate accounts at BPL Mobile. He worked at another Japanese firm that used to sell magnetic mattresses. “The theory behind that mattress was that if you sleep on it, you essentially don’t get ailments like arthritis. I honestly think it’s a scam! But it was just so much fun,” he says.</p> <p>Menon also contracted with Air India for three months to ferry all the Hajj pilgrims from Kochi to Jeddah. His job was to ensure the passenger experience from takeoff to landing was seamless. His role was a query and mediator, and interpreter, in case they wanted to actually speak in Malayalam. “The age group of people on the flight was essentially 60 to sometimes even 80. You need to be highly patient with them. In fact, I enjoy being an age chameleon. If you put me in a room, I can easily have a nice conversation with a 90-year-old person or a two-year-old child,” Menon shares.</p> <p><b>Big break in corporate career</b></p> <p>Menon likes to call himself a very late bloomer. The risk he took in making sure that he learned from the leaders, his function, and what the corporate world is all about, helped him a long way. Getting to work at GE was the biggest break for Menon in his corporate journey. I was a rookie when I joined them in their HR team. I started off by managing their university relations and campus placements. But what excited me was working with great leaders and gaining a lot of knowledge. And I knew that eventually I would catch up if I worked here for three to four years. I could accumulate a lot of knowledge on HR, on organisations, and on how to manage culture, and I would become a better professional. The first four years were very tough, but the next five years were probably the best. And, the next ten years after that were even better. It just got better and better with every year passing,” he says.</p> <p>The biggest challenge that Menon faced initially was not being an HR person to begin with. “The room was full of very intelligent and smart folks who were highly educated, whereas I barely had a degree in my hand at that time. But what I had was passion and curiosity. I would never shy away from giving a good idea to the team,” he says.</p> <p>“A lot of people obviously would think, ‘He hasn’t done anything in HR, and he is giving suggestions on how to manage retention, performance management, etc. I felt that my biggest advantage was that I came from a non-HR background. I used to talk to employees more than I would talk to my own team. I got a better understanding of what we could do as an HR function for people,” Menon says.</p> <p>A few projects that put Menon at the top map in the firm were:</p> <p>The firm was interacting only with students during campus recruitments (in 2001), and there were a lot of dropouts during that process. It was Menon’s suggestion not to target the students, but to target the parents. “Because at that age, you will listen to what your mother and father tell you. I put forward that we should have a proper conversation with the parents and meet them if it is possible, maybe do a little bit of a town hall, call them over to the Office, and give an orientation about what GE is, what careers their kids are going to have, etc. The biggest challenge was that most of them were joining the night shift. Asking parents to leave their kids in a cab for the night shift and come back at like six or seven in the morning was literally impossible at that time,” he says.</p> <p>“The only thing that we could sell to these parents was that their children were in safe hands. We also elaborated on what their training would look like, and gave them plenty of examples of some of the successful people in the company who started very young and today are leaders. We were able to convert about 85 per cent of those campus graduates into joining us. That was a very big success to start off with and put me on the map, even as a rookie,” Menon adds.</p> <p>Menon’s other effort was in the employee referral programme. He was able to push the referral rates from 16 to 60 per cent on a month-on-month basis by emphasising the referral programmes to employees (this talk was missing before). “I tried educating and encouraging them to refer more candidates. I talked to the team leaders to motivate their team to refer more people,” he says.</p> <p>His other project was to figure out ways to retain employees, as the attrition was high at that point. “Creating an exit interview structure and making sure that our dashboards and analytics reflected the employee sentiments actually helped the leadership make some smart decisions,” he says.</p> <p>The dashboard revealed:</p> <ul> <li>The <b>top reasons for leaving</b> (compensation, manager, culture, growth, workload).</li> <li><b>Trend analysis</b>: Spikes in attrition after org changes, policy shifts, or team restructures.</li> <li><b>Department/role patterns</b>: Analysing the functions that had higher turnover.</li> <li><b>Manager insights</b>: Input from the leader/manager to spot areas that need coaching.</li> <li><b>Tenure analysis</b>: When people are most likely to exit (e.g., </li> <li><b>Demographics</b>: Turnover trends by location, gender, or age group (if relevant).</li> <li><b>Engagement themes</b>: What employees consistently valued or struggled with?</li> </ul> <p>A short survey is sent to the employee to gather baseline insights. The discussions in the exit interview are around sharing a thank note to the employee, explaining the purpose of the discussion (to learn about things that are good or not good), and getting into the core discussion touching the aspects such as:</p> <ul> <li>The reasons for leaving (push & pull factors).</li> <li>Feedback on work environment & culture, growth & development opportunities, processes, tools and support. </li> <li>Retention check: “What could we have done differently?”</li> </ul> <p>The <b>reflections</b> involved inviting suggestions for improvement, highlighting what they valued most, and sharing two-way feedback with them.</p> <p>The <b>closure</b> involved documenting insights that feed into trends, sharing follow-up actions internally for leaders & HRs, and offering an alumni network/ongoing connection.</p> <p>“I learned a great deal. I started taking on opportunities where I could lead HR for maybe 150 to 200 people. It was a good practice match for me then, because I would get to do recruitment, business partnering, operations, etc. Although it was a small size of headcount, the learning and exposure were just too good,” Menon says.</p> <p><b>Completed his graduation while working</b></p> <p>Menon says, “I was so proud of what I had done that my ego never let me do a graduation. I joined my first job as a contractor. And, to be fair, I just wanted to have fun initially. My salary or my job title didn’t even matter at that time. Everybody was asking me if I was crazy to choose a job that could just earn Rs 4,000 to 5,000 per month in the initial years, after making lakhs of rupees from flying.”</p> <p>His thought was, ‘I am a Pilot, and what value would a course, be it BA or BCom, bring me?’ I believe that graduation has no value in the real world unless you’re doing a very specialised course related to your profession, like engineering, medicine, etc. Even my dad told me a hundred times to pursue a degree. He often used to say, ‘You’re not flying commercially now. Your career can only grow if you have a graduation, or a post-graduation degree if you’re going to choose a management role.”</p> <p>Doing a graduation was the least of Menon’s concerns until one senior HR person in his team took him to his cabin and told him, “You’re working very hard. Everybody has good things to say about you, but you’re still a contractor. Wouldn’t you want to be like a full-time employee and then get the benefits that they solely avail?”</p> <p>Menon never thought about his career that way, because he never looked at it from a monetary point of view, as his family was decently well off and didn’t have to make ends meet. “Still, I didn’t depend on my parents for money. I used to somehow manage to make it myself,” he says.</p> <p>“It was a senior leader in the firm who explained to me the benefits of being a full-time employee versus a contractor. He played a very crucial role in giving me a lot of financial knowledge on what a salary structure is, how it helps, where you can invest, and how you should invest. That conversation opened my eyes. That’s when I went back to my dad and said, “You know what? I think you’re right. Let me actually get a graduation,” he adds.</p> <p>Menon requested the senior management if some arrangements could be made so that he could do a graduation through correspondence without leaving the job, which they agreed to. “I had to manage a crazy work schedule and also make time to study and write exams for the next three years. I had my graduation degree three years later. I can tell you that that felt like my biggest accomplishment ever, because I never thought I could study and work at the same time,” he says.</p> <p><b>Initial challenges in the corporate career</b></p> <p>As a commercial pilot, there was no concept of team; everything was centred on his safety and that of the plane. When Menon transitioned to corporate, he took time to appreciate the concept that individual success is not as important as collective success. “A lot of my mentors and leaders that I work with helped me instil this. My initial thought was, ‘Why should I be reprimanded when other team members aren’t doing well? GE’s organisational culture looks at collective success and collective failure, which means ‘if we sink, we sink together and when we swim, we swim together.’</p> <p>According to Menon, one of the least expected challenges of his HR career was that he didn’t understand the concept behind a candidate not showing up every time after they confirmed the joining date. “I thought everybody was like me. I didn’t join a company (at least initially) because I wanted more money. I joined because I could learn more and work with smart people and then become successful. Later on, I understood that every person and job is very different. I made considerable efforts to learn why they do so; it could be because the project may not be exciting enough, or they don’t like the organisation’s setup as much, or because the competitor firms were poaching the candidates, etc,” he says.</p> <p><b><a href=Early life

Menon studied in a boarding school from the age of six, as his father worked in Djibouti, East Africa. “I had a very broad cultural exposure and a good context about the country. I used to travel by plane on my own as a six-year-old child as an unaccompanied minor. I changed a lot of schools from nursery to class 12. I was born in Bombay and did my schooling till class 2nd there. My class 3rd was in Africa, 4th & 5th were in Bangalore, 6th & 7th were in Kerala, 8th & 9th were in Pune, 10th & 11th were in Chennai, and 12th was in Kota. I was also the school captain in my class 11th and class 12th!” he says.

“Even in the firms I worked for, I was the first person they would ship if they wanted someone to go to locations, be it Calcutta or Rajasthan. It is very easy for me to strike a relationship with people of literally any state. I like to learn new languages, and I like to understand them better,” he adds.

Commenting on his frequent school changes, Menon shares, “My dad was working all by himself in Djibouti in a new environment. English wasn’t even the primary language there. He was also from Kerala and moved to this place. I think he knew French and Arabic more than he knew English. My mother was a school teacher, and she was working with the American Embassy. We understood that if my mother went and lived with him, it would be much easier for my dad to manage.”

“Most often, my parents would want to come back to India and settle down in a city, but they just couldn’t figure out which city was the best to kind of settle in at that time. But in that process, I would just keep getting moved across India. It wasn’t just the changing cities and schools, even my board was changing, from the State Board to CBSE, to ICSE,” he says.

“During the summer vacations, my mother would sit next to me, write my notes, and teach me a lot of stuff. My first semester exams would be absolute bangers, and I would get nothing less than 90 per cent. But the second semester would be an absolute disaster. Again, I look at it in a positive light, where I feel that it made me more independent,” Menon adds.

Menon further says, “I was very adaptable as a child. I could have created a big scene, and could have started crying, saying ‘I want my parents back. I can’t live without them, etc.’ But something in me also understood that I shouldn’t do that. He has gone there to build his career and make a name for himself, and earn money so that we can have good lives. Maybe, because of all these experiences as a child, I was able to make friends faster. I was able to be comfortable in an unknown setup. Even if you throw me in a jungle and ask me to survive there, I will survive!”

Unwinding

According to Menon, the mind and the body have a crucial role to play. “I try my best to give attention to both those aspects. I play sports. I like watching football. If time permits, I go and watch a lot of concerts, be it performing arts or music. My creative side is more tuned to that. Also, I enjoy going to the gym every day to stay fit,” he says.

“I enjoy traveling and meeting different kinds of people in different countries. I would have easily been to about 18 countries. I had the advantage because my parents were living abroad. Because of that, I had the opportunity to see a lot of the world with them. I enjoyed traveling so much that I took it even in my adult life, like once a year, I would explore a new place,” he adds.

Recently, Menon did scuba diving in Thailand during the extended weekend. “I was actually there for a vacation, and scuba diving was not even on my mind. I thought about that one morning when I woke up. I called up a few scuba diving places, and they gave me the details about the package. I just went there and did it. I dived like 20 to 30 metres under the ocean. And I assure you that under water is the most beautiful place in the world,” he says.

“Now, I am thinking of taking up an instructor course for sure someday! I’ll keep doing stuff like this whenever I miss flying. What’s life anyway without any adventures or challenges? I can continue working on PowerPoint or an Excel sheet any day. But life is much more than that. Every human has a child-like side to them. Every person should ask themselves what their inner child wants,” he adds.

Menon further goes on, “Have you heard of Silverback gorillas? They’re amazing creatures who are extremely intelligent. The thing is, you have to be a very submissive person when you are with them. There has been an ongoing debate for a long time on social media about ‘100 men versus a Silverback gorilla: Who will survive?’ It would be an enriching experience to meet a Silverback gorilla. My next adventure is that!”

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