In most stations, there's a Crew Lounge where you can hire crew members. These are only helpful if you have TWO fighters on board (since you'll be flying one). Once you have enough credits that you really don't care, you can hire them, then fire them.
Crew members take a cut from every mission EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT THERE, so you don't need fighters to work toward these, just hire three crew and do missions until this pops. Better pilots take a bigger cut, so hire 3 experts (you need to spend money on them anyway), and you'll be giving them 36% of your mission pay.
Once this pops, fire them. You don't need them to eat into your profits.