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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Engineering

They are talking about this topic: Experience & Credentials

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Many employers, particularly those in the Northwest and Central economic planning regions, speak of how rural locations affect hiring practices. Most say they prefer to hire locally because they believe local workers will stay longer. Many rural employers say it is difficult to recruit the talent they need from within their own region. Additionally, it is often difficult for them to compete with engineering salaries in the Twin Cities.

Employer Quote Region
"My personal view is that they're more likely to come back when they start raising kids themselves. We can get some of those 30-year-oldish, 35-year-oldish back here. We're having some success with that. Initially, out of school, they want to go and run with the big dogs downtown." Central
"It's a chicken and egg thing. We can't get the students here, so it really creates a battle when they can go to the cities and they've got options for hundreds of jobs, of businesses. The rural area here has a real struggle to tug them away." Central
"I'm still surprised with recent college grads' connection to home-base. When I was out to get my first job, I'd go wherever. You don't see that now. I think that's different than it may have been quite a few years ago, when you went wherever the job was." Central
"It's difficult because you have to have a job for that spouse as well. Also, on the flip-side, if someone is not family-oriented, they're going to ask, 'What do I do? What's my night life here in Willmar, Minnesota?' There isn't any. So, when you get someone from out-of-state Iowa that's been in a larger school, we're hearing that." Central
"You can find candidates, but they don't want to be in Nowhere, Minnesota. I think bringing kids that have left and gotten educated, gathering them back to our area is the biggest problem." Central
"I think the other part of recruiting people to rural areas is their spouses and whether there are job opportunities for them. I think the area sells itself if you go maybe a 150-mile radius. I think our area sells itself as family-oriented and nature and agriculture and all those kinds of things." Central
"We're finding similar results when trying to recruit. It comes down to location." Central
"Employer 1: We focus on the five-state area when we're recruiting: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Employer 2: I would agree with that.
Employer 3: We do, too."		 Central
"Local is better, if they've been in the area. But, really, that's kind of where we recruit from— the five state area. Certainly, we've gone further out than that but generally the five states." Central
"We have a few [out-of-state colleges] looking for us. That's worked to some degree. It seems as though the individuals that are going to South Dakota and North Dakota for school, they're interested in rural. It just appears that they're more interested in the rural." Central
"Just in the environment of doing the work that we do, one of the goals is to grow that talent here locally. So, what is it that industry is looking for that you're finding in another group of individuals that we're not actually producing in the state in terms of that talent and growing that skill?" Metro
"We're international, we're getting bigger. There are 20 universities across the country we recruit at. If we were to put all of our eggs in one basket on the Iron Range—there's not enough engineers being developed here for us. So, we have to go outside our region." Northeast
"It's just this whole concept of advanced learning, how can we fill the need here in this region and make this a destination, as opposed to someplace that people leave?" Northeast
"If you've not read the Georgetown study—it came out about a year ago—it's very good. It's a national perspective, and basically it identifies six states as the technology states that will require a higher level of education than the other states. Minnesota is one of them." Northeast
"For us, we hire a lot of people who don't necessarily have connections up here, and we've got enough of them now that they've formed their own network. It's trying to hook them up right away and introducing them to other people." Northeast
"I'm a graduate of [non-MnSCU college] for grad school. So, in part, it's a question of where students go when they're done. And that's the hard thing. I heard that Iowa and South Dakota's have done it, where they've tried to make these pushes to get people back to the rural communities. It's just a hard sell." Northeast
"There's no doubt, in our business, that mechanical is the most universal engineer." Northeast
"There are a lot of schools that have mechanical programs, but to find the electrical engineers in the numbers that we need them is tough. So [non-MnSCU college] is moving in the right direction. At our company, we recruit at 20 universities across the country, and [non-MnSCU college] is our number one school." Northeast
"The last two people we hired were engineers. One of them came from Stillwater and the other one was from Minneapolis. But one of the engineers has a wife from the Range, and he had moved to Hibbing a while ago for another job. Then, he came to us after a couple of years. And our assessment was, 'He has some ties to the Range, therefore the chances of him staying are better.'" Northeast
"So, what might be making us a little different up here in northern Minnesota versus southern Minnesota is that we have a tremendous need up here for technical and skilled work." Northeast
"In this industry, we're associated with the steel workers, who have negotiated some pretty good deals for themselves. I know that our wages aren't competitive with the Twin Cities, but if you throw in the fringe benefits—which include medical, dental, vision, 401Ks, and profit-sharing—there's no issue when it comes to attracting people because of the money and the benefit end of it. These are some of the best paying jobs in Minnesota. There was a statistic at [company] that, as an industrial classification, mining is the highest in the state. As we've been going out and telling our story, we have been quoting some numbers saying that the average Minnesota wage, for all occupations, is about $46,000. The average mining wage—and this is a benefit-loaded rate—is something like $72,000. As you dig down into the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data and you look at hard rock mining, that goes up another 18 to 20 percent. So these are not only jobs, these are really good, well-paying jobs." Northeast
"Most of our graduates would like to stay in the area locally. That's basically why they're here; they would like to stay in the area if they could. Now that may not happen right away. They may have a dream to move to the city for a few years, but then they will return. As a matter of fact, when we hire faculty and we take a look at the faculty, whether we hire them from Indiana or Florida or wherever, if you look back you find that they grew up in Minnesota, and they're returning after X number of years. So there is that pattern." Northeast
"Just by looking at the geography here, it strikes me that our communities up here are probably further from a four-year institution than other communities in the state. So, as kids are going to school, they're leaving here, with the exception of [non-MnSCU college]. I wonder: If there were more people graduating with baccalaureate degrees here in the area, people that had spent four years in the area, might there be a greater likelihood of keeping those people?" Northeast
"The number of students who are graduating in this area, even the total number of graduates, isn't enough to fill the anticipated need. So, that's one part—we've got to keep those graduates here. A lot of our recent hires have been people who are from here, but we've got to draw people from outside the area, too." Northeast
"Can I quote one statistic I heard the other day that absolutely shocked me? I worked at a company and of the 1,400 people who worked there, 85 percent of the employees stayed in this area, 85 percent! It wasn't this mass exodus we had back in the 80s when there were layoffs galore and everybody was taking off to other parts of the country. Eighty-five percent stayed here, out of 1,400 jobs." Northeast
"I work up here, but I go down to the Cities, and I cannot tell you how many people in the Cities think it's a ghost town up here. The perception of someone that's not from the Range coming up here and working up here is something we need to work on, I think. And I don't think it's higher education's responsibility, per se." Northeast
"We're recruiting constantly for professional positions, and it seems everybody knows that if candidates don't have some kind of connection somewhere in northern Minnesota, it's very difficult to keep those people here. I think they come in with preconceived notions of what it's going to be like to live here. So, I think we really have to work on that whole perception thing." Northeast
"If you find a qualified candidate from outside of the area, what does that person's spouse say? If they're not familiar with a rural community, and they're coming from a larger metropolitan area, is it something that they're ready for? Because it is a different culture and a different feel, and if they don't have a specific tie to the area, will they stick around after we've made an investment in them?" Northwest
"You don't want to create any internal equity issues, so that gets to be a tough thing, especially when you're trying to recruit out of Minneapolis. There are salary differences based on region, and it creates challenges." Northwest
"We only hired probably about ten percent of our engineers from Minnesota. There are six people that work as recruiters. But we also have ambassadors on a lot of the campuses. We have one here in Mankato." Southwest
"We don't usually have a problem recruiting applicants, but we do have problems recruiting applicants with special experience in our industry. The university gives us lots of applicants, and we do hire a lot of them. But to try to find someone with experience in our industry and to convince them to move to Mankato, when the Twin Cities is so close is challenging. And I think that the salary levels are really affecting our recruiting. It's very difficult to convince someone to work here when they really want to work in the Cities and make much more money. So, we have to find a way to convince them that this is a good spot." Southwest