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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Manufacturing

They are talking about this topic: Workforce Trends & Challenges

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Overall, many employers find it difficult to attract quality entry-level applicants; this is particularly true in the areas of welding/fabrication, system automation technology, and machine technology.

Employer Quote Region
"We currently use three different staffing agencies to hire machinists. And what we're looking for is skilled machinists who can do set-up and programming." Southwest
"Right now, we're all poaching each other's people, whether we know it or not." Southwest
"We don't go out and physically approach people. These agencies that work for us place ads, and the people have to answer the ad. It's a real generic ad. Then they sort through the candidates, and they try to weed it out. But we talk with these people almost daily, and it's really hard to find good people. Most of them get kicked out right away." Southwest
"Over half of our customers are aerospace and military government. And so we've had a continuous need since I've been in the Waseca plant—for a little over two years. We've tried using staffing agencies. Part of their struggle is our location. But then just availability. I mean, I can go to a job board and look at the number of openings for CNC." Southwest
"CNC machinists, that's my biggest struggle. We're in Waseca, not a far drive for people in Mankato. We need experienced machinists, but we are willing to train an entry-level person, someone that just graduated from [MnSCU college] for example. We have two students from [MnSCU college's] Your Right Skills program; they started with us on Monday. And they won't be contributors necessarily as far as producing product—they've gone through, I think, a six-month basic machining program. The level of skill that we need is comparable to machinists who work in the medical device industry, but we can't compete with wages in the metro area. So, we're really looking for people that want to live somewhere around here, just to be within a commutable distance.

In our workforce, we either have people who have been with us less than five years or over 20. So, in about ten to fifteen years, we will have a number of people leaving. Those long-tenured employees were very mechanical, but not necessarily good programmers. So, we're really hurting for CNC machinists. We did go up to [MnSCU college]. Most of the students there are from that area so they don't know where Waseca is. Some don't even know where Mankato is. So, that's a challenge."		 Southwest
"Employer 1: There's no feeder here for welders, and that's a major problem. And then also we have draftsmen, yet we're not hiring those as much as we're hiring welders. But there's no program for that at [MnSCU college].

Employer 2: So, there's demand for the jobs, but there's no program. And then MnSCU decided there was no program because no one enrolls."		 Southwest
"Everything is going to become more automated, more connected, and more human/machine interaction. So, software engineering is huge, but the way we're handling that is our electrical engineers—we're sending them for software capabilities right now. And I can see that we're going to lose them to another company because they'll be fabulous." Southwest
"It's quite a luxury to have somebody who can just sit and do drawings. You know, I'm being factious there, but..." Southwest
"My concern right now is seeing applicants that come to me with those skills, to fill the positions that I have for maintenance, for electronics, and for quality control technicians. Fortunately, if I see one of those, we have been fortunate in that they do come with those problem-solving skills, too. But the greater problem right now is seeing enough of those people, enough of those applicants to fill the positions that we have." Southwest
"Maintenance is my number one problem area." Southwest
"We do a lot of welding and custom fabrication. And with the new plant that we're going to build, there will be an increased need for welding and fabrication skills as well." Southwest
"I need good machine operators, people that can run the machines with the PLCs. And I need maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. So, those two key focused areas. I'm taking people off the line that are my best assemblers, and trying to train them internally on how to run the machines. That's what I'm doing." Southwest
"Employer 1: We have positions open today that we've been looking to fill for some time. And it's like, I'll describe it as an associate degree level engineering assistant—an individual with enough mechanical and electrical experience to engineer solutions for the floor. That's a pretty universal perspective of things. Someone who can move easily through lots of different processes. That's the type of person we've been looking for. We need more general mechanical engineering problem-solving, maybe someone with a two-year engineering assistant degree.

Employer 2: I could use that, too.

Employer 1: We're trying to get one, and we could probably use half a dozen of them. Because the people on the line, can't do what you're saying. Our guys who do this today, they roll through the plant solving problems. They come up with solutions, and then we try to grow them with automation projects to get them involved in automation projects. So, they get a chance to grow their skills as well."		 Southwest
"When I was interviewing the engineers that we're just bringing in—it was for a production job—the hardest thing for me was I felt I was trying to find that unicorn out there in the forest, which is somebody who has an engineering degree. Because it's the best feeder degree that I can find.

That's a willingness to say, 'I'm willing to be a production supervisor, and then work my way through operations because I know that I have a future here.' Most of the people that go into engineering want to be CAP engineering. They want to design plants. They want to design lines. They don't want to actually run the line; they don't want to run the plant. If I could get that two-year degree, you know funnel, then those would be my next operations supervisors and managers. Because that would be an excellent feeder for the critical thinking and just the general skill base that I would need."		 Southwest