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60 The PCB Magazine • May 2017 Brennan: An EET (electrical engineering tech- nology) program is perfect. Goldman: You're not going to find something in imaging at a vo-tech school, are you? Miller: Well, no. But some of the arts work in imaging techniques. There have been some trained in the gas and oil industry and some of those chemical processes seem to translate, at least loosely, to what we do with circuit board chemistry. Goldman: They're chemical and manufacturing. People have become familiar with those areas and so this seems familiar to them. Sometimes I think manufacturing isn't familiar to people, and so they don't think about it. For insides sales, I see here you want a four-year degree for that. What kind of ex- perience should they have? Brennan: We are comfortable with some cus- tomer service experience, people skills and a go- getter attitude. Miller: Experience in order entry, telemarket- ing, customer service… Brennan: Someone who has just finished their liberal arts degree, for example, and who had worked in fund-raising in college. That's some- one who could be a good fit. Goldman: Someone with good communication skills, who could then learn the business. Brennan: Right. Whereas for production posi- tions, we're looking for a couple of years of ac- tual manufacturing experience. Goldman: How hard is it to find a person like that? Miller: We've made it a little bit more difficult because we're trying to fill second shift posi- tions. Goldman: That would be more difficult. There's not much manufacturing around like there used to be. Finding somebody who has manufacturing ex- perience has got to be tough. Miller: We either find people who have 15+ years working for somebody that might be a competing company, or people who have vir- tually none. Goldman: If you find someone with virtually no experience, is that a no-go or does it depend on the person? Miller: We're not looking for necessarily five years' worth of experience, but they must have something relevant. They must have those skills. Let's say somebody is doing this as a hob- by for the last five years on the side. They've been doing drilling and routing for some proj- ect that they're working on their own. We like them. Or, some inspection experience, for exam- ple, may translate well. It's not necessarily that they worked in circuit board manufacturing but they've done something along those lines. May- be they've inspected parts in another industry. If they have a lot of experience inspecting parts, that could translate well. Goldman: I can visualize that when you start with somebody who has no manufacturing experience at all, the likelihood of them being able to grow into a position is a lot lower than finding some- body with experience. Miller: Certainly, in manufacturing, in years past, when we were looking for people in as- sembly, where there is more of an opportunity, we used to advertise for people who like to knit. HOW TO FIND—AND RETAIN—THE RIGHT PEOPLE FOR THE RIGHT JOBS Becky Brennan