All the tech companies moving to Chandler need skilled workers and they are often competing against one another for the best employees.
The Chandler Chamber of Commerce has a new program to help and that helped EMD Electronics, which held a ribbon cutting for its new Chandler manufacturing facility in the Airpark jobs corridor on Oct. 11.
The company started looking for skilled workers well before that event.
“We’ve had our business retention and expansion program for many years, but we started inviting our educational partners probably since May,” explained Chamber President/CEO Terri Kimble.
“We bring our educators together, sit down with the companies, and really kind of say, ‘Where are your pain points?’”
For EMD Electronics, the U.S. subsidiary of German company Merck KGaA, that “pain point” was anxiety because it needed skilled workers.
And the Chamber helped EMD find the workers it needs to help it provide equipment that semiconductor makers rely on.
The company has more than 64,000 employees in 66 countries. It invested $39 million, the most in its history, in its Chandler plant, where about 100 people work today.
“In industry, we’re constantly thinking about how do we prepare for what’s coming,” said Katherine Dei Cas, executive vice president and global head of delivery systems and services.
“We need to hire assembly technicians, we need to hire welders and we need to hire engineers. We need to hire tradespeople and in order to do that, you don’t necessarily have to have a four-year degree.”
The Chamber put EMD officials together with Tom Pearson, the associate dean of workforce programs and academic affairs at Chandler Gilbert Community College.
They explained their needs, and the college put together a 12-week program to train their workers.
The customized course is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and is taught at both CGCC and Estrella Mountain. Those who pass after 12 weeks earn a certificate.
EMD’s Francesca Domingo said that 40 of the company’s employees have already taken and passed the course.
She said some of those employees have since been promoted and all have experienced career growth.
This is not the first time CGCC has tried to help industry with its training needs.
`Pearson said Intel approached them about creating a class to train its workers for artificial intelligence.
“They had a [high school] program called ‘AI for youth,’ which was over in Singapore, and they wanted to make that a college-level program. They shared that with us, and then we had to modify about 90% of it to make it college level.”
And it’s not just limited colleges. Chandler Unified School District recently hired Patrick Brown to be its coordinator of workforce development.
His job is to network with businesses and fellow educators so that the district can stay on top of their needs for the workers of the future.
Kimble said these kinds of partnerships are exactly what the Chamber was hoping to accomplish.
It invite educators from all the colleges and universities in Arizona to meet with companies and learn what their needs are and how they might be able to address them.
The Chamber has hired its own workforce development coordinator, Kimble said.
She added the team of educators they have assembled include representatives from CUSD, CGCC, Arizona State, Arizona, Northern Arizona, Grand Canyon and, depending on the needs of the company, East Valley Institute of Technology.
When CGCC representatives attend, they are representing the entire Maricopa County Community College system.
“It’s one thing to land these companies here, but it’s another thing to help them find the workforce and keep them here,” Kimble said. “That’s the secret sauce.”
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