The key component to advancing your capabilities and capacity is successful recruitment. While this pertains to all industries, it is especially true for manufacturers. How do manufacturers succeed when fighting against the raging tide of a generational skills gap that is only going to get wider as the manufacturing workforce shortage continues to increase?
It is predicted that the impact of the shortage will be felt up to 2025 and beyond. The manufacturing industry is creating new jobs from a natural expansion following the recession. Data indicates there could be 400,000 new jobs by 2020, and up to 700,000 by 2025.
The challenges that manufacturers face are:
- Baby Boomers are retiring, with nearly three million workers expected to retire between 2015 and 2025.
- Millennials, who are expected to assume 75% of the manufacturing workforce by 2025, aren’t interested in manufacturing work.
- The incoming workers are deficient in technology, as well as basic technical and problem-solving skills.
Marketing To Millennials
Successful manufacturing recruitment involves targeting today’s Millennials (aged 19 to 33 years). Three things are important to this generation of workers:
- Social Consciousness
This generation wants to see their career prospects concerned with making the world a better place. By highlighting your community service, environmental awareness, and sustainability development, you add value by increasing your firm’s attractiveness.
Your website, company branding, and social media presence are all important in your recruitment process. An outdated site, unattractive branding, and missing the mark on social media will work against you.
- Advanced and Innovative Technology
Dispel the old image of manufacturing as “dirty, dumb, dangerous, and disappearing.” Show how work environments and skills have changed to incorporate highly advanced machines and processes requiring computer-savvy workers with multiple talents.
Develop your firm’s image by posting new product lines on your blog or publishing articles in trade magazines on new processes. Ramp up your marketing to reveal how manufacturing has evolved into a “cool” place to be.
- Part of a Team Environment
Enhance your desirability in this area by marketing your organization’s need for multi-taskers with advanced skill sets. Clearly display career path information on your website and write blog posts that feature employees’ development or production breakthroughs and accomplishments.
Help your prospective employees to understand the impact and value of their work. Share the culture of your open and collaborative work environment through social media and benchmarking publications.
There are currently six out of ten skilled production positions unfilled, and by the end of 2015, there will be 9,300 manufacturing job openings statewide in fourteen job categories. In order to compete for the available workforce, demonstrate your desirability as a company to work for through marketing that reaches out to a generation in a manner that is socially conscious and technologically up to date.
The principals of Web Savvy Marketers have been assisting CT manufacturers with their business development and marketing needs for more than 25 years. Give us a call at 860-432-8756 to see if we can help you with your on-line and off-line presence.