(Seguin) — Seguin, Navarro and Marion High School students on Friday donned the safety glasses, hard hats and ear plugs at an opportunity to learn more of what career paths lie within the walls of Seguin’s many manufacturing facilities. In observance of National Manufacturing Day, the Seguin Economic Development Corporation hosted student bus tours for the area sophomores. The group of 189 students visited a total of nine different manufacturing plants throughout the community. The students are either enrolled in a CTE (Career and Technical Education) class or have expressed a desire to learn more.
SEDC executive director Josh Schneuker, says this marks the third year that the city has teamed up with the local schools to help students observe and learn all the available career pathways that exist right here at home. He says these are careers that are ready for the taking upon the completion of high school or that will be waiting for them when they return home from college.
“I think there is plenty of opportunity for students that are both college bound and not college bound to work in the manufacturing industry. It’s just educating them on what those career pathways are. You might not need to go to a four year college for it but there’s a lot of sophisticated positions that require additional workforce training and a lot of times, what we see is that the companies are just looking for good people to come in and they are making the investment in the employees to help them learn those hard skills. But if we could find the workers with the soft skills, that eagerness to learn, to be on work on time, things like that — companies and manufacturers will make the investment in you and help push your career path forward within the industry,” said Schneuker.
Schneuker says the perception of manufacturing for some is not always positive. However, here in Seguin, he says those negative perceptions are quickly put to rest when people see exactly what is going on under those large signs that read Cargill, CMC, Caterpillar…etc.
“It will really blow your mind of what’s being made here and the sophistication behind the processes. There’s a lot of skilled individuals here that are really hard working and just doing what they can to make ends meat everyday and we are lucky to have so many manufacturers in this community that are giving people an opportunity tap into well paying jobs and these jobs — you may not think they have a career pathway but at the end of the day, when you come in and learn more about it and gain some more knowledge and the industry and what they are actually making, there are viable career pathways in manufacturing. Even outside of maybe welding or machine operators, there’s other positions and things like that within a manufacturing operation that might be more of the back office type thing. It’s a very diverse industry that has a variety of different occupations involved in it,” said Schneuker.
Schneuker says one of the most important lessons that students took away during their tour is that Seguin is a powerhouse when it comes to the manufacturing industry. He says data shows the Seguin region alone having 6,000 manufacturing jobs.
“When you are looking and comparing yourself to a national average, that’s probably three times greater than the national average so we really are a manufacturing powerhouse not only within this region of Texas but really in the state and I”m sure that if you compared us to other similar communities across the country, we will be leading the pack in terms of manufacturing presence in our community,” said Schneuker.
Schneuker says during the tour, students also learned how Seguin’s position on the map makes it a very attractive place to do business.
“A lot of what is made in Seguin is not only exported throughout the United States but really all over the world and our location within two and a half and three hours of the Port of Houston allows a lot of our manufacturers to bring in that raw material or export their product to a global market. Then, I’d also like to bring up the fact that we are a rapidly growing community not to only here in Seguin but throughout the region and that’s really attractive to companies that are looking at our area. They don’t want to be in an area where they see a contraction in the area. They want to see growth and with our manufacturing presence here already, that equates to having that skilled workforce in place and a lot of times what you see in manufacturing is folks that work in this industry have transferable skills that can be impeccable really across the spectrum in manufacturing,” said Schneuker.
Schneuker says the tours are an extension of the the city’s Talent Pipeline effort — an effort that also works in partnership with the schools and the Seguin Area Chamber of Commerce in recruiting and growing business.
He says often times, folks in the community question why his office is largely focused on the recruitment of manufacturers instead of new retail. He says that idea couldn’t be any farther from the truth and says the more jobs you have, the more opportunity for a community to grow. He says recruiting new manufacturers and increasing the residential activity go hand in hand in helping to change the overall tune of a community.
Schneuker says because of the recruitment of companies, like last week’s groundbreaking announcement by Continental Structural Plastics, there is a stronger focus on Seguin by retailers and retailer developers.
“It’s not something that is going to happen overnight just because we’ve got retail development taking place. It’s still a process. Those homes have to be built. People still have to move into those homes and a lot of times, these decisions are made with folks behind a computer. So, we are out there in the trenches trying to get one on one face time with these folks and let them know about what’s happening here in Seguin. I think it’s going to help us at the end of the day see some hopefully acceleration in our retail recruitment efforts because it is something that the EDC is very involved in. We are very aggressive on the retail recruitment front and pushing very hard to get new retailers in the community, diversify our retailer base here and it’s definitely easier said than done but I’ve personally seen the attention now focused on Seguin a little bit more than it has in the past and that’s a good sign and it’s a matter of time that we see dominos fall on the retail side,” said Schneuker.
The manufacturers who opened their plant doors to the students on Friday included Alamo Group Texas; The Koehler Company, Caterpillar, Central States Manufacturing, Minigrip, Cargill, CMC Steel Texas, Niagara Bottling and Vitesco Technologies, formerly Continental Automotive Systems.