Tesla is looking to the local community for future employees through its Manufacturing Development Program, which is being offered through Nevada’s Jobs for America’s Graduates program. The program aims to connect high school graduates in Nevada with the skills required to land a job or move forward with postsecondary education. Naturally, it connects nicely to the high-tech manufacturing jobs at Tesla’s booming Gigafactory outside Sparks, Nevada.
Image credit: Tesla
Tesla’s Manufacturing Development Program gives high school grads the chance to plug in at the Gigafactory as a full-time production associate with opportunities to grow from there, if it turns out to be a good fit. Those who make it through the program will be given the opportunity to receive a more specialized education in automation and robotics at the nearby Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada.
For Tesla, the program offers the company a pipeline of new talent that the company can run through. It is essentially a curated internship at the Gigafactory. If it turns out to be a good fit, Tesla can then afford to invest a bit in further education to really kickstart the careers of new Teslanauts.
The program does not just look at job placement, but also includes housing near the University of Nevada’s campus, with a daily shuttle that runs back and forth to the Gigafactory. The prospect of landing a starter job at Tesla’s monster Gigafactory with all of the accoutrements that are included with the program seems like a great way for a company to not only build a pipeline of new hires for itself, but to help high school grads find a career path that’s best suited for them.
Image credit: Tesla
Granted, that’s “only” within Tesla, but in a company of its size and especially at a facility already sporting more than 7,000 employees with plans to grow to more than 10,000, jobs can be found in almost any line of work, if you’re willing to put some effort into it. When I was hired at Procter & Gamble almost 20 years ago (okay, it was 20 years ago as of this year), I looked at it as the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure opportunity, and because I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at the time, it was perfect.
The partner program with the state of Nevada may be a local program, but it also includes federally funded relocation assistance to allow folks from around the country to get in on the action at a growing facility in a very fast-paced company in a region that’s hot on supporting them through the early stages of the Gigafactory’s production ramp.
The new program ties into Tesla’s existing Gigafactory Training Gateway, which was developed to leverage the factory as a platform for education. Through the program, local schools have created a special 15-credit curriculum focused on advanced manufacturing to build the skills needed for potential employees to thrive at the Gigafactory.
Image credit: Tesla
The upshot of building a factory in the middle of the Nevada desert is that land is cheap (or free) and the local government was tripping all over itself to get Tesla out there, but the challenges of spooling up a force of 10,000 highly trained workers in a remote location are very real. These programs show that Tesla is looking at the problem very pragmatically, leveraging government and internal funds to build relevant skills in the area, and hopefully pulling in some new hires along the way.
Source: Northern Nevada Business View via Reddit
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