Finding the right job is like finding the perfect mate; sometimes a matchmaker can help find hidden similarities between two parties and pair them up. For the resurgent Puget Sound manufacturing sector, one of these matchmakers is Thomas McLaughlin, who oversees a public/private program to find highly skilled manufacturing candidates from a seemingly unlikely source: the U.S. military.
Launched this January by the Kent-based Center for Advanced Manufacturing Puget Sound (CAMPS), the Military to Manufacturing (M2M) Career Pathway Training program has helped train about 140 returning military veterans and their family members in Washington state for opportunities in the expanding field of manufacturing. At least half of these program graduates have been able to find a wide variety of living-wage jobs at local companies such as Red Dot Corp., OmniFab, Orion Aerospace, Stress-Tek and GM Nameplate, among others.
Read how the professions in the burgeoning manufacturing industry in Washington's largest city, Seattle, stack up in the CareerCast Top 12.
