How to Find 3D Printing Jobs and Get Hired in the 3D Print Industry with Jennifer Killingback from Alexander Daniels Global – Updated 2020

 

Change is constant, no matter what market you are in. However, with the current happenings in the world, the changes in the 3D printing industry have become even more accelerated than before. As such, finding 3D printing jobs and getting hired pose new challenges for many people out there who are looking to get in. In this episode, Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard bring back their interview with Jennifer Killingback of Alexander Daniels Global, where they discussed how to apply and get hired. They take us back to some relevant insights, tips, and information while adding great updates that could help you navigate a rocky future.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

How to Find 3D Printing Jobs and Get Hired in the 3D Print Industry with Jennifer Killingback from Alexander Daniels Global – Updated 2020

We’re going to talk about 3D printing jobs and this is a good update from a great episode that we did before.

We interviewed Jennifer Killingback from Alexander Daniels Global. They have offices, placements and recruiting agencies for 3D printing jobs worldwide. They have a good perspective on how things are going, how things are moving through the marketplace, what shifts are happening, and what the types of jobs. We interviewed Jennifer and she was insightful into everything. She’s got some great tips and great information on how to apply, how to be bright for being hired, all of those things in there. We’re moving out of the education episodes that we’ve done and we’re moving into how that applies to the future and how that applies to jobs. We also do want to put this in perspective with what’s going on in the world. Is this still viable? They are keeping their website updated. They have a great blog there. They have white papers and other things. Check that out because things are changing monthly, sometimes weekly around this industry. Make sure you’re keeping that updated.

One of the things we want to share with you here before we bring this episode back, because it is still very relevant now, but there are some things that have changed and need to be updated. It’s not the demand for hiring in the 3D print industry. That’s certainly still very high, but what employers are looking for skill-wise. There have been some shifts in that and it’s notable. We want to share that with you.

The World Economic Forum put out a list of the top skills. These are qualities, not just skills, even though that’s what they called them. They’re needed to thrive in what we’ve been calling Industry 4.0, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, whichever way you want to call it. We’re looking at that and what has changed over the years. In 2015, when they put out their first report, the top three things were complex problem solving, coordinating with others, and people management. That’s what they were valuing yet they’re talking about hiring engineers. It’s an interesting idea that that’s what was valued at that time. We look at 2020 and the value have shifted and what has moved up the list significantly is complex problem solving is still at the top, but critical thinking and creativity are coming at 1, 2 and 3. Looking at that model, we’re seeing that the values of the things that many of us who have design educations, art educations, engineering educations, all of those things, we’re getting into this creative world with critical thinking processing going on.

The other thing that has happened is there’s a new add to the list called cognitive flexibility. It’s a term that I like. I interviewed with Shane Snow, who’s one of my favorite authors. He wrote a book called Smartcuts. You will love it. Cognitive flexibility is a part of his newest book, which is about building a dream team. When you want to build dream teams, cognitive flexibility is where innovation can still happen. That’s why we want it. We want to be able to think in an open-minded way, but not so open-minded that we’re wishy-washy and we’ll go whichever way the opinion flows. We want to have that flexibility to be able to take an opinion, work it through in our minds, and be cognitively flexible to shift our viewpoint and perspective so that we can stay innovative. That’s a valuable trait that they’ve highlighted in this 2020 World Economic Forum skill report.

One of the things I found most fascinating about the difference in the skills that employers are seeking from 2015 to 2020 is the fact that quality control that was right in the middle of the list is no longer on the list at all. Its absence in this top ten list speaks volumes because it shows you a shift away from maybe the tech or technician side of jobs and the need around 3D print-related jobs more toward the critical thinking and the creativity, which is going to help 3D print jobs, companies produce products that are going to be received more in the real world and in the marketplace. This is not a shocker to me. This is a good sign and a hopeful sign for the future of 3D print jobs being more widely adopted and more mainstream.

I look at this list also and I’m seeing an add that’s going to probably happen within 2021. They don’t put this report out every year, but I wish they did. We’re going to see a shift to something. Virtual communication skills are going to be a strength that is required like, “Am I able to still convince people? Am I able to still communicate with passion and ability to win friends and influence people?” How am I able to do that to get them on my path when I’m not in the office with them? Because we’re moving out into such a remote working environment, especially in our tech companies. We’re moving into that world in a post-COVID environment. As we get back into these office spaces, our ability to communicate at that high level is going to be a new add to this list. I’m convinced of it. We are starting to see it right here. Active listening was the other thing that dropped off the list. That is something that you do need to do. When you’re on a virtual conference call or anything like that, active listening needs to happen in order for you to be influentially communicative and being able to do those two things as well. I think that one might make a comeback.

It is still an important skill and this list was produced before COVID-19 and before all these tech companies like Twitter and Facebook have said they’re going to allow more, if not all their employees to work from home. I’m sure active listening is still on the list, but it may not be the top 10. What’s interesting is it’s fallen below a lot others that are more important, critical factors for this particular job. Maybe active listening is going to be an important thing for all jobs, but it’s not a key distinguishing factor for 3D print jobs more than it might be for others.

 

How can you ensure that you’re up to speed and employable in 3D related fields?” How are you going to find those 3D printing jobs? That is one aspect in Daniels Global and Jennifer Killingback is going to talk about it in the episode, but you also have to skill up and being sure that you’re ready in demonstrating that at any given time. I was counseling and mentoring someone who was looking for work. I said to him, “Go out and produce a video every single day.” It doesn’t have to be long. Produce a video, teach something, convince somebody of something. Figure out what it is. It doesn’t even have to be 100% related to exactly what you expect your job to be in. Show knowledge in the 3D print industry if that’s what you want or if that’s where you’re going for the type of job. Go out there and prove, “I can get on the technology. I’m capable of getting on Zoom, Webex,” or whatever you’re using. “I can go out there and I can put out a video. I can communicate well.” I’m already demonstrating that I have one of the skills on the list, that I have the ability to do that.

The other thing is that when you show up day after day or week after week if you only do this once a week, but if you show up, consistency and constancy is a value. We want to know, as employers, that you’re going to show up. Even when we’re virtual, that you’re showing up for us and understand the value of that commitment level. Think about some of those things, “How can I demonstrate this to employers, future employers?” and not just, “How can I put that on my résumé?” These skills are not something that’s easily read and that’s the struggle. I was at a big conference, the Adobe MAX conference, and I interviewed Adobe and talked to them about these same things. This is what they were saying is that they were struggling to find a way to review applicants, to assess these same skills from the World Economic Forum that they knew were strong and important.

They were having difficulties doing that because it doesn’t come across. It doesn’t show up from an AI that’s searching through résumés and sending them to you because it’s not one of the keywords you search for. Unless someone had relevant past experience in one of those things or they knew, it wasn’t helping them find great hidden talent. You going out there and adding these multimedia components, maybe in some cases, to your résumé balance of things of what you’ve got helps me find you, explore and you’re right there in front of me and I want to hire you. We’re talking 3D printing jobs, but we’re not just talking it. We’re talking about 3D related jobs. There are lots of sales jobs, marketing jobs, all of these support functions that need to have an understanding of 3D printing, but they maybe aren’t best served by having the skillset of having been engineers or other things.

These other skills require different types of people. We need to think broader in our team and Jennifer Killingback does bring some of that up of what they’re looking for in terms of jobs that they’re out there searching for and recruiting for. They’re not just engineers or designers. There’s a broadness to that, but that’s where at the end of the day, thinking about this, “How I can express if I’m not in a 3D print-related job already, but I’m interested in moving into sales in 3D printing or moving from an engineering world that’s not in 3D printing, I want to shift into that. How can I demonstrate some interest, some experience, and some passion about it? I can still use all of the great things on my résumé, on my sales side or my marketing side.” Finding those two ways to do that, this is a broader look at how we’re doing this. This is not just résumés and that’s critically important.

The last thing I want to bring up is something that I got some experience with. There are some tools going out. We’ve used them with our friend Bill Stierle. We’ve used the Herrmann Brain Dominance program. There are lots of them out there. There’s a new one that I heard called the Genius Factor that many companies, including some big financial management companies, are looking at bringing in and screening all of their workers through. I happened to meet the founder of it and she’s amazing. These are interesting ideas. Also, some of these things where you might screen yourself and put yourself through this ahead of time. If you’re in the hiring side of things, you might want to put all your people through it because sometimes we cannot always assess these skills straight out of a résumé. Let’s go learn from Jennifer Killingback.

How to Find 3D Printing Jobs and Get Hired in the 3D Print Industry with Jennifer Killingback from Alexander Daniels Global – originally aired on December 19, 2017

We’ve got Jennifer Killingback from Alexander Daniels Global. They are a specifically-niched, additive manufacturing recruiting company. They are worldwide so they are recruiting all over the world.

Any of you out there who are already in the industry and looking for maybe a different job or you’re looking to get into the industry, maybe you’re a student or you have another job and you’re looking at a second career and you want it to be in additive manufacturing 3D printing in some way, shape or form, you want to read all the details in this episode.

Jen has a ton of experience working in Human Resource Management and recruiting for over 25 years. She’s been in various industries, including OEM, which is Original Equipment Manufacturing. For those of you who don’t know, that might be companies who are building big giant production 3D printers or do all of those things. She’s the principal for North America, recruiting at Alexander Daniels Global. Because she’s got the vision from both sides, she has tremendous step knowledge of what it takes to be a good candidate, as well as to building a good job description and for searching for it. She’s in the right place at the right time too because this is exploding and our opinion has been that there is a skills gap. We believe there are more jobs than there are people to fill them with the right skills.

For us though, that’s been what I would call anecdotal evidence. We don’t have the hard, quantitative data to back it up, but from everything that we’ve read and seen and everyone we’ve talked to in industry for years now, we believe that’s the case. Now we’re going to find out if that’s true from someone who has the data.

Let’s go straight to Jen.

Alexander Daniels Global is enabling the industrial revolution and #additivemanufacturing through talent. @hp @zbyhp Click To Tweet

Jen, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

We’ve been a big advocate of the fact that there are lots of design and engineering and 3D print jobs going vacant or begging might be the case. I finally have a person we can talk to, to confirm that. Is there a job gap, a skill gap in additive manufacturing, in 3D printing?

There is absolutely a skill gap in 3D printing on a global scale. As you know, I am responsible for the North American market, but my team sees it equally in the EMEA and APAC region. That’s with OEMs, service bureaus, distributors, resellers, production facilities and end users. Everyone wants the same pool of talent and there just isn’t enough to go around.

What type of jobs are we talking about? What type of range of positions do you guys look for?

We have been asked to find basically in additive from production or programmers, the people that program the machines, do post-processing of parts, whether it’s metals or resins all the way to C-level positions. Where we see probably the largest request is in sales, business development, and R&D application engineering.

That’s an area that we have been told by other business researchers is going to be an increasing gap area for jobs in the coming years there. Their theory is as more companies in the United States especially shift to additive manufacturing and are not manufacturing as many things perhaps in other countries as they used to be, they need more designers and engineers to develop those products. Would you agree with that?

 

Absolutely. When dealing with additive manufacturing in terms of engineering, you are continuously upgrading machines, creating new machines, new materials, developing new processes, post-processing functions and how to save money, how to make it greener. There’s always going to be, what appears at this very moment, more and more research needed to make this a viable industry in the years to come and also to keep on this path of success. For example, metal printing. As we all know, metal printing has taken over the headlines this past year and more of the roles that were traditionally a mechanical engineer or a sales manager, they needed to have a sales background or mechanical engineering background. With the metals coming more into play, what we’re seeing is a strong desire to find people that have metal knowledge, people that not only can talk about selling a printer that will print in titanium, but that the sales manager understands what things can be printed in titanium. What are its properties? What are its limitations? That’s going to be a big skill gap.

On the sales side, you see that companies need people with real manufacturing knowledge of not just best practices, but what capabilities are in general. In order to help people, you’ve got to know what they can and can’t do with it.

The sales role seems to become more consultative as this industry grows. A salesperson may work in conjunction with an application engineer or a senior project engineer to better educate the client on the printer they’re buying the material they’re buying or the parts that they’re buying from them.

I would imagine the post-processing becomes a critical factor for a lot of companies. If you’re talking about implementing a manufacturing line or a production line for some product, and maybe it’s even more so if you’re setting up a service bureau that could be doing anything for anybody, but right now I’m thinking about a company that’s setting up a production line to make a product and making the part is one thing. That’s incredibly important to be able to make the right part that meets the requirements. The finishing is critical. Not everybody wants to create a finished part that, even if it’s made of metal, is that raw material on the surface finish? How much has post-processing and finishing become a part of a company’s plans as you see it?

I think post-processing is very important because that’s time being spent. You’re paying people not just to run the machines and to do basic maintenance on the machines, but for instance, in polymer, resin printing, you need someone who maybe has a delicate touch to the parts so they don’t break them. How much of the support structure needs to be taken away, dissolved or does it just print exactly as is on the bill plate and you can simply pop it off? All of those contribute to costs and savings. When you get into metal printing where we had subtractive manufacturing with CNC and machining, now they’re playing in tandem with the post-processing of metal additive because it will print the part, but it doesn’t necessarily come out perfectly smooth or a great bottom or there are supports that have to be taken off.

You have to have someone who has experience and knows what they’re doing there already.

It would definitely be helpful. It is an area that I believe you can find as the new skill trade. For instance, if you have someone who is very good with their hands, very detail-orientated, able to read blueprints, CAD drawings, things of that nature, it could be a great skill trade to bring people into. There are organizations addressing that. One instance is 3D Veterans, where they are working with veterans that are coming out of the service and putting them in boot camps to learn the skills to run the machines and to have gainful employment once they come out of the service.

#Additivemanufacturing is definitely a draw to this industry. It's new and it's exciting, and the possibilities are endless. @hp @zbyhp Click To Tweet

I’m very happy to hear that about the 3D Veterans. That’s something that is an area that we have some interest in. Neither one of us are veterans, but we have family members who are. Certainly, we see the big need in this country to help veterans transition to civilian life and they may not have the right skills. I know you’re saying this organization helps train people for these jobs, but are companies willing to train or do they generally not have the skills internally to train?

Generally, in production positions, I have found that companies will train candidates or new employees on the post-process. They generally need to have certain skills to be selected for that role. For instance, if I was hiring a post-processing person for polymer, I may look at someone who has done maybe computer repair, has fine motor skills, is very highly attentive to their detail and how well do they communicate. I’m looking more for those outside skills to bring into additive. With metal, do they have any metal knowledge? Are they a welder? Did they take CAD in high school? Did they take welding in high school? That could be a great transition for someone that maybe is not looking to go to college, but definitely has some solid skills that would lend well to a skilled trade.

That’s great that they have the vision to be able to say, “If they’ve got these, it should translate and we’ll be able to do this with them.” I think that’s fantastic. Does that mean though that a résumé’s not good enough anymore and you need people to apply and show different things to you as they’re applying?

Some of the areas in recruiting and additive that prove to be challenging are location. Additive manufacturing is still somewhat small in North America. It’s not in every state to the point where we have major employers throughout the country. It’s like pockets of employers, the Northeast up in Boston, down in Texas, out in California, maybe down in Southeast and South Carolina and here in Detroit, Illinois. It’s not so widespread that if you’re a university student in Kansas and you took some additive classes that you’re going to be able to put your résumé out in Kansas and get the job of your dreams.

Candidates may need to be willing to relocate. Are companies willing, because there’s this gap in skills, to help provide some relocation assistance for the right candidates?

It depends on the position and the employer. Some positions can be remote where you could stay in Kansas, but let’s say that you’re a field service engineer and you travel 70% to 100% of the time or if you’re a salesperson, you may work remotely. If you’re an engineer or you’re into a very customer-facing maybe a customer-experience center, you’re going to need to be there. In some instances, companies have told us, “We will offer some relocation assistance.” Other times, we’ve had candidates be very upfront and say, “I do not need any relocation assistance. What I need is a position in the career that I went to school for and I want to get into additive manufacturing.”

Are you looking at alternative industries for some of them like in the sales and marketing? When you have a sales job, it’s not all that attractive in additive manufacturing right now because the numbers aren’t there. It’s not a high growth in income sales. You’re not going to be the top seller. It’s not that kind of marketplace right now. It’s an early stage growth and so you need a different type of salesperson. Are you looking at complementary industries or other places like textiles or something?

 

In the past where I have been asked to find salespeople would be in capital equipment sales that have sold large frame, heavy equipment, very large CNCs, things of that nature, people that are accustomed to a longer sales cycle. Sales and additive are not like speak to a candidate in January, quote it in February, sell it in March and installed in April. When you get the larger machines, it could be six months to a year to close a sale.

You need somebody with that right level of understanding of what that sales process in cycle is.

I’d like to return to the post-processing for a minute because that’s an area that I think is risky for a lot of US companies because it can often get into a lot more labor. It can be a very labor-intensive process whereas the wonderful thing about additive manufacturing is it’s a machine making the part. You have to handle the parts and clean them up a little bit, but if you’re getting into a lot of finishing, painting, plating, powder coating or whatever it might be of metal parts for instance or even dying or painting of resin parts, do you see companies shying away from that or are they accepting and embracing that realizing in order to provide the right product or parts, they’ve got to do the whole process?

Personally, I believe up until this point, most of the parts that have been printed and post-processed have been small run samples, benchmarks for sales, things of that nature. When we get into the future of additive manufacturing in 3D printing, the postproduction is the necessary evil. You’re going to have that labor. If you’re going to make a point of printing hundreds of thousands of parts to go into different machines or airplanes or anything like that, you’re going to have to invest in the labor side of it.

Or on the tech side of it. This is where I think innovation can happen. If you don’t have the right research and design team, you won’t get to that.

It all has to work together. If someone designs a part and orientates it the best way when they prepare the printer, then there’s less to post-process. Less support is quicker processing. Less support is a smaller chance of breaking a part as well.

That’s the way we design here on purpose

Companies will train #3Djob candidates on the post-process, but they need to have certain skills to be selected for that role. @hp @zbyhp Click To Tweet

That becomes an R&D issue as much as anything. Orientation is one thing in the printer, but I think when it comes to orientation, somebody with enough experience and knowledge will know there is one right best way to orient a part to minimize the amount of labor after you take it out of the machine. When it comes to design and engineering of a part, there are many more opportunities to create a part in a different way to create geometry that still will meet all of the functional and aesthetic requirements of the part, but because of its design does not need supports in certain areas. That’s at least a challenge that I take up when I designed parts for additive manufacturing. Have you experienced companies looking for those kinds of skills?

Absolutely. Everyone wants to make the most out of the time, the material. Material is not inexpensive. What they’re looking for in R&D right now that we’re being pushed for is more on the actual printer side, developing new ways of printing, improving the way machines are printing, maybe trying out new materials, what’s going to work better. That seems to be the push right now on our side of the desk in terms of R& D and applications and what the companies are looking for.

It seems maybe that development and industry in the US is still maybe more on building the infrastructure for companies to engage more in additive and we’re not still a little ahead of the curve on companies that are deploying this technology. As you said, manufacturing hundreds of thousands of parts using it that maybe there still needs to be some more time and development before we quite get there.

I believe there are some service bureaus that are doing it and they’ve been doing it for quite a while, but in the current atmosphere, it does seem that it’s more of the OEMs of the hardware materials and software that are focusing on the sales and R&D applications in my opinion on my books.

I can understand that. You’re deep into it, but you’re one company. Maybe that’s an indication of what it’s like in the US market as a whole or maybe not. I would think at some point, if there’s enough of a market there to support all of these companies developing these machines and materials, at some point, it has to tip to being a little bit more of a consumption market than an infrastructure market.

I definitely think that is the wave of the future. That was one of the reasons why I left my position in Human Resource Management with an OEM and went back into recruiting because I’ve done both for years. I saw this coming a year and a half ago where we were shifting from strictly an OEM recruitment pool where people moved around between the OEMs and I could see the service bureaus and the end users and the distributors wanting to hire the people that have been trained.

That’s a very interesting opinion to understand. I appreciate that. For what it’s worth, my instinct, and maybe it’s a little bit more informed than just an instinct, is that you’re right. We’ve been exposed to owners of large companies that manufacture hard physical goods sold at mass market retail. Back even as early as 2014, there was some knowledge that was shared with us of an owner of a $400 million company that had been meeting with a lot of other similar sized companies in the US that are all involved in manufacturing, distributing of these types of goods. They all saw that 5, 10 years down the road that their companies are going to have to dramatically change if they’re going to survive and in the ways that you are talking about and seem to be experiencing. I guess the anecdotal evidence is all we have.

 

Jen, you’ve been in additive manufacturing for quite some time, so you have a passion, interest and knowledge of it. It’s not like you just sit there and look at a résumé. You know what you need to be searching for. You know what skills this job requires. You’ve got a passion and understanding for that. Are you seeing that in candidates as well? Are you seeing people who are like, “I badly want to be in 3D printing?”

There is definitely a draw to this industry. It’s new and it’s exciting. The possibilities are endless. They see things that are on an emotional level with the bioprinting. The amazing things that we are doing with materials right now and the hardware and software is amazing. I think that gets people excited. I get requests through LinkedIn from students, established people in additive, people that want to get into additive. I’ve yet to find someone that said, “Please find me a job outside of additive.” They want to stay in it or they want to get in it. It’s one of the two. One of the areas that is probably the most challenging are the students now graduating or will be graduating in the next couple of years. It’s only been recently that we’ve seen so many new universities and education programs focus on additive as a career choice versus something that assists in an engineering program.

Some of the issues that they’re facing are they’re not involved in anything outside of school. What I always encourage them to do is focus on their LinkedIn profiles, network with the proper people, attend the expos when they can like RAPID or even AMUG or something along those lines so that they can be more involved in the industry. The industry is small and it seems that people that have been in it, everyone knows everyone to an extent. The other areas where there are challenges is there are some exceptional candidates that are graduating, that are students that would require sponsorship. OPT sponsorship for STEM is up to 36 months.

For a long time in industrial design, graphic design or other areas like that, we’ve had Core77 as a big directory where people post jobs and other things. IDSA has their own directory as well. Is there a directory out there for job listings and where people put their résumés up that are much more 3D printing and additive manufacturing associated?

There isn’t a specific website or listing that I’m aware of that list just additive manufacturing. Things get picked up on The Standard, Indeed, Glassdoor. They pick up listings that are online and you can find things there. Of course, LinkedIn.

I hear this from people all the time that when you apply for jobs on LinkedIn, they go unanswered. I have known a few people who were extremely qualified in marketing jobs and other things like that and they don’t go answered. Is it because there are so many applicants?

I have to say that it’s not even the fact that there are so many applicants. Sometimes what happens is when someone applies on LinkedIn and you’re going through the profiles, if you will, depending on the position, it could be that that person is in San Francisco and they want someone in Boston. They may say, “We want someone local to Boston. We’re not looking for a relocation.”

It’s a mismatch and understanding between the listing and the candidate who applies.

It very well could be. The other thing too is I love to tell candidates that when you see, let’s say that you look at a particular company in additive manufacturing and they have five jobs listed on LinkedIn. If you go to their website, their career page probably has ten jobs listed. I would venture to guess there are probably another 5 to 10 jobs that aren’t even written yet that they’re about to write. What we tend to do as recruiters is we develop relationships with our clients and our hiring managers and they share things about, “In Q1, we’re going to be looking for two salespeople. In Q3, we’re going to be looking to add an R&D team,” or something along those lines. As we are recruiting and looking at different candidates and networking, we have in the back of our mind, “This is a job that could come up. This person would fit great in this company and their culture and location. The background just needs to be there.” We can make those introductions. I think working with recruiters that are specific to additive manufacturing is definitely a positive way to approach it. I’m not speaking for all, but in our particular case, we only do additive manufacturing here. All day, every day, seven days a week, I am focused on additive.

That’s a specialty.

Yeah, it is. It’s a niche market. Because the market is so small, it is a benefit to know as much as you can about it like who’s in it, what the next steps are, who’s laying off, who’s hiring, who’s acquiring who. There’s a lot to know.

To me, the fact that you’re focused on this full-time is very telling in and of itself. I’m sure you’re probably not the only recruiter in the country involved in this. Maybe the only one full-time, I don’t know. There’s got to be some others, but the fact that at least you are focused full-time on this speaks volumes for the market, the opportunity, and the jobs that are available and the people looking to get jobs there.

I think that as with any company that uses a recruiter, you use a recruiter to find your best match for what you’re looking for. You have to be talking to people all the time and know everything about your candidate, what makes them tick, where do they want to live, why do they want to be in metal, why do they want to be in polymer, could they do both. It’s constant conversation. That’s what our clients are relying on is that we know the people that we are submitting.

Jen, I was hoping maybe you would give us some actionable tips for our job seekers out there, the ones looking to beef up their LinkedIn profile, make sure their résumé is attractive to a company like yours. What should they do?

One of the things that I counsel candidates about are their LinkedIn profiles. When you look at a LinkedIn profile within additive manufacturing, if you go on your laptop and you pull up your public profile and you look at what everyone else is looking at, before you scroll down the page or click the About Me, what are you seeing? Many times, there is no reference whatsoever to 3D or additive manufacturing in those first five lines of text.

Also, I’ve been working with this amazing LinkedIn coach and you can hack your name. You can add 3D print expert to your last part of your name because there are extra characters in there. Mine says, “Tracy Hazard – Product Launch Expert,” and that’s legal. That’s LinkedIn appropriate. They won’t shut you down for that so you should do that.

When you have the About Me, the first two lines are what show up. That first two lines, I would make it very specific to what type of role you are looking for in additive or the type of role that you are specialized in that a recruiter or a hiring manager would pick up on.

For the readers, you’ve got to understand that people like Jen are busy and they see hundreds of résumés and they’re going through all of this or looking through many profiles. What they see quickly, what they see first is what is going to get them to pause and read more.

I’d like to give you an example because I think it would be helpful for your audience to understand the process a little bit. I received a job order for one position. On LinkedIn, I have thousands of first connections in additive. I do a search for this specific role in a geographical area and 800 and some plus profiles are populated. I then have to go through 800 profiles on that initial search to find the key people that I want to follow up with. When they say that a recruiter or a hiring manager is giving you that 30 second view on your résumé on LinkedIn, it’s that first page. You want to grab someone’s attention to say, “They’re an Application Engineer 3D printing,” or something that draws attention to your profile.

Thank you so much. We appreciate you coming and sharing. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience?

Alexander Daniels Global is centered on additive manufacturing. We conducted a salary survey specific to additive manufacturing globally and we send that out for free. It’s a PDF file and it was very well received by both companies and candidates. We are now completing 2017. It goes over the APAC market, EMEA, North America, sales, R&D, software. It’s a great reference point not only for hiring managers to see where the salaries are, which rose considerably.

There might be a shortage of applicants.

How to Find 3D Printing Jobs and Get Hired in the 3D Print Industry — Final Thoughts

There is no way any formal college degree education can provide you with all of the skills that you need to be able to hit the ground running and be a perfect fit for any job that is out there that they’re seeking to fill now.

We talk about this a lot back to our days when we graduated from RISD, Rhode Island School of Design. When we graduated, there was a computer lab and lots of CAD equipment that was donated by big companies who wanted to attract these young industrial designers and graphic designers and all of us in there to their software platforms. That was the whole purpose of it. It was a big lab that they put in, but it wasn’t yet in the structural programs. There wasn’t a lot of CAD usage.

No one was teaching you how to use it. It was not a requirement to use it. Those of us that got into it had to take the initiative and do it ourselves. I think that’s a great example, Tracy. Certainly, CAD software is a very important part of this industry, but there’s a whole lot more to it.

My point was it was a time at which the faculty and the administration didn’t know how to teach it yet. They didn’t know how to incorporate it into their core structures. They didn’t know how to add it there. That’s what they were trying to get a handle on. If we had waited for them to get their act together and start teaching it, we would have graduated and we would have missed it.

It wasn’t available before we graduated.

It wasn’t available in the whole time we were there. The fact that they’re incorporating it into a curriculum right now is probably three years behind what is needed to be taught now. That’s because it takes them that long to figure out how to integrate it into their structure. By the time they do and agree on it, these are bureaucracies and administrative nightmare at most of these colleges and universities, they don’t move fast enough. It’s great that you’re getting some exposure and getting basis for it, but you need more.

Your estimate of three years for some schools, maybe some schools that are taking the initiative, will be ahead of that curve but I would even bet most schools, it’s going to take more than three years for their education systems to be putting out graduates that have those skills that all of these businesses need. The technology in this industry is moving too rapidly.

The schools aren’t attracting the right kind of teachers. That’s another problem with that. Who knows how to teach it yet? It’s a VR, AR, AI problem as well. You’re talking about there is no place for you to learn the skills that you need. The colleges and universities are not moving fast enough for that. There’s a problem there, but there’s also a retraining problem because where do you go to get new skills? A lot of this is on you and that’s one of the reasons why we started this show way back when. It’s one of the things that I appreciate about Alexander Daniels Global and what Jen is doing. They have this vision that they want to enable the industrial revolution and additive manufacturing through talent.

We wanted to give you a place at which you could meet people, find tools, find tips, get networks because network is an extremely important part of what Jen was pointing out. It’s one of the key criteria. Find a broader network, expand out of your little town, your little maker shop, expand out of that and find a broader network of people who are doing things because when you do that, you accelerate your skills, your position, what you can do. For us, that’s what we call jumped the learning curve. That’s what we wanted to do here. Because if you were skill-building on your own, we want to give you a broader reach of people and broader reach to things that are out there that might help you do that faster and accelerate you through that.

While I know some students who are maybe either high school students looking to go to college or maybe people that are in college or those that are looking to get training for a second career that are already adults, you may be frustrated and disappointed that there isn’t already an education system that’s going to train you for exactly what you need. You’re interested and excited about it. You want to know, “How do I do it? Where do I need to go? What do we need to learn?” That may be disappointing, but at the same time, to me, that’s exciting. I’m an individual that sees opportunity and takes initiative to take action on it. If you’re like that and you have the motivation and will take the initiative to take action, you have the ability to go out there somehow, somewhere probably in your community. Although, Jen made some good points that there are more pockets of this technology in certain areas of the United States more than others and that’s probably true in other countries.

Anything that you do to go out and get experience in additive manufacturing on your own to further your own education is going to benefit you. I would highly recommend you to go out there and get involved one way or another and then find a way to make that clear to anybody who would be researching you, whether it’s on LinkedIn or even Facebook. Find a way to stand out above the crowd of people that are interested in this market and show what those special things are that you’ve been able to learn, that special experience that you’ve gotten or any particular areas of interest that you have. You taking that initiative will speak volumes and you will stand out and you’ll get that phone call interview or that email. You’ll get contacted by someone. A little informal research here and find out where maybe some of you see some gaps and things that you would like to be able to learn.

Please give us some feedback on that. You can do that on the website in the comments field. There’s a form there at 3DStartPoint.com. You can also do that on social media, @3DStartPoint. We are on LinkedIn. You can follow 3D Start Point business page, but you can also connect with us. We connect with the audience all the time on our LinkedIn. Thanks again for reading and I’m so glad we were able to finally get someone to talk about 3D jobs and the skill gap. I appreciate Jen for coming on the show.

I don’t think it’s something that we could have done years ago as in earlier episodes of this show because no one had concentrated as much as she has in it. Now, this is great times of change. There’s new information and we’re bringing it to you. We hope you found that fun and valuable.

 

Get Even More!

Additive Manufacturing in Higher Education: Leading the Way to the Industry of Tomorrow

 

Important Links

• Alexander Daniels Global
• 3D Veterans
• LinkedIn
• RAPID
• AMUG
• Core77
• IDESA
• Indeed
• Glassdoor
• Tracy Hazzard – Product Launch Expert
• Forbes – The 10 Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking for in 2020
• World Economic Forum: 10 Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• Alexander Daniels Global Blog – See the latest advice and resources to help with job hunting post-COVID19
• Alexander Daniels 3D Printing Talent Market Report 2019
• LinkedIn page for Alexander Daniels Global

 

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