There's a Growing Need for Technicians, ABQ Companies Say

Alex Dickey dropped out of high school when he was 15 with no plans for the future.

Dickey, now 29, eventually went back to school, receiving his high school diploma from Central New Mexico Community College. He went to work for Amazon, where he discovered Unmudl, an online training platform that offers courses in areas such as mechatronics. Long story short, he took a course, then landed an internship at Intel.

“I like being on the tech side just because I get to use my hands,” he said of what his plans are for the future. “I find that a little bit more rewarding.”

People like Dickey, a technician, are a growing need for manufacturing companies across the country, including here in New Mexico. It’s estimated those companies will need millions of more workers, many of them technicians, in the coming decade to keep up with demand, said Daniel Gillaspia, a marketing strategist for Unmudl.

CNM and Unmudl hosted a “Technicians of Tomorrow Expo” on Friday in the hopes of persuading more people to take a serious interest in the manufacturing sector. The event, at CNM’s Advanced Technology Center, included a panel of speakers from Intel, Maxeon Solar Technologies, Amazon and General Mills who touched on everything from challenges in finding workers to the skills needed to get a job in the field.

Kevin Driggs, senior manager of talent acquisition with Maxeon, the company planning for a large-scale manufacturing campus that will produce solar cells and panels at Mesa del Sol, said his company has a huge need for technicians once the project is up and running.

“We’ll have a huge number we will be looking to recruit here,” Driggs said to the crowd in attendance.

The companies are looking for people with skills that are applicable to a technician role, like troubleshooting, the panelists said.

“Whenever you can break down a problem into smaller pieces and be able to find a solution to things, … it’s so rewarding,” said Mark Flores, a technical initiatives lead at General Mills in Albuquerque.

He said at General Mills technicians can make anywhere from $23 to $45 an hour.

“You understand the basics, the mechanics of it, the electricity, all of that — and work through the problems that we see on a daily basis,” he said.

Tracy Hartzler, CNM’s president, told the Journal the community college has had partnerships with companies such as Intel and General Mills for 30 years, creating a pipeline for students to manufacturing jobs. But she said advances in manufacturing, like increased automation, have led the school to invest more in areas such as mechatronics to properly prepare students for those jobs.

“You have to have more of this knowledge of information technology, electrical work, engineering,” she said. “We’ve always been involved in this — we’ve just increased our investment in this in the last year or so around mechatronics, because we need more equipment to meet the needs of our advanced manufacturing partners, including Maxeon.”

Erin Johnson-Kruft, the interim dean for Skilled Trades and Arts at CNM, said that investment in new technologies and coursework also means consulting with those manufacturing partners to help with identifying those technical skills for students. The community college officially launched its mechatronics program last year.

But, she said, CNM is “launching into the next phase now, ensuring that we also have durable skills like communication and some of those other skill sets that help support the technical skills.”