A few days ago, Manufacturing.net published Concept2Manufacturing Partner Tom Sons' article on attracting — and retaining — high-tech talent.

Here's an excerpt from his article:

Recently, I came across a number of stats that, for those of us in the manufacturing sector, paint a very bright picture of the foreseeable future. If, like me, you keep an eye on trends and an ear to the ground for good news, of particular interest to you might be a study conducted by the State of California Employment Development Department, which found that, by the year 2022, commercial and industrial engineers will see a 10.3 percent employment increase in Silicon Valley alone.

While this study centers on data sourced from Silicon Valley manufacturers, by no means should these results be considered limited to this area. After all, as manufacturing professionals throughout the country know, the above statistics aren’t necessarily unique to Silicon Valley. In fact, perform a quick search on the term, “talent war,” and one thing becomes clear: hiring the right talent to fill a position in technology is as challenging today as it’s ever been.

Gone are the days when simply posting a job online is enough to identify the ideal candidate. Instead, as manufacturing employers are now coming to discover, knowing how to spot qualified talent by looking beyond work experience, training and education can make all the difference.

To read more, and to learn Tom's top three steps for finding and keeping tech talent, hop on over to the full article here.