Best Practices for Attracting Young Talent to the Pennsylvania and U.S. Metalcasting Industry

The Pennsylvania and United States economies rely heavily on metalcasting foundries for both jobs and products. Up to 90 percent of durable goods in the United States contain cast parts, and the metalcasting industry directly provides about 160,000 jobs in the U.S. and indirectly supplies about 300,000 additional jobs. Recently, veteran manufacturing employees are retiring faster than they can be replaced, taking decades of experience and knowledge with them. It is imperative to continue to train and hire young manufacturing talent to keep the industry strong. For this study, four well-established Pennsylvania foundries and 18 students or alumni who completed metalcasting internships were surveyed to begin to establish the best practices for recruiting and retaining young talent into the foundry industry, with a focus on providing internships to four-year university engineering or engineering technology students. The survey included 10 directed questions with information typical of establishing a manufacturing internship, and one open-ended question. An overview of the results from the survey is given as well as a summary of the most beneficial methods for developing a strong, successful foundry internship program. While the influencing factors were not ranked by respondents, notable favorable practices reported by both hiring managers and student interns included providing housing or a stipend for housing, employee-intern mentorship, hands-on work, progress reports, competitive pay, networking and social opportunities, and opportunities for rehire. Although this study focused on surveying four-year university engineering students, the survey may also be applied to two-year technical programs in the future.