By no means is this list exhaustive, but here are seven local companies or institutions that are either hiring or expanding or both.
To apply for job openings, contact these companies or institutions directly, or visit the “careers” or “human resources” sections of their websites.
Dayton Progress
Alan Shaffer, Dayton Progress chairman, chief executive and president, said his West Carrollton toolmaking business has already filled most of 100 openings recently available, but there are still a few openings, and he hopes to hire even more people in 2012.
The company plans to build a storage site to free up production space at its main facility on Progress Road.
Shaffer knows he’s not alone among local manufacturers in needing qualified employees. A member of the Dayton Tooling and Manufacturing Association, he said most of DTMA’s 315 members are “all screaming they can’t hire enough qualified people for their shops.”
“Everyone I know in manufac turing” is hiring, he said, a situation he finds puzzling in an era of 10 percent local unemployment and about 9 percent underemployment.
About 2,600 people appled for the company’s recent openings, which led to 900 interviews. Of those, 118 people where hired, he said.
“It’s hard to find qualified people, people who want to work in a factory,” Shaffer said.
Techmetals
In Dayton, metals coater and finisher Techmetals Inc. is still hiring after filling 11 positions for quality technicians, chemical engineers, sales, plumbers, electricians and others this year. Next year, the company may hire 11 more employees, said Phillip Brockman, the company’s business development director.
Brockman put the value of the company’s upcoming physical expansion — more than 10,100 square feet with a 1,258-square-foot storage facility — at $1.8 to $2 million, with ground scheduled to be broken later this month or next. But Techmetals managers have an eye on the economy and whether it sinks into another recession, Brockman said.
“If it gets much worse, we might not expand,” he said. “It’s an issue right now. We’re basically going to make a decision at the end of September.”
But as of late August, the company was still hiring and its customers were still ordering, he said.
“We’re getting our best people direct out of college or Sinclair (Community College).”
Soin Medical Center
Work continues on the combined $165 million Indu & Raj Soin Medical Center and medical office building, said Terry Burns, president of Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia and Soin in Beavercreek.
The hospital should be complete late this year or early next, with 250 to 300 employees, and the medical offices will be complete by April 2012, with an additional 150 employees. For now, construction is employing about 200 workers on the hospital side and another 30 for the offices, he said.
Some of Soin’s employees will be transferred from Greene Memorial, but Burns said it is “too soon to say” how many. But he emphasized that Greene Memorial will remain open to serve the eastern half of Greene County.
L-3 Cincinnati Electronics
The defense contractor marked the opening of its expanded Mason facility Aug. 26. The event celebrated a $20 million expansion that included a 15,000-square-foot clean room, where semiconductor fabrication work is housed, with a systems integration lab, said Jim Wimmers, L-3 president.
The company’s facility on Innovation Way serves the joint strike fighter, as well as companies working in the commercial launch vehicle industry. L-3’s products also serve night vision and airborne reconnaissance technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced heat-sensing imaging arrays and more.
Today, L-3 has about 600 employees in Mason. That number will grow by another 120 employees over next four years, Wimmers said.
Wimmers is not deterred by talk of a double-dip receession or new pressures on Department of Defense and NASA budgets.
“There are no other companies that are capable of building the array that is needed for some of these applications,” Wimmers said.
The company has ties to Dayton, including collaborations with the University of Dayton Research Institute and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Behr Thermal Products
On Aug. 21, the Dayton Daily News reported that the Dayton Behr Thermal Products plant needed 55 production workers immediately. Rob Baker, manager of the plant, said response to that story was “overwhelming.”
“To date, we have over 4,000 applications on file,” Baker said Aug. 29. “I actually am very happy.”
The Webster Street plant — which makes heating, ventilation and air-conditioning parts for General Motors, Ford, BMW and other automakers — received 1,079 applications the day after the article was published and about 900 applications the next day, he said.
The company wants employees who can read at least at an eighth-grade level, pass a drug screen and meet other requirements, including passing a background check. Baker said last week it was too soon to comment much about quality of applicants, but he was optimistic.
And after hiring an initial 55 people, Baker said the plant may hire 50 more in a bid to ease a seven-days-a-week work schedule, letting employees work 36 to 48 hours a week.
Caterpillar Logistics
Hiring continues at what is perhaps the area’s largest active distribution center, the $69 million, 1.6-million-square foot Caterpillar Logistics site in Clayton off Hoke Road just south of Interstate 70. Eventually, the center will employ more than 600 people.
“Hiring will continue through the end of the year and into 2012,” Caterpillar spokeswoman Bridget Young said.
Young could not provide the number of people who have been hired so far, but in late spring, local Caterpillar managers told the Dayton Daily News that about 115 people had been hired up to that point, and that a hiring push would happen in the fall. This may be a good time to check out openings at the Caterpillar human resources web site, jointeam caterpillar.com.
Kohl’s
The clothing and housing goods retail chain will be hiring about 150 people for its new store at Austin Landing, east of the Interstate 75-Austin Boulevard interchange. The store will open at the end of September, and the company is looking for register operators, department associates, customer service, early morning freight unloaders and evening ad set employees.
The best way to apply is online at kohlscareers.com.
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