Manufacturing is Awesome!
By 1492’s MD Jordan Dudley
When I first started in recruitment I had come from the fitness industry, I knew the fitness industry well but I was technologically challenged. I was the kind of person that struggled to find the power button on a laptop, the first time I experienced a remote log in from our IT team I thought I was experiencing other worldly spirits. So when, in my first recruitment role I was told I would be recruiting engineers in the field of electronic engineering for military and defence purposes it was a little like – ‘fsheudhwehggefhi’ or a regional dialect of jibberish. However more than 10 years on and I can tell you that manufacturing and engineering is a most fascinating world. And whilst some of the products and technology are still a little difficult to get your head round it is, in my opinion, without doubt the best industry to work in. And below are my top 4 reasons that manufacturing and engineering is awesome.
1. It encourages continual learning and development. Whilst I still have a little technology impairment I am massively improved, this has been driven by a real thirst for knowledge, more than I have ever experienced, so much so I kind of wish I was back at school. I owe this to working in the manufacturing and engineering industry. Seeing, hearing and working with people from the industry has given me a curious mind and a desire to continually improve – it has changed my mind set on life
2. It has wonderfully rich cultural and social diversity. Supply chains and customers are often global, depending on what route you take in the industry you can do business and make friends anywhere in the world. Locally, within manufacturing business you can find the same vein of diversity too, and a diversity that people in manufacturing and engineering are proud to be part of.
3. It is the leading industry in terms of innovation, both in products and service but also in business process. Many methods of business process improvement were developed in manufacturing and engineering proving grounds. Serving consumer markets that demand things quicker and cheaper, and it is manufacturing and engineering that has delivered the tools and techniques to do so, other industries have followed.
4. Manufacturing and engineering touches everybody’s life every minute of every day. The thing I love most about manufacturing and engineering is that it is all around us. The screen that you are reading this article on, manufactured. The clothes you are wearing, manufactured. The car you drive, manufactured. The cup you drink out of, manufactured. The bricks that made your house, manufactured. You cannot get away from the industry, even when you’re asleep!! So unless you go native with a troop of howler monkeys in the Amazon you will inevitably be in contact with the industry in some way.
Think about it, just look around, everything is manufactured.
And I find this amazing.
To think that the most simple, unassuming items in our life, things that we take for granted, such as a toothbrush for example, are there as a result of a series of ideas, decisions and actions from people in supply chains and factories all over the world with materials that could have come from anywhere, I think is a wonderful story.
So if you’re wondering about which career is right for you, seriously look into manufacturing and engineering
