YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – About 90 companies across the manufacturing, medical and information technology industries attended the Youngstown State University Spring STEM Expo, looking for employees, interns and co-ops.
BuTech Bliss, a Salem machine design company, has been coming to the twice annual event for as long as Randy Smrek, assistant sales manager, can remember.
“We’re a sponsor because we are a local company, really, and the main purpose is to get talent,” Smrek, a YSU alumnus, said at the Thursday event in the Stambaugh Stadium gymnasium. “We’re always struggling to find good engineers, and we hire mechanical and electrical engineers primarily, not just for our engineering department but for our sales department as well.”
The company is looking for employees as well as interns. BuTech Bliss has hired several engineers from YSU, he said.
“I think they do a really nice job preparing students,” Smrek said. “There’s always like we talk about, personalities, and sometimes we’ll just get someone who’s just really backward and shy. I mean, technical people sometimes are that way. But they take that and they try to get them as prepared as they can.”
Sherri Hrusovski, executive director for STEM professional services, runs the expo, and Smrek said she knows what employers need.
This marks the 13th year for the expo, held in the fall and spring semesters.
“The big thing when the students and the alumni participate, is being able to get that face in front of the company so they can actually talk to them one on one instead of on a virtual type of atmosphere,” Hrusovski said. “It’s always good to have that personal contact anymore. I still truly believe in that, and you can tell the difference, too, with the students interacting with them and the alumni.”
Local companies love to hire local talent, she said of why some companies are interested in YSU students. “And then other companies who might come from the region or from the national aspect of it, they may have alumni who work for them, and they like the quality of the work that they bring to the table …”
The quality of YSU students is often different from other institutions, Hrusovski said. “Our students do a lot of hands-on work, which gives them a better opportunity with employers because they’re looking for those well-rounded individuals.”
Besides BuTech Bliss, Dearing Compressor of Youngstown, Gray Matter of Pittsburgh, Hynes Industries of Austintown and Steel Equipment Specialists of Alliance sponsored the expo.
Zak Logan, a mechanical design engineer at Dearing, is another YSU alumnus. He started with the company as an intern through a STEM expo when he was a student.
Dearing values Youngstown and YSU and has hired most of its engineers from the university, Logan said. The company seeks to hire interns and engineers who work in field service.
“Once these compressor units are made and put onto site, we need a group of guys to go out, reassemble it, test run it, make sure it’s running good,” he said.
Those engineers also respond when a customer experiences a problem with equipment. They also help to update and improve compressors that are being refurbished and redesigned.
Tod Virden, vice president of brilliant operations at Gray Matter, earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering technologies and a master’s degree in industrial systems engineering with a focus on engineering management, both from YSU. Two more YSU graduates who work at Gray Matter, and Sarah Stephens, the company’s college recruiter, attended the expo with Virden.
He’s been attending the YSU STEM Expo for years, both with Gray Matter and the two companies where he previously worked.
“I drag our recruiting team here now because what I find about YSU is we find people that actually want to be in factories during work versus some of the other schools where people want to be doing more R and D kind of work,” he said.
The company wants to hire full-time employees and has a set of characteristics in mind. For fresh college graduates, Virden lists curiosity, a willingness to say yes and to travel and a thirst to learn what the company does. “We can teach the skills,” he said.
Gray Matter works in industry control system integration, and Virden characterizes it as more theoretical and behind the scenes than what some of the other companies at the expo do.
About halfway through the expo, Gray Matter had collected resumes from many positive prospects, and there are many opportunities, Virden said.
“As a company, we’ve got a goal to hire 100 new college grads next year – 50 in January, 50 in June,” he said.
YSU engineering graduates compare well with their counterparts from other universities’ programs, he said.
“I actually think that the programs probably better prepare students to jump right into control systems than some of the other much much bigger schools,” Virden said.
Kaden Bernice of Hermitage, Pa., and Cade Gleghorn of Springfield are both seniors who are studying civil engineering.
“I was probably planning on going into transportation,” Gleghorn said. “That’s the main field that I want to really go into, but I was fine with any opportunity.”
Bernice is interested in transportation or structural engineering. “I really haven’t decided which one,” he said.
They had just arrived at the expo and were starting to visit the companies to learn more about them and the opportunities available.
Ava Pappas of Youngstown is in her first year at YSU, studying biology.
“I was really focused in the Akron Children’s section, medical-wise,” she said. “I’d like to be a physician’s assistant, but obviously I’ve got a long way, so I’m trying to find maybe some internships or shadowing opportunities.”
Pictured at top: Marlie McConnell, human resources generalist; Randy Smrek, assistant sales manager; and Leslie Warren, human resources specialist, at BuTech Bliss.