Cracking the Code: A New Model for Developing Manufacturing Talent in the East Bay?

TL;DR
PilotCity, EASTBAYWorks, and La Familia have teamed up to create a manufacturing workforce development program pilot for out-of-school youth in the East Bay. Using PilotCity’s “traction-driven employer recruitment” model, participants work on hands-on, interest-driven manufacturing projects—like creating new syrup flavors or refining production workflows—to build skills and engagement before employers are involved. The program minimizes employer burden early on, focuses on participant success, and gradually introduces mentorship and job opportunities, aiming to address manufacturing talent shortages while empowering youth for long-term careers.

A few months ago, our friend over at EASTBAYWorks, Michael Katz, introduced us to an incredible woman named Claire Michaels leading up the manufacturing workforce development initiative to crack the code of establishing manufacturing talent in the local East Bay. If you don't know what EASTBAYWorks is, I'd call it the "horizontal layer" of the workforce development boards in each county & city in the East Bay in the Bay Area.

In our conversations, we were exploring possibilities of how we could leverage PilotCity approaches and innovations in the work of incubating manufacturing talent. As many know in the industry, "manufacturing" a manufacturing pipeline of talent is incredibly difficult, especially with young people headed towards technology fields in this area, and across the nation. Yet, manufacturing brings robust wages and benefits, careers and opportunities for those who seek it - given this shortage and need. You would have thought, wouldn't we have this figured out already? The answer is, not quite.

This is where our conversations led us, to scope out a partnership to experiment and test how we could not only get out-of-school young people the opportunity to work in a high-growth career, but to retain that job, and establish a success story that even the manufacturer would call a success and desire more of. This is where the approach of what PilotCity calls "traction-driven employer recruitment" or TDER comes in where we have participants (young out-of-school youth in this case) engage first in opportunities based on real manufacturing workplaces that engages their interest, motivations & drive - before we engage the employer. By utilizing a "build and they will come" approach to workforce program delivery, we safeguard employer perceptions in participating in programs that typically are forced upon participants that lead to low retainment and high failure rates - and let the participant's motivations & drive lead us to where we make the "pitch" to employers.

In this case, we started to identify the best case scenario between our contacts in the East Bay area, given where there are manufacturing hubs, and PilotCity recommended a past partner we've had success working with, La Familia, who have contracted with the Alameda County Workforce Development Board (a "vertical" workforce board to the "horizontal" layer of EASTBAYWorks) to deliver in-school youth services and now potentially out-of-school youth. And on the employer side, EASTBAYWorks recommended Torani as the employer target of interest, your favorite beverage syrup maker. Both organizations are in the East Bay, La Familia located in Hayward, California and Torani in San Leandro, California - neighbors to each other in the East Bay (not to mention, PilotCity started in San Leandro as well).

So whats the partnership? Out-of-school youth supported by La Familia, funded in the future (hopefully) by Alameda County Workforce Development Board, to "build projects to pitch internships" with Torani based on project scopes of their interest relating to the theoretical positions of:

• Syrup Filling Line Assistant
• Quality Control Inspector
• Batch Record Keeper
• Packaging Specialist
• Production Floor Sanitization Manager
• Flavor Development & Product Designer

For example, the project scope for Flavor Development & Product Designer includes the following scope:

"Develop a new syrup flavor for Torani that increases customer engagement by 20% within six months, using feedback from at least 100 taste testers to refine the recipe, while considering resource constraints such as ingredient availability and production capacity, and create a marketing plan using Canva to visually present the flavor's unique appeal and potential market impact."

While this position is one of the more "exciting" ones, it gives a sense of the process of having students engage with one of the available options or even customize their own project, position, scope, interests into the solution making scope that is parameterized to "manufacturing" as the single specification. The youth can customize everything around it, so long as it's authentic to what a typical food manufacturer such as Torani would want for their own production and manufacturing lines. And note, this is all before engagement with the employer to 1st, maximize the engagement of the youth with their own navigation of their own checklist of interests (or even help them discover what their checklist of interests are). This is why this 1st step is incredibly important before delivering "packaged talent" to the employer for the purpose of retention, and future partnership building with the source of opportunities (ie: Torani). What we want is success, not a simple placement for the number itself.

Will this be guaranteed to work? Absolutely not, this approach is a compilation of approaches learned by the workforce & work-based learning professionals in our meetings across PilotCity, EASTBAYWorks, La Familia and eventually a manufacturing employer (such as Torani). But, it is baking in the key problems each of our organizations typically see, and how we might address it individually or together with a comprehensive solution. To summarize, these are the key problems & solutions we are addressing in our partnership:

1. Maximizing participant interest & engagement for retainment and success
   1. Customize programs to participant such as projects
   2. Engage participants in a focused, step-by-step program delivery model
   3. Participant buy-in to the end goal and program model such as internships.
2. Safeguarding employment sources with only vetted & engaged participants
   1. Do not engage employer until there is traction from participants & provider
   2. Onramp employer in engagements that is proportionally less than traction
   3. Utilize a point of contact that knows the employer (ie: EASTBAYWorks)
3. Minimizing employer involvement upfront (ideally zero) to always over deliver
   1. Start program with little or no engagement from employer before starting
   2. Once traction is made, ask for less than 1 hour of their time
   3. The 1 hour or less should be spent interviewing employer on their interests
   4. Once employer interests have been sourced, then re-calibrate participants
   5. Let participants re-orient & then further develop solutions
   6. Engage employer for next engagement, such as mentorship on project
   7. Let participant re-orient & then further develop solutions
   8. Engage employer again with iterated solutions, asking now for opportunity
   9. Opportunities can be externship certificates, job shadows, field trips, etc
   10. You can see trend from here until reaching internship or -ship of some kind

The summary of the partnership can be safely categorized as an innovative "approach" to workforce development in a two-sided marketplace of job seekers and employers in disenfranchised populations with a 1st principles approach to time, investment & resources from both participants and sponsors. If this model works for this population, it will certainly work for other populations that are doing slightly better, becoming a potential fundamental model of how we approach workforce development when recruiting both participants and employers.