By MARIE CLARKE
Greater Sudbury - Keeping students in Sudbury is crucial to engineering firm Bestech.
The company takes in and trains electrical, mechanical and engineering students and trains them in their field before they go off to post-secondary school.
In this, the students are able to work on live, active projects and truly get the feel of working in the trades.
Not all decent paying work in Sudbury has to be within the mining industry. There are jobs that are not as dangerous that pay just as well.
“We want to show these students that there are good, well paying jobs in Sudbury,” said Bestech’s Andre Dumais, sales and marketing manager.
Bestech allows students to work through high school co-ops or summer jobs. The students are paid according to the standard schedules and their personal choice of work. This can be upwards of $15 per hour.
Two students are taken on each term to ensure that a mentor is available and the proper attention can be paid to them.
The idea is that the company keeps track of the students as their education advances, and invites them back when their post-secondary career is complete. About six of the current staff were at one time interns or co-op students at the company.
Adam Tonnos is now the manager of product development. He went to Queen’s University in Kingston and returned to Sudbury after finishing his program in engineering physics.
Tonnos had done two co-ops with Bestech prior to his post-secondary career and they offered him a job upon graduation.
“I graduated and two days later I was working,” said Tonnos.
He had the opportunity to go on and get his master’s in education and physics but was persuaded by Bestech to return to Sudbury and remain here to work.
His career involves extensive travelling and thanks to this, Tonnos has visited China, Australia and has been for training in the United States.
Bestech is trying to recruit students from local secondary schools. They are currently talking with guidance counsellors around the city about promoting their training, and have also offered to visit classrooms and discuss the benefits of such a placement.
A high school co-ordinator asked for a presentation because she has a dozen engineering students graduating this summer.
A presentation at Lo-Ellen Secondary School merited a phone call four days later.
Unlike Inco and Falconbridge, Bestech does not feel the need to set up booths at high schools.
Falconbridge hired every new graduate from Laurentian University’s mining engineering program, so the competition is definitely evident to Bestech.
Still, Dumais says they prefer to verbally sell themselves to students or be promoted throughout the school systems in the region.
