Work in Progress podcast The Manufacturing Comeback Episode 2 Small Employers
Work in Progress podcast The Manufacturing Comeback Episode 2 Small Employers

Small employers are recruiting workers for the manufacturing comeback. Here’s how.

A conversation with small employers on how they are sourcing talent for manufacturing jobs near you
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This is Episode Two of The Manufacturing Comeback, a three-part Work in Progress podcast series. The series takes you inside the surge in hiring in the manufacturing industry. In this episode, we look at how small manufacturers are recruiting and training workers.

Small Companies are Looking for Talent

On my recent trip to Minneapolis for The Manufacturing Institute‘s Workforce Summit 2025, I sat down with leaders from several small companies, including Ketchie Precision Machining Solutions and Acutec Precision Aerospace, to learn how they are meeting their growing demand for talent.

They tell me that they need a highly-skilled workforce with technical, problem-solving, and soft skills to operate advance equipment. They also point out that they are struggling to compete with larger companies to attract that talent.

In the podcast, you’ll learn about paid internships, apprenticeships, and other recruiting and training initiatives. You’ll also hear from local colleges and how they are helping meet the hiring surge.

The Manufacturing Comeback

The recent uptick in manufacturing construction and hiring is fueled by the infusion of federal funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted in 2021, the CHIPS and Science Act enacted in 2022, and private funding.

To better understand how the manufacturing comeback is reshaping the workforce, I speak with Gardner Carrick, chief program officer for The Manufacturing Institute, which is helping employers figure out how to build a strong talent pipeline. .

This three-part podcast series is a robust conversation about an industry that is once again looking for workers.

Next week, in Episode Three, we conclude the series with a conversation around how large and small employers are tapping into underrepresented talent to fill jobs.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

This series is made possible through support from The Manufacturing Institute. As a nonprofit journalism organization, WorkingNation partners and collaborates with outside organizations to make possible our mission of telling stories about solutions to today’s workforce issues. All editorial decisions on this series were made independently of our supporter.

Episode 340: The Manufacturing Comeback: Small Employers are Hiring in Your Town
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.