On October 11, at Jabil Blue Sky Innovation Center in San Jose, over 125 high school students gathered to learn more about how they can pursue careers in manufacturing. Students from around Silicon Valley – representing Lincoln, Yerba Buena, Piedmont, Overfelt, Metro Ed, Leigh, and Fremont, Cupertino and Monta Vista High Schools – toured the facility watching Jabil employees perform stress tests, use 3D printers for additive manufacturing, track supply chain trends in other Jabil facilities, and more. They also participated in a panel Q&A where they asked three Jabil employees questions about what it’s like to work in manufacturing.
The event also included an education/career fair with representatives from NextFlex, Manufacture: San Jose, the Silicon Valley Organization, San Jose Works, Evergreen Valley College, and San Jose State University who were on hand to provide guidance to the high schoolers about higher education pathways and to demonstrate some of the technologies that make manufacturing such an interesting field to be in.
On the tour, students were impressed with the variety of products that manufacturers create, from IoT-enabled devices to MedTech to acoustic technology and beyond. Jabil employees impressed upon them that there are many different career paths for them at a manufacturing facility. They saw that today there is much more to manufacturing than working on an assembly line, there is the innovation process itself, prototyping, design, engineering, and fulfillment.