SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — As San Diego's hiring crunch continues, a growing number of companies are sweetening the deals for workers to get them in the door. But making it in San Diego often involves looking well beyond your starting salary.
Benjamin Quintero knows the ins and outs of Nordson's spectrum 2 machine. After all, he built them early in his career.
Now, he's managing a team selling them.
“When I started, we were maybe 30 people in the company, maybe eight of us in production. It's amazing to see our production force now,” Quintero said.
Quintero has been working his way up at Carlsbad-based Nordson for 29 years. In that period, the company, which manufactures and sells fluid dispensing and surface treatment production equipment, has grown to 500 local workers.
Quintero’s grown along with the company — getting married, buying a house, and raising three children.
“Work hard and care about what you do, and show interest of wanting to grow and the company will support you 100 percent,” he said.
It all started with Quintero getting his foot in the door as an entry level production worker, a job the company hires for to this day.
It pays $18 an hour and doesn't require a four-year degree. Nordson recently filled dozens of these positions but still has openings.
“We train people when they come in the door, we have a pretty good process, we have a pretty good track record,” said Chris Marion, senior director of Nordson's precision dispense business unit. He added the company prefers workers with some technical background but it's not a requirement.
Marion, by the way, started at Nordson after college 26 years ago and also worked his way up.
“We like to think once we get people here we have a pretty track record of keeping people here quite some time,” Marion said.
Nordson has a few dozen openings in Carlsbad, including for the production associate job.
