REGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSREGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSFor owners, general managers, and hiring leaders at manufacturers with open roles
A Regional Career Network connects your shop to the school that trains machinists and to the nonprofits that bring people to it, so hires arrive already trained on the first skills from your list and you decide who gets hired in a structured interview. It starts inside your own shop with the RCN Upskill Tracker, a training system for the people you already have, built for you and run for you. The network stays standing after any single grant ends, so the pipeline keeps running.
A pipeline of trained machinists into your shop is something a region builds together. In San Bernardino, the region's school trains the machinists, the companies choose who they hire in structured interviews, and the first company is hosting apprentices at its own facility with the state paperwork carried by the sponsor. California funded that pathway. Here is the model, what your shop gets from it, and how to bring it to your region.
BOOK A MEETING ABOUT YOUR HIRINGThirty minutes with me about your open roles.Pick a time and the meeting books right away.
Where this came from
My name is Daniel Wierman. I come from a manufacturing family, and before any of this had a name I ran recruiting and apprenticeship programs on a machine shop floor in Southern California. I hired a young man out of the local college, top of his class, early every morning. Two weeks in, the owner walked past and said, he is going to quit in six to eight weeks. He did. It was not the young man's fault. He could not see a future from where he stood on that floor.
When people can see what they are learning and where it leads, they stay.
Months later, in the same shop, a young man in quality control asked me to print his training certificates. There were about twenty of them. I handed him the stack, he looked at it for about ten seconds, and he said, bro, I barely graduated high school. He had earned something he could see. That moment changed how I see this work. When people can see what they are learning and where it leads, they stay.
Then I spent years inside a Southern California workforce system with 120 programs, and I watched the same thing happen over and over. A program wins a grant. It trains people. Companies start hiring from it. Then the grant ends, and the program ends with it. The companies that loaned a supervisor to the advisory board, opened the floor for tours, and hired the graduates were left with nothing to show for it. Nobody in that story failed. Programs die because they are built on a single grant, and because they run alone.
The model
So we built a way for a region to do this together, with the company's part kept small and specific. In plain words, a Regional Career Network is the nonprofits, the school, and the companies of one region, committed in writing to run one career pathway together, so the pipeline into your shop survives any single grant. The formal definition, the one we use in grant narratives:
A Regional Career Network is a locally coordinated system of nonprofits, educators, and employers that moves people into careers, with sector-specific pathways like CNC, Welding, or Maritime deployed based on regional demand.
Each partner does one part, and nobody does another partner's job. Nonprofits provide participants and wraparound services, the support that keeps a person in training. Educators provide the training needed to be hired. Companies interview and hire graduates. Support Partners, such as workforce boards and chambers, provide resources and networking. A person moves through one path: Get Informed, Get Trained, Get Hired. Your shop is the Get Hired step. The tour and the structured interview are where they meet you, and you decide who gets hired.
Every partner signs a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that says what it will do for the grant. For a company, that is facility tours, classroom talks, and structured interviews with graduates. Hiring is your decision, made after the interview. The partners doing funded work are attached to the Lead Applicant as contracted partners, each with a Scope of Work in the budget. The fiscal lead is chosen per grant from the partners. Company MOUs are the scarcest piece of every grant package, which is why a shop that hires two people a year matters to the region's grants. The network is held together by an entity that sits outside the school, the nonprofits, and the companies, whose only job is keeping the region's partners connected. That is Regional Career Networks, with CNC Career Network as our delivery team for advanced manufacturing. That is why the network stays standing between grants: when one ends, the team is still there to go after the next.
That standing team is what makes Grant Stacking possible. A region wins a grant, builds one piece of permanent infrastructure with it, and goes after the next grant with that piece already in place. You cannot decide to stack grants on your own; only a region with a standing network can, because the partners and the infrastructure are still there when the next grant opens. In San Bernardino, a California Opportunity Youth Apprenticeship award and a Strong Workforce Program grant supported a STEM Lab (science, technology, engineering, and math) that introduces students to machining, and a Registered Apprenticeship formed with the state that the first company hosts at its own facility. Each grant added a piece the companies hire from, and the partners are going after the next one together.
What we bring
You already have open roles, a shop floor, experienced people who know things nobody wrote down, standard operating procedures (SOPs) as bullet points on paper, and someone you already call: an instructor at the college, a person at the workforce center, or the chamber. Every hire who leaves at month four costs you around $25,000 in recruiting, training time, scrap, and the restart. What you do not have is a system around the people you have, or a pipeline of new people into the shop. Here is what we bring, in the order we bring it.
The RCN Upskill Tracker is your whole training system on one page, built for you and run for you. It shows who can do what, the next things to train each month tied to the jobs coming through the shop, and your SOPs and videos organized by skill. The records stay with the company when the machinist with thirty years in the trade retires. It is competency based, never hours. Your team runs the shop and reads a report card; we keep the records current. There is nothing for your people to learn. It is the first thing we build, before anything else.
When you are ready, an apprenticeship program at your own shop, non-union, built to keep the people you train. The sponsor registers it, the state paperwork is filed for you, and your mentors are trained. The apprenticeship layer sits under the Tracker, so nothing is rebuilt. It is not in the first agreement. It comes later through Grant Stacking, when the region's grants fund it, or sooner if you ask.
A place on your own floor to teach, mentors who know how to teach, and a way to check what was learned, built with you by the training partner on our team. The knowledge in your senior people's heads gets handed down inside the building instead of leaving with them.
People from the region's nonprofits, which serve opportunity youth, veterans, and career changers, go to the region's school, train on the skills list from your Tracker, and come to you already marked Trained on the first skills. You meet them on a tour and in a structured interview, and you decide who gets hired. This is the piece a company cannot build on its own. It only comes by partnering with the region and signing the MOU.
What to say to the instructor you already call, to the workforce board, and to the nonprofit down the street, with me in the room. I explain the sector and the regional strategy to each of them and bring them into the network. Your training need goes into the region's grants in the funder's language: roles, headcount, and the skills nobody can teach. Training the workers you already have can be a grant outcome on its own, with no apprenticeship attached.
You already know an instructor at the college, someone at the workforce center, and the chamber. Bring me to those meetings. With the instructor, I explain the pathway and ask the school to train to the skills list from your Tracker, so hires arrive already marked Trained. With a nonprofit, I explain the openings their people can fill and the path to reach them, and your shop in the room is the proof that employers show up. With the workforce board or the chamber, I write them into the region's scope. Each of those meetings ends with a partner brought into the Regional Career Network for your region.
Two ways in
If your shop is in a region where a Regional Career Network is already running, you join it by signing the company MOU: facility tours, classroom talks, and structured interviews. Your Tracker is built on your first job role, your training need goes into the region's next grant, and you start meeting the people the school trains.
If there is no network in your region yet, we start one with you. It begins with your shop. The Tracker is built on your first job role, and the training need it shows becomes the first thing we write into the region's case for funding. Then we go together to the instructor, the workforce center, and the nonprofits you already know, and bring them in. A network can start from any partner, and a company with open roles and a signed MOU gives the region the piece every grant package needs most.
The proof
A California Opportunity Youth Apprenticeship award and a Strong Workforce Program grant supported the pathway in San Bernardino. A STEM Lab is operating. A Registered Apprenticeship was formed with the State of California. The first company is hosting apprentices at its own facility: hired first as its own employees, trained at the region's school, with the sponsor carrying the state paperwork. The region's partners have won over $1.95M in workforce funding together, and the company, educator, and nonprofit commitments are signed in writing.
Thirty minutes online. We go through your open roles, the retirements you can see coming, and who you already know at the college, the workforce center, and the chamber. You leave with a clear picture of your shop's part in the region's network, and the RCN Upskill Tracker gets started on your first job role. After that, I join your meetings with those partners and bring them in, and your training need goes into the region's grants.
BOOK A MEETING ABOUT YOUR HIRINGThirty minutes with me about your open roles.If you would rather write it down first, apply to work with us on your region and I will reach out to set up the meeting. Apply to work with us on your region.
Questions companies ask
Yes. The network is built for shops your size. Your MOU commits facility tours, classroom talks, and structured interviews, and a company willing to do those three things is the piece the region's grants need most. The Tracker is built for you whether you hire one person this year or ten.
You will not be asked to. Apprenticeship is not in the first agreement. When the region's grants fund it, or sooner if you ask, the sponsor registers the program, the state paperwork is filed for you, and your mentors are trained. Your part is hosting. The Tracker works the same way: you read a report card and a list of what to train next, and we do the entry.
You decide. Graduates come from the region's school, the one that trains the skills you hire for, with industry credentials such as those from the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS), and marked Trained on the first skills from your list. You meet them in a structured interview before anyone is hired, and nobody is placed in your shop.
That is the exact problem this model was built to solve. The program you helped was built on a single grant, and it ran alone. A Regional Career Network is held together by an entity outside any one school, nonprofit, or company, so the partners are still connected when a grant ends and go after the next one together. The Tracker and its records stay with your company either way.
When a region wins a grant, every partner doing funded work is paid for its part. We are written into the funded budget as a fixed fee for a defined scope.
Not ready to talk yet?
RCN Grant Watch shows the verified workforce grants in your region, read from the company side: what each one would fund, which partner carries the application, and what your shop's part would be. When a card touches your hiring, it books this same meeting.
Open a free RCN Grant Watch accountSee the grants your region could win.
This is what we're going to do. Do you want to be a part of it?
BOOK A MEETING ABOUT YOUR HIRINGThirty minutes with me about your open roles.Pick a time and the meeting books right away.
P.S. Your open roles stay open, the people you train leave, and the machinists who know the most are retiring. A Regional Career Network is how a region fixes that together: the nonprofits bring the people, the school trains them to your skills list, and you decide who gets hired, with your own training system built and run for you first. The meeting is thirty minutes about your hiring. If you are not ready to talk, open a free RCN Grant Watch account and see the grants your region could win.