Invest Hamilton County increasing employer, student connections

NOBLESVILLE — On Thursday morning, Cameron Mullen is at his internship at Metro Plastics. The senior at Noblesville High School has been here a few weeks now.

"First month and half I was out there on the floor running machines," said Mullen.

The molding services company gives him a glimpse into the life as an engineer.

"That's what I want to do, so I felt like I can have an engineering internship where I get out there and get some real world experience," said Mullen.

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For more than a decade, Noblesville High School has had an internship option.

"We have some students that come back and confirm that's what they want to do. We have others that maybe find out that's not the path they wanted to follow and they can change prior to high school graduation," said Dan Nicholson, the internship coordinator at Noblesville High School.

Now, Invest Hamilton County is helping provide more of these opportunities.

"We're serving as a central hub in coordination with our local chamber of commerce to help introduce more employers into this space," said Mike Thibideau, the CEO of Invest Hamilton County.

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The new InvestEd initiative received grant money to increase those connections.

Invest Hamilton County received an Intermediary Capacity Expansion Grant directly from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (CHE) and is an intermediary partner in the Central Indiana Education Services Center’s (CIESC) Career Coaching Grant.

The organization also received additional support for InvestEd programming from the Duke Energy Foundation.

More than 1,000 high school students participate in work-based learning, and that number is projected to go up.

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"On one end we have thousands of open positions that these students are an amazing fit for and can help meet a legitimate market need in our community. The other part is we want to show these students the opportunities that are available here at home," said Thibideau.

Thibideau says the biggest labor need in the county is healthcare.

"It's the king of the castle. It's got the most market need overall," said Thibideau. "We do see food service and accommodations are also a big need. Then a lot of other industries like businesses services is our third largest sector. We're on of the largest insurance hubs in America."

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To learn more about these programs, click here.