DETROIT — When General Motors engineer Joaquin Nuno-Whelan returned to Detroit in 2014 after working overseas for two and a half years, he attended a GM recruiting conference.
Nuno-Whelan recalls that the bill was high — and that none of the candidates at the conference was local.
That "lit a little fire under me that we need to grow the local talent better," said Nuno-Whelan, chief engineer for GM's next-generation full-size SUVs.
"I know very clearly what it costs to go to these recruiting conferences and what I spent on these recruiting teams last year to talk to a kid at a job fair for five minutes, to get his resume and fly him to Detroit and maybe he accepts the job," he said. "I can take that same budget or even that budget reduced, focus it on [local programs], and the [return on investment] will be greater."