HOUGHTON — From Miller Electric to 3M and even Georgia-Pacific, 11 companies from all around the globe had the chance to interact with Michigan Tech students Tuesday at Manufacturing Day.

“That’s the whole idea. We encourage students, even as early as in their first year, to come out and get to know different career pathways,” said Sharon Attaway of MTU Career Services.

Manufacturing Day is very hands on for the students. In addition to playing with several interactive displays, students were able to speak with people in the engineering industry, like Doug Stage, a program leader at Kimberly-Clark, who is also a Michigan Tech graduate.

“It brings you back to when you were in their shoes and what they’re going through at that time. It’s a good position to be in now because you can offer a lot of advice,” said Stage. “We come up to Michigan Tech because we want to get some of the top engineering talent to come and work for Kimberly-Clark,” he added.

Manufacturing Day is part of MTU’s CareerFEST. And it’s just the start of opportunities for students to interact with future employers.

Next week is the highly anticipated Fall Career Fair.

“We’re excited. This is a pretty large event for us. And again, this is all pre-Career Fair activity. It’s an exciting time for our students,” said Attaway.

“We want to have a very good presence on campus. We want to make sure we’re here every year and get your name out there. As you can see there’s a lot of companies here to compete with from an employer standpoint, so we want to make sure that people are aware of Kimberly-Clark and we get some of the top students to come to our company, K-C,” said Stage.

The Fall Career Fair, which takes place September 27th, will feature 339 different companies.