It was the U.S. trade school DeVry Institute that provided Steve A. Manolis with a skill in 1976 to land a blue-collar job as an electronics technician.
But it was the German-owned firm Heidenhain Corp. in Schaumburg that has propelled him into the glitzy professional world of advertising and marketing, thanks, in part, to the generous educational benefits the company provides its employees.
Manolis joined Heidenhain in 1981 as a technician and soon moved into the arena of conducting training and seminars for the customers of the company`s precision measuring devices and machine tool computer controls. By the mid-1980s, Manolis recalls, ”As a product manager, I began working closely with our sales people and I realized we were doing very little advertising, which I felt we needed.”
Expressing interest in the area, Manolis became the full-time advertising and market coordinator for the firm, which employs about 80 people in the United States.
”In conjunction with getting that responsibility, I decided to get my college degree,” explains Manolis, who has been accumulating credits as a part-time student, first at Mundelein College and now at Loyola University. Working toward a major in marketing and a minor in communications, Manolis expects to toss his tassle from one side of the mortar board to the other in 1994.
Heindenhain is footing the entire bill for Manolis` degree. Along the way, the advertising and marketing budget that Manolis oversees has zoomed from about $50,000 to $1 million.
”I think that foreign companies, particularly German ones, recognize the value of education and encourage their employees to pursue educational opportunities,” Manolis says.
