Navy Sonar Tech Succeeds at Nordco

**NORDCO** [www.nordco.com] (http://www.nordco.com) Nordco supplies North American Class 1 railroads, regional and short-line railroads, and public transit systems. The company also serve industries that rely heavily on rail transportation, including the port authority, agriculture, mining, chemicals, and energy industries. Nordco helps the railroad industry build, improve, maintain, and inspect its track infrastructure and move rolling stock. The company designs and produces new roadway work equipment, rebuilds equipment; and offers machinery repair, machine parts, rail inspection systems and services, wheel and axle inspection systems, and railcar movers. The company believes that veterans make great employees. A large portion of the employees in its Rail Services and Inspection Technologies business unit are veterans. One of Nordco’s 2015-2016 initiatives is to focus on hiring more veterans. ###A VETERAN SUCCESS | RICH SCHLEGEL Rich Schlegel spent nine years in the United States Navy before separating as a petty officer, first class. His main responsibilities were as a submarine sonar technician. Now he is a field service engineer with Nordco, focusing on production, troubleshooting, installations, and customer service. He joined Nordco in 2014. Schlegel said that his military technical training led to his first civilian job opportunity. He advises servicemembers to keep their certification records because they will come in handy in the civilian world. He also recognizes that his success started in the Navy. “The military established a baseline knowledge of certain traits and now I can build from that,” he said. He also learned to be ready for anything: “To be in the military, you have to be very flexible; and being accustomed to that has helped.” There are two reasons Schlegel believes veterans will enjoy working at Nordco: “Good Benefits and opportunities for hard-working individuals.” When it comes to finding a post-military job, Schlegel encourages servicemembers to take chances. “Don’t be scared to take a risk,” he said. “Look for a position that you would be comfortable with, given your skill set – and climb the corporate ladder from there.”