DANVILLE — You might be surprised at the skills needed to work with and maintain production robots at Thyssen-Krupp Presta.

For one, you don’t have to have direct robot-maintenance experience.

“We’re looking for people with good math skills and good observation skills,” said Meredith Cumbow, the company’s human resources manager. “We actually have quite a few positions (open) now.”

But despite Vermilion County’s 12.5 percent unemployment rate, the global automotive parts maker is reporting it hasn’t been easy filling the last 40 or so well-paying floor-production positions (machine operators) from the local labor pool.

“We’re having a very difficult time finding people with the capacity to learn,” said Steve Hughes, a plant supervisor. “It takes a special skill.”

He said the plant had expanded from 25 skilled workers when he started in 1996 to around 216 this year, with the hiring process extended to February after failing to meet a January goal to bump the total to nearly 260.

“We do have some new business coming in,” Cumbow said. “Business is doing pretty well right now.”

Company officials say they haven’t recruited outside the region and have recently ramped up efforts to find the right employees in the Danville area. They continue to advertise through Vermilion Advantage’s Web site, 442jobs.com, posting two more new positions Tuesday. The Web site leads them to the corporate Web site instructing applicants how to file.

Vermilion Advantage leader Vicki Haugen said other area companies have experienced the same problems recently — finding enough quality employees to meet staffing needs.

“It’s very, very difficult to find quality people,” she said. “We are indeed seeing that happen.”

She said high-tech skills are needed now more than ever as signs of a resurgent economy have grown in recent months, and local companies have started to make things once again after sitting on inventories created by a global downturn.

“We’re indeed seeing that happen,” she said Haugen, noting Alcoa and Viscofan had recently added employees as demand slowly returns.

A recent Vermilion Advantage survey of area employers had 21 of 35 respondents indicate they would be hiring in the second quarter of 2010.

Thyssen-Krupp’s sister crankshaft division has also been on a hiring binge in the last several months, almost tripling its number of employees following last year’s consolidation of a Ohio plant to Danville. By March, as employees complete accompanying state-funded training, the division plans to reach a 300-plus hiring plateau.

Haugen said her organization’s focus on education programs linking students and local businesses through training programs in and out of the classroom is designed to groom students for local jobs. She said character and work-ethic education offered at the younger grades is also expected to yield better-rounded, future employees.

“We’re trying to reverse the trend,” she said. “You’ve got to keep those (businesses) that are here, strong. It’s a national issue.”

With starting pay near $12 an hour, an attractive benefits package and a “from-within” promotions policy, Cumbow said the company has had no shortage of applicants. But the list is soon thinned based on math acumen and following standard background and drug tests. She said having a college degree, even in a non-science discipline, could catapult an applicant to the top of the list, as could a recent high school student with math skills.

“We’re choosy about the applicants we pick,” she said. “We’re big believers in training.”

“We’re trying to keep it as much local as possible,” Hughes said. “But we’re way behind schedule.”