The Director’s Chair

SCHOOL IS OUT for most, and many are celebrating their graduations. It’s a great time of the year, both for those grads and the Arkansas workforce.

Building on our focus on Youth job candidates from last month’s newsletter, we at Apprenticely have been strategizing, along with a number of our partners, to answer this question: How we can help close the skills gap, across all industry sectors, with the talent pool that has just graduated high school?

The employers have to be on board first—whatever workforce problem any of us is trying to help solve, there is no solution without employer demand for specific skills. In this case, we also need Arkansas employers to buy into a strategy in which a percentage of their workforce can be filled with 18-year-old high school graduates. Our anecdotal survey over the last few months indicates that employers are warming to the idea. Such a strategy will never be for all employers, but we’re seeing a growing recognition by many that these young job candidates bring a talent-rich foundation with a high potential upside.

In Arkansas, the yearly number of high school graduates, from both public and private schools, is close to 40,000. About 60 percent of those pursue a college degree, and only about half finish a two- or four-year degree. So the talent pool each year is made up of some 40 percent of those graduating—that’s 16,000—plus half of those deciding not to pursue a college degree—another 12,000 people on average. That comes to about 28,000 Youth job candidates each year.

And here’s another question: How, when, and where do we deliver the message of real career opportunities that are awaiting these grads? Apprenticely has been testing that message with high schools and school districts, and they get it. Success for high school administrators isn’t just pegged to how many of their students go on to college. Today, many are also asking, “Did they get a good job and a potential great career?”

Apprenticely is helping with internships and apprenticeships for their graduates. We’re also working with a few schools whose seniors can work 20 hours a week as a Youth Apprentice, hopefully leading to a fulltime apprenticeship after graduation—and we’re seeing an increase in grant activity focused on that very subject.

For all of us concerned with the Arkansas workforce, the next question is, How do we scale? The answer to that is too important not to pursue.

This is a dialogue that we intend to continue, and we would love to hear your ideas.

–Bill Yoder
Executive Director