MEET KENDALL YOUNG
Age: 32
Hometown: Sheridan, AR
Apprenticeship: Strong Manufacturing
MY BACK STORY
I lived in Pine Bluff until I was probably about 5 or 6 years old, and then we moved to Hunter, Arkansas, which is up near Brinkley. We lived there for probably about seven years. I have one brother and one sister. My brother is a year older than me and my sister is 10 years younger than me.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and my dad worked for a subsidiary of Exxon for a while, and then he owned a fabric store. But he always worked on cars on the side, and his dad owned the body shop in Pine Bluff. Eventually my dad took it over, and once my sister was old enough, my mother started helping Dad maintain his businesses. I was 13 when my brother and I started working on cars with him, and I did that for a long time. That’s really what I did most of my life. Without patting myself on the back too much, I got really good at fixing cars, but it’s just not what I love to do. I was good at it, but I want technology more.
MY EDUCATION/WORK LIFE (Part One)
I was homeschooled until fifth grade, and then I went to public school in Hunter, up through half a year of seventh grade. Then we moved back to Pine Bluff, and that’s where I finished high school. That fall, I started college at Southeast Arkansas Community College (SEARK) in Pine Bluff. My brother and I were the first ones in our family to go to college. So I worked in the body shop trying to get enough money to pay for gas and college, but I found out that it still wasn’t enough. That’s when I also picked up a job at GameStop, a gaming store. So I was working at the body shop during the day, GameStop at night, and trying to go to college.
My plan was to do my first two years at SEARK and then go to UALR. But I made a mistake. My understanding was that you could do your two years basic at a community college and then go to UA Little Rock, which is partially true—but I didn’t know you were supposed to call between the schools and confirm that. So when I finally went to UALR, I found out only four of my classes transferred.
MY EDUCATION/WORK LIFE (Part Two)
My end goal has always been to do video game design, so at UA Little Rock I was pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering. I’ve always had a passion for technology. I think I was probably about 11 or 12 when my parents got me a computer and I first started dabbling. I downloaded all kinds of programs. That experience really made college easier on the programing side, but there were still so many extra things that I had to learn while I was in school. And, of course, I was working at the body shop the whole time. I was doing automobile detailing and other jobs.
The truth is, when I went to UALR, I actually considered quitting college, because I was practically starting over. But eventually I was like, “No, I’ll just go ahead and finish.” And I don’t have any regrets. I got my degree in May of 2021, and it did land me one good technology job.
MY WORK LIFE (Part Three)
In August of 2020, I started as a Website Developer for Smart Home Assurance. Frankly, website building wasn’t really my thing, but it was still an interesting experience because, besides learning how to build websites, I got more familiar with HTML, CSS coding, and some Java. So it built those skills. But it was a very easy job, for lack of a better term. In other words, not challenging.
MY WORK LIFE (Part Four)
I really needed to be actively doing something, so eventually I decided to find something closer to my field. That turned out to be at Windstream, where for a couple of years I was a Transport Engineer. I really enjoyed that one. I got experience with network building, such as NNI and UNI paths. I also honed my troubleshooting skills so that I could identify whether it was a hardware or network issue. I got to a point where I could put it all together and had no problems. But I enjoyed the job more when there were problems, because that allowed me to use a little more critical thinking.
MY WORK LIFE (Part Five)
By the fall of 2024, my dad had shut down the body shop. But since he had a contractor’s license, he decided to do some contracting jobs. So he started a company called Young’s Construction, and I left Windstream to go help him. I didn’t yet have my own contractor’s license, but I could work under him because he was licensed. So I did that with him for a while. Then he got really sick, and I started helping take care of him. He passed away in early 2025.
MY TURNAROUND MOMENT
Since I had to work under someone who’s a licensed contractor, I was now out of a job. So I was talking to a friend, and she told me about Strong Manufacturing in Pine Bluff. “They’re looking for another engineer,” she said, so I sent them my resumé.
What Strong Manufacturing does is build concrete machines for huge industrial jobs, using raw materials such as vermiculite and perlite. The company founder, the late William Strong, was the inventor of basically the double-barrel concrete mixing machine, an idea he got from watching his wife use a kitchen mixer with double beaters. Strong also came up with a machine to pump mixed concrete up to the roof of a construction site, a revolutionary idea. Until then, they used a very labor-intensive wheelbarrow device called a “Georgia Buggy” that took the mixed concrete up on a conveyor belt. Strong Manufacturing is a very forward-thinking company.
I got an interview with the company’s vice president, Kris Kline, and we talked for a while. Then he said, “You know what? Instead of putting you with the engineers, I want you to go into IT and we’re going to put you through this apprenticeship program, and that way you can get certified and be state-recognized as well.” And even though I excel more on the engineering side, I was like, “Okay, I’ll do IT. I’ve never done IT before.”
I’ve always known that there are people who take on apprentices—it was kind of like what my dad was doing with me in contracting. But I had never even heard of “tech apprenticeships.”
MY APPRENTICESHIP
I got hired in April of 2025. At first, they put me with the guys building the concrete machines, so I would get familiar with that. I did that for about a month. Then I started working with our IT lead, Joe Powell, and he has been excellent in teaching me things, having patience, and explaining every little thing. I’m the kind of person who can’t just do something I’m told to do and then go on with my day. I have to understand why I’m doing it. What is this affecting? Why does it have to be done this way?
Joe has always really good about fully explaining it, so that made it a lot easier to pass those exams to get certified. Even if it was something we hadn’t necessarily talked about before, I could walk through the logic in my head and say, “Okay, well, the answer must be this because of these other reasons.”
As far as the apprenticeship program goes, I was incredibly impressed. I was the lone apprentice, and the whole process was really smooth. Apprenticely and Strong were very clear about what I needed to do as far as my OTJ and my RTI hours. And of course, I bombarded them with questions. They answered everything, made sure I had full clarity of everything that was going on. And they’ve been incredibly helpful. I’ve even asked them for additional classes on the side. I say, “Hey, I really want to learn this IBM program.” Or they set me up with a CompTIA network plus a certification exam, and I had already studied for the A+ exam. I was like, “Well, can we just go ahead and schedule me for an A+ exam too, so I can just grab both of them since I already studied for this one?” They were very generous. “Yeah, we can do that.” So I have both certifications.
MY WORK LIFE NOW
I finished my apprenticeship earlier this month, and now I’m a full-on IT support technician. My role is mainly keeping up with the computer and printers and making sure everything is up and running correctly. The guys on the floor go by work orders, and those have to print correctly and accurately so they know exactly what parts to pull, what diagrams we pull from. At the core of all the business is an IBMI machine, and they also use the AS400. I mostly spend my time maintaining the AS400, making sure all the programs and procedures are following order, because one slight little hiccup and we start having bad data.
I was the first one in the company to go through this apprenticeship program, and they’ve started putting engineers through it as well. “Hey,” the VP said to me, “can you help them get their spreadsheets done and show them how to do all this? Because I’m on the phone so much that I don’t always have the time to be able to do it.” So, yeah, I’m already familiar with the whole process, so it’s no big deal to help with that too.
MY CAREER GOALS
Three words: video game design. It’s hard to make it in that field, but I’m thinking about just doing some solo developing, trying it out. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but I’ve just never sat down and done it. During that short period when I didn’t have a job, I was actually pursuing it. I had downloaded a game-developing engine called GameMaker, quite literally. And I was making good progress, I had a functioning game, it was playable. I just really needed to build it and turn it into a full game, but I never did. So when I do it again, I think I’ll just start from scratch.
A possible partner would be my sister. She’s an incredibly talented artist. You could ask her to draw just about anything, or any character, and in less than a day she’ll have it done. So instead of me trying to be an artist, how about I get someone who actually knows how to do it? I can do everything else.