IN PART THREE of our series on the people who make Apprenticely tick, we continue to learn just how personal this work can be. Nobody comes to this job in a vacuum—for every day of talent spotting, careful coaching, and joyful placement, they bring along their own histories. Sometimes, as in Nichole Parsons’ case, that makes success all the sweeter.

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I see from your LinkedIn page that you’ve long been drawn to workforce recruitment work. What about that attracts you?

I’ve always had a passion for helping people get to that next step. I came from a very, very small town where opportunities were pretty limited. And I feel like I’ve always had a great ability to understand people’s stories, to give them the opportunity to share those stories, and then to advocate for that person to a hiring manager. “Okay, here are the things you’re not seeing on their resumé. Here are the things you really need to know about this candidate.” I like being that middle person, the one who says, “This candidate deserves this opportunity. They put in a lot of effort. Please just give them an interview. Let them have that one chance.”

What do you think makes you understand people’s stories, their motivation, their below-the-surface capabilities?

Well, I feel like people have never asked me the questions they should. So many of us live on such a surface level: “Oh, how are you doing today?” “I’m good.” And that’s it—we never dive deeper into people’s stories. I’ve always been like, Let’s just ask two or three more questions. Let’s create that safe environment where people feel okay to open up and really share their story.

You mentioned growing up in a small town. What town, and what was growing up there like?

I grew up in Huntsville, a very small town in Northwest Arkansas. Actually, I grew up 30 minutes outside of Huntsville, up a long dirt road.

So, Greater Huntsville….

It was way out in the boonies, so it was hard to get to events even in Huntsville. And then to get to our biggest nearby city, Fayetteville, that’s an additional 40 minutes. So I grew up with only what Huntsville had to offer, which at that time was limited.

Huntsville was very agriculture based, so the extracurricular activities tended to be farming- or automotive-related. In school, they had a couple of AP classes, but I was always in the middle—not quite smart enough to figure out those classes, but not at all into farming. So I had a really hard time there.

I ended up not going to college, so I’m a non-traditional student myself. And I was like, You know what? You got to learn things. The information’s out there, we can obtain it, it’s free…all this great knowledge.

I was going to ask about all your certifications—you have a bunch of them.

I don’t even know how many I have, I just kind of obtained them here and there. I actually earned a lot of them from Apprenticely, through my HR project management apprenticeship. Then if I find stuff that’s interesting, I’ll pick them up….

So when you were a kid in Huntsville who wasn’t interested in agriculture, what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up? What were your dreams? Was your family in farming?

They were not. My dad was a landscaper, my mom was a waitress. I had the big idea that I was going to be a doctor. Then on my first day of ninth grade, I was taking pre-AP science, and my teacher said, “Who in here wants to be a doctor?” And we were all like, “Oh, yeah, it’s me! I want to be a doctor!” And the teacher said, “You’re not going to be.”

That happened a couple times, where I’m like, “I want to do this.” And I was told, “You don’t have the qualifications to do that. You’re not going to be able to do that.”

That’s kind of terrible, don’t you think? I thought teachers, especially, were supposed to be encouraging….

So, originally, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I thought, Okay, maybe I don’t want to go to school for 12 years. Maybe I’ll go be a nurse. So that’s when I tried college, at NWACC, which really wasn’t the right fit.

Why not?

NWACC doesn’t have dorms or anyplace for students to stay, so I was living in Huntsville needing 45+ minutes to get to school, and the vehicle I had didn’t have air conditioning, so it was just a miserable experience. And I was struggling in school. Something just doesn’t feel right, I thought. I’m not having a good time. It shouldn’t be this difficult or unenjoyable. We’re going to pivot and see if something else fits.

I had to get some kind of job, so I worked for a while at Bed, Bath and Beyond in Fayetteville. And it was enjoyable—I met a lot of good people through that, and I moved up as much as I could there. But I also realized I wasn’t going to be able to work my way up through retail, because once you’ve hit that manager level, they’re there forever. They’re not leaving.

I finally came to the conclusion that I was just going to have to work my way up through corporate America. Office work. So I started off as a receptionist at a staffing agency, and I liked what I saw about staffing—talking to all these different people looked really fun. Eventually I was able to work up from a receptionist to a staffing consultant, a job I did for several years—and then life happened. They had to downsize and I got laid off.

But it worked out for the best. Through the connections that I’d made in that position, I was able to obtain my first corporate job with Transplace. I was an employee engagement coordinator, doing onboarding of people into various organizations. That was really fun.

What was fun about it?

It’s people’s most exciting day, right? They’re full of nerves. They’re joining a new company they know nothing about, and you get to be the person to calm their nerves, get them excited, make them know that they made the right choice to join that organization. We get to give them their welcome bag, take their photos, and participate in all the fun parts of that process.

And so, you realized you had found your field?

Yep. I love the engagement part with people. I love being able to connect with them, helping them most specifically on the early part of their career. The ongoing business part of “Human Resources” never appealed to me—that felt like more of the disciplinary, negative side of HR. But I liked connecting with and helping people on the front end.

I want to shift gears to the personal for a minute. What do you do for fun?

I’m an avid reader. Last year I read 55 books. That’s usually my yearly average.

Wow, that’s impressive. What do you read?

Mostly fantasy books, fantasy romance-type books. My all-time favorite authors are Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti—they’re sisters who co-write a lot of books together. My favorite series is their Zodiac Academy Series. I also love ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns and Roses) by Sarah J. Maas, and the Fey Academy Series by C.N. Crawford.

How long are these books?

Most average from like 300 to 600 pages. They’re lengthy books.

Anything else for fun?

Well, my husband and I run several side hustles. He’s a re-seller on eBay—he buys stuff and then repurposes it and sells it. But on top of that, we’ve done flea markets. We’re starting a seasoning company.

This is your relaxation, your side hustles?

Well, I hang out with my dog a lot. He’s a Boxer. We go to the parks in the morning just for an early morning walk. I start work at 7 a.m., so we usually leave the house about 6 o’clock. Do a lap around the park and come back.

Are you a music lover?

I like music, but I’m not obsessed with it. I mostly listen to alternative rock—my favorites artists are AJR and All American Rejects. And then I like Broadway musicals. The “Heathers” and “Hamilton” soundtracks have been on repeat for me recently. I’m obsessed! 

Well, you’ve already proven to be pretty surprising, but…what else is surprising about you that no one knows?

How do I know if there’s anything surprising about me? But, well, maybe that I’m an avid baker? Anything from bread, cookies, pies (but not cakes) I really enjoy. I think this comes from my Nana, my grandmother, who was very big into baking and she had this tradition for Thanksgiving that every person would have their own dessert. If you were a big chocolate-pie person, she would bake you that and then some apple-pie person would get that. That was your dessert to take home.

I’m not a sweets person, though, and neither is my husband. So we don’t actually eat a lot of the stuff that I bake. We pawn it off on the neighbors—new neighbors moving in, people’s birthdays, that kind of thing.

That’s a very nice thing to do. One more personal question: Do you have any heroes?

I wouldn’t say I have “heroes.” But I do have a lot of people I admire and look up to. For example, my husband is very, very kind. He’s the type of person who will drop everything to go help somebody. If he sees someone struggling at the grocery store, he’s going to help. So that kindness for other people is really admirable to me. And Ashley French, our Director of Talent Management and Recruiting—she has an ability to give everyone a second, third, and fourth chance, to understand that everyone has a story and that you don’t always see them initially. That part of Ashley has always been very inspirational to me, and I’ve learned a lot from it as well.

Well, that’s a good segue to your work at Apprenticely. How did that come about?

Yes, I’ve been with Apprenticely for three years, starting when it was still Arkansas Center for Data Sciences. What happened was, with my last position, I was trying to move up in the organization, trying to get into recruiting. But I was told that I wasn’t going to be able to because I didn’t have a college degree. And I couldn’t get a salary increase for the same reason.

So that prompted me to start looking for a job that was a better fit, in a place that values what I’m doing. I came across the posting from ACDS, connected with Ashley, and we just kind of clicked and went from there.

Well, great. So tell me about your work at Apprenticely.

I’m a work-based-learning program manager, which means I monitor our internship program here at Apprenticely. My normal day consists of working with companies to help them get started on the internship program, signing paperwork with them, getting the partnership established.

And then, on the opposite side, going out and recruiting for these positions. That means finding that right fit for a particular company, and coaching the candidate to make sure they’re fully prepared before we send them to a company for interviews. Then once a candidate has been selected, we work with the employers on sending an offer letter. There’s more paperwork that goes along with that for that specific intern. We will also help mentor that intern.

Right now, we have 13 active interns that we’re working with in various stages of the process. If something comes up and an intern needs someone to advocate on their behalf—say, they’re not getting enough training, or they think they can do more but they’re not sure how to approach that conversation with the manager—we step in and help guide them through it.

How old are these interns generally?

They’re anywhere from 18 years old all the way up to the 50s and 60s. We’ve had people who’ve been teachers for several years and want a change. Or people who want to earn more and have more security: “I want something more stable for my family and I know IT is very stable, so let me change into that.” Age itself has never been a very identifiable number because it’s all over the place.

For a lot of people, this is their first time in IT, so we coach them about those unknown social norms and help them navigate this new corporate environment. Before any candidates get sent over to companies, we do at least one mock interview with them. We’ll role play the position of that hiring manager, coaching the candidate on answering questions like, Why do you want to work for our company? What’s your strength, your weakness? Tell me about a time where you had a difficult situation. How did you handle that? How do you work with customers? Give me an example of that.

So we ask them all the questions and then give them feedback to make sure they understand the whys of the coaching we’re giving them.

What would you like people to know about Apprenticely that you think they may not know?

One of my favorite things about Apprenticely is how customizable everything is. If you have a company, or if you have a candidate who’s interested in our WBL or Registered Apprenticeship programs, there’s usually some way we can make something work. It may not be how we initially thought it would work, but we can usually support it in some capacity. The process transfers to all kinds of sectors.

I have one more question: After being told in a previous job that you couldn’t be promoted or given a raise because you don’t have a college degree, how does it feel to be in a position to help people without degrees get started on well-paying, open-ended careers?

It feels like a powerful full-circle moment. I know exactly how it feels to be overlooked because of not having a degree—I’ve lived it. That experience gives me deep empathy for the candidates I now support. Being in a position to help them access well-paying, meaningful careers despite that barrier is incredibly fulfilling. It’s hard to put into words how much it means to turn that past frustration into purpose.