CONTINUING OUR CONVERSATIONS with the people who make Apprenticely work, we talk this month with one of our key people in talent recruiting and coaching. As you’ll see, Jenny Sales is excellent at her job not just because she’s been trained to do it, but because in many ways she’s walked in her candidates’ shoes.

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Judging from your LinkedIn profile, it looks like you’ve always been interested in workforce development. What attracts you to that field?

It’s the helping-others aspect. Somebody gave me a hand up back in the day. I was actually in aviation and had worked for two Hot Springs companies doing small instrumentation for aircraft. But when 9/11 happened and we stopped shipping 8,000 parts a day and went to 200, I knew I needed to find another career. And my wonderful mentor, Allison Ramsey, gave me a great opportunity to start as an assistant recruiter at Staffmark, also in Hot Springs.

Allison helped me understand all the different nuances there are to recruiting. She was great in helping me grow my skillset, and I worked with her for 14 years.

Are you from Hot Springs? I noticed a couple of other cities on your site, but where did you grow up?

I’m actually a Northerner in a sense, but as an Air Force Brat, I’ve been all over. I was born in Illinois, lived in California, Nevada, Arkansas. Then when the aviation companies in Hot Springs closed down, the companies in Tucson, Arizona, came to my husband, who is an Airframe & Powerplant mechanic, and said, “Hey, we want you to come work for us. We’ll move you out to Arizona, all expenses paid. And we just happen to need a recruiter for HQ Aero [one of the top recruiters in the aviation field], which would be perfect for your wife. So you have a job and your wife has a job—will you come?” And we did.

So your husband worked for the same aviation group?

Yes, he went through an A & P mechanic apprenticeship with a company called AAR, a program that Staffmark actually supported back then. So at AAR he got his license and grew his career. Shortly after that, they closed the Hot Springs location. That’s when Bombardier moved us to Tucson, Arizona.

But back to your original question: In each of my positions as a recruiter, helping others be successful in their careers has always been really important to me. When I worked for Staffmark, I would say it was the first thing that I was attracted to, but I was also attracted to the pay. The more placements I did, the more money I made, and I was really successful in that. But it didn’t fill my heart.

In 2015, my dad passed away, and it took me a while to figure out what was really important to me. My dad was always about giving somebody a hand up. And to him, it was a full circle—if somebody helps you, you make sure you help somebody else. So in time my primary focus became how can I help others be successful? Our house is paid for. Are my husband and I at the top financially? No. But are we happy and content? Absolutely. We’re able to do the things we want to do and help others.

I had worked with Ashley French, Apprenticely’s Director of Talent Management and Recruiting, back at Staffmark, so when I saw a recruiter position available at what was then ACDS, it was a no-brainer for me. Apprenticeships are perfect vehicles for helping other people be successful in their careers.

And I would say that those are my success stories. When I think about my career and what I’ve done, the most important things are when I have a stay-at-home mom who’s now in the workforce working on moving forward in a career. That’s a success story for me. Or the gentleman who earned minimum wage at Arby’s and then went through our ReSkill program and is now working at Walmart as an automation developer making $90,000. It’s not just his life that’s changed. It’s also that of his wife and children, and even beyond that. He was the first in his family to have that type of career.

So I feel blessed to be in this role, to be able to have the opportunity to give back and share with others. Because like I said, if I hadn’t had Allison in my life, and if my husband hadn’t had AAR, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

I want to shift gears for a minute. When you and I first talked on Zoom, right when you joined ACDS, you mentioned a guitar for some reason that I don’t recall. Do you play? Are you a music lover?

I’m not a guitar player, but I love music. My father was into dancing. He came from the era when they were doing the swing and bop, so music and dancing have always been important to me. I think music feeds the soul. There’s not any genre that I don’t like. My son played in a jazz band, so I love that. My dad loved country, so I still love Charlie Pride.

Do you go to concerts?

I used to go all the time. I don’t go much anymore, especially to inside concerts. I’ll still go to outside concerts. My favorite concert of all was the Beach Boys. I saw them in Little Rock, by the river. This was back in the late 80s, early 90s. In those days you could bring your cooler, and everybody wore tank tops and cutoffs. Those were the days.

Well, you live in Hot Springs, a fun town. What do you do for fun?

Between my husband and me, we have five sons, all grown. Most of them live in this area, though my oldest lives in Tucson. And I have four granddaughters. We’re avid campers and lake goers. Our address is actually Malvern, and we’re literally two miles from Hot Springs. We’re in the middle of four lakes: Ouachita, Hamilton, DeGray, and Catherine. So we’re always on a lake, in a camper and on a boat. That’s our jam. That’s what we do.

Do you have heroes, people who inspired you?

There are a lot of people who’ve inspired me. I’ve always looked at others to see what worked well for them and to figure out how I could implement that. My dad, my hero, was in the Vietnam war, and when he came back, he started drinking a lot. My parents were both alcoholics, which we didn’t talk about then. We should talk about mental health in relation to substance abuse. Wonderful people lose valuable time with loved ones—it’s a disease that needs more understanding.

But, growing up, I would always look to other people who weren’t drinking, who had a different life, and think, How can I do what they do? I had a couple of aunts who were amazing, and I used them as an example. I also had some really great mentors. Allison Ramsey was definitely one of the mentors who helped me understand how I could have a hand up.

But also our Apprenticely team currently. I still struggle with self-confidence, with my value as a person. I can recognize every flaw I have, and how it relates to what I do. It’s really hard for me to say to myself, “Oh yeah, I was successful with that.” So I could not do what I do without my team, because they build me up. They come to me and say, “Hey, you’re really best at this. You’re the best at figuring out why or who or what somebody needs. When one of our team members is struggling with a candidate, they say, “Jenny, I need you to connect with them. This is your niche.” And it does help me in that aspect. So I’ve been really blessed with a lot of mentors in my life. A lot of angels.

That’s a good transition to talking about your work at Apprenticely.

I would say that there isn’t anything I can’t recruit for. The reason I say that is because it’s about understanding a candidate and their needs and wants and desires. If you can do that, then helping them find a matching job or apprenticeship is the easy part. The hard part is truly understanding what their needs are.

So when a candidate comes to the table and says, “I want to be in advanced manufacturing,” or “I want to rebuild cars,” and yet they’ve been mathematically inclined all their life—they’ve been a gamer, they’re always tearing apart computers and putting them back together—I find that they know way more about computers than they do about fixing cars, so that’s probably their niche.

The key is understanding the niche of a candidate. We often don’t understand our own needs and desires. Growing up, I thought I would have a career in the Air Force. But then I had three beautiful boys from my very early first marriage. Life has a way of changing your direction.

I didn’t finish high school. I had a ninth-grade education. I had to go back to school to get my GED. That was not easy at the age of 23. If I hadn’t had really good math scores, I probably wouldn’t have been able to pass because my reading scores were not good, due to my dyslexia. But thankfully, my dad was forceful in math. You didn’t have an opportunity not to be good at math at my dad’s house.

So I graduated and went to school to become a cosmetologist. Then I discovered that I really liked to talk to people, but I took too long to do their hair! So I went into the aviation industry. The lady who helped me in that world was definitely a mentor. Her name was Kim Bishop, and she told me, “You don’t give up.” My dad said the same thing: “You don’t give up. You just keep moving forward.”

We all make decisions, and sometimes they turn out great and sometimes not. It’s how you handle those decisions that determines who you are and where you’re going to go in life.

I imagine that attitude is a big help in your recruiting work. What’s a day in your life like at Apprenticely?

I start my mornings answering emails or text messages from my candidates. It’s always about the candidates for me. I would say there are about 300 candidates in my pool, but not all are always actively connecting. On a daily average, I’m probably talking with 10 to 15 different candidates: “Did you get your resumé done? Have you completed the assessment? Good luck on your interview today! How’d your interview go?”

Within this role, I can handle anything from advanced manufacturing to IT to accounting to healthcare. If I don’t know it, I’ll figure it out, and I will find the niche. I also like to recruit in different pools of candidates. The military is really close to my heart, so I work with Camp Alliance Inc. I have a military group that I support, helping them with their resumés and reviewing them and advising them on the kinds of jobs they could be looking for. I also work with the Arkansas Virtual Academy and any students who are looking to upskill into a career, as well as with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for those college graduates who want to get into an apprenticeship or an internship. Those are the three very different groups of job seekers I support at various stages of their careers. I provide coaching and career readiness to them on a regular basis.

I also work with our team on various projects like our COCA (“Come One, Come All”—thank you, Bill Yoder, for the name!), and I volunteer in College Relations for the West Central Arkansas Society for Human Resource and support our RESEA candidates (Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment) within the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services. I also contribute my efforts to many other projects that focus on helping anyone looking to grow skills through apprenticeships for a sustainable career.

So while you’re juggling up to 15 candidates, who are you talking to internally at Apprenticely?

It could be a number of people, especially those on the client development team. They’re critical to bringing in new employers willing to hire our job seekers based on skills and potential, instead of requiring a certain number of years of experience or degrees. I enjoy sharing potential candidates with our team and company partners, and I do what we call a skill market: I build up a candidate profile, but there may not yet be a job out there for this candidate, so I’ll send the profile to some of my colleagues or company partners and say, “Hey, this is your area, this is the summary, the location, the wage, the skill set. And this is why I feel like this person would be a great fit for this company. Could you go talk to them about that?” We do this in hopes of gaining our candidates an interview, or even a job shadow opportunity, to expand their knowledge.

Nichole Parsons, our program manager for work-based-learning, and I both do that a lot. Recently one of our recruits got an internship and then an apprenticeship through a skill market. So we’re super excited about that.

What would you like the wider world to know about Apprenticely, and your work there?

There are two things I would like them to know. One, the talent is out there. But, second, it takes time to really develop that talent. So you can do one of two things. You can hire someone and still have to train them even though they have experience or a degree, because you’re going to teach them your way.

Or you can really grow talent and create loyalty in the process. You’re going to create talented team members who believe they can and will succeed—and they’re going to be loyal to you. The people I’ve worked to put into apprenticeships feel a devotion to their work, because an employer gave them an opportunity to succeed—a hand up, if you will. They have a desire to do better, to meet that need and exceed that expectation because somebody believed in them and invested in them. So invest in apprentices!

And, by the way, I’m an apprentice myself—for an HR Generalist/Specialist role, with Apprenticely. I’m down to 16 hours of RTI (Related Classroom Instruction) and should complete the apprenticeship on time in April. Dreams do come true with hard work and an opportunity.