The Director’s Chair

THE WORLD IS changing with lightning speed, and today’s young people and their parents are increasingly occupying different realities. A story we’ve told before bears frequent repeating: A professor we know was on a college recruiting visit to a medium-size Arkansas city when the mother of an 18-year-old daughter approached him with an unforgettable request. “Please tell my daughter there’s no career future in being a mathematics major,” she said. The professor, a physicist who also oversees his university’s engineering department, launched into a polite but pointed 10-minute litany of all the tech careers in which math skills are a plus, if not a requirement.

This woman’s daughter had grown up with computers and technology, and she and her generation now lived in a different world than the one their parents inhabited. “From that experience,” said our professor friend, “I learned that it’s not enough to educate the students. We need to educate their parents too.”

When we first told that story, a couple of years ago, Apprenticely was still focused solely on IT careers. But even now, as our scope of sectors has expanded from “just tech” to include advanced manufacturing, energy, healthcare, transportation  and financial services, IT skills remain a major component of our work. What this means, to both young Arkansans and their parents, is that today there are more and more opportunities for fulfilling, high-paying careers—right here at home—than ever before.

Not only that, but today it’s possible for young people to begin preparing for these careers—and getting paid to do it—while still in high school. If you missed my Director’s Chair columns for April and May, please click on those links and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I think you’ll be impressed.

Meanwhile, here are a handful of reasons for you parents to get behind your young person’s foray into Youth Apprenticeships:

• The breadth and depth of available careers: While some form of IT plays a role in most industry sectors these days, it’s not just coding, not just data analytics, not just computer programming, not even just the technology industry itself. It’s banking, retail, consumer goods, healthcare, education, manufacturing, hospitality, travel, transportation, communications, legal, engineering, financial services—you name it. The world is quickly becoming transformed by technology, and every business is increasingly dependent upon the tech talent it employs. Even your local farmers now rely on technology. “You might think my tractor is just a tractor,” a farmer told us in an interview. “You would be wrong. My tractor is now a computer on wheels.”

• Much of this work can often be done remotely: Post-COVID, more and more companies are adopting a “hybrid” policy, meaning that today’s employees have the best of both worlds: in the office some days, working from home others. That’s why there are people throughout Arkansas working for companies all over the state—and even across the country—while enjoying the benefits of living at home.

• Offering fulltime, paying positions while still learning the job: This is the advantage of Registered Apprenticeships, which are a key part of Apprenticely’s work. In the five-plus years since our first apprenticeship cohort, we have helped more than 200 Arkansas employers engage nearly 2,000 apprentices in a variety of fields. “Companies have had time to see how well the apprenticeship model works,” says Lonnie Emard, Apprenticely’s National Apprenticeship Director, “and I think the breakthrough is with the HR departments, who used to only consider people with four-year degrees. But today they need so much talent that they’re saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to start doing some things differently.’ And we at Apprenticely have shown that we can bring them high-quality people who, even though they don’t already have the skills, can be taught the necessary skills—and we’ve proven that we can do the teaching. We’re even starting to work with some of our state’s largest employers—organizations that aren’t used to looking at the types of individuals that we’re bringing to the table.”

• It pays very well: While starting salaries vary by company and occupation, Arkansas apprentices age 24-39 have started at salaries ranging from $32,000 to over $100,000, with average wage increases at 17 percent.

• There’s room for everyone: High school students, college English Majors, business students, graphic designers—everyone’s welcome. Here’s Lonnie Emard again: “Whether you’re a computer science student or not, a college student or not, a high school student or not, a parent, a career changer, a veteran, a minority or rural worker, or someone who hasn’t yet found your path—whoever you are, if you live and work in Arkansas, or you want to live and work in Arkansas, there’s a place for you in one of these cutting-edge careers. And don’t think this is just about young people and entry-level jobs. In the apprentices Apprenticely has placed with Arkansas employers, we have folks who are 20 and folks who are 56.”

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IN OUR EXPERIENCE speaking to young people and their parents about IT-focused careers, one of the parental questions that comes up most often is, “How smart do they have to be?” It’s an almost unanswerable question, because how do you define smart? But most parents these days have never had jobs like the ones available today, so this is such unfamiliar territory to them that they don’t really know how to guide their son or daughter. They imagine IT and “technology” to require such a high level of intelligence that it’s going to be a barrier for their child to get into it.

Our response to that question is, “This isn’t even about intelligence, it’s about learning style and aptitude.” There are so many varieties of occupations available. It’s not all about writing code or being an operations specialist on some kind of hardware. It’s not all about math! In our work, we focus on 26 different occupations in which creativity, design, big-picture thinking, communications skills, and other “soft” aptitudes are at the heart of the work. So even if technology isn’t your child’s strong suit, that doesn’t mean there’s no place for him or her in today’s high-tech careers.

Have questions? Want to know more? Get in touch with us at www.apprenticely.org and let us tell you all about it.

–Bill Yoder
Executive Director