Q&A with Ashley French

 

Hard to believe, but we last talked about the workforce in general back in 2021. So catch us up: How is today’s workforce different from that one, and how are the two alike?

I think the biggest difference is going to come in the application process, with the use of A.I. to kind of “gatekeep” and stack rank applications. Our team of career coaches often hears feedback from our webinars or our coaching sessions that candidates are applying for jobs and either immediately getting a denial letter—because of some preset questions—or the application system is scanning their resumé for keywords, and if they don’t align to a certain percentage match on the job description or however it was set up on the back end, it’s not even getting seen by a human. That’s a very significant difference on how quickly they’re being screened out.

What kinds of keywords is this algorithm looking for?

It’s defined by that specific job and how the hiring manager is setting it up. So maybe it’s a requirement to have HTML or .net or Tableau. But whatever it is, to get to the point of interacting with a human, unless you know someone or you were referred, you typically have to go through an automated online system today. We recently had a job seeker tell us that they were being interviewed by A.I. over the phone. That’s brand now, cutting edge. It’s a way of eliminating the recruiter role in the pre-vetting process.

Wow. How do you feel about that?

Well, as a serial recruiter, I know there are behavioral and situational interview techniques that I truly believe will pick out if there’s an individual with a performance issue or red flags on their work ethic, their performance, their ability to work with others. It’s a very humanistic approach. These interview techniques, paired with the job seekers’ work history, job tenure between job transitions, reasons for leaving, and references, should all be used to consider job fit.

Meanwhile, with A.I. screening out people left and right, what does that mean the successful candidates are like? Successful as in “getting hired.”

You still have a very significant percentage of job seekers gaining employment through some form of referral or networking. In Arkansas, that good old boy network—your cousin’s cousin and so on—can get you through the system into an actual human interview. We still see that 72 percent of successful job transactions happen through some form of networking or “who you know.” That can include your former boss or a former co-worker, which is really a critical piece that we educate the youth on—the importance of leaving on good terms and having that strong work ethic, because your reputation follows you throughout your entire career.

Going back to the original question, are there ways that today’s workforce is similar to the workforce from four-or-so years ago?

Yes, I think so. Young people are still very focused on the environment, giving back. They want a career that makes an impact, a difference. Work-life balance is very important to them. If they feel they’re being overworked, they’ll walk off a job, without giving notice. Whereas some of us have that old school work ethic handed down from the Baby Boomers: “Work is work. You stay at the office and you figure out how to get it done, and you meet the deadline.” And that’s how it is.

Well, what about COVID? At the time you and I talked in 2021, we were in the midst of it and had no idea of the changes it would bring. What do you think COVID has done to both your job and to the workforce?

Well, for my job specifically, we no longer have an office, so I’m at home 24/7! On a positive note, I think COVID forced companies to figure out this whole remote access to all the technology to make working from home an option for their employees. So that’s great. But I think what many employers have found, and I’m nervous to even say it, is that there are some employees who may not be as efficient and productive working from home.

So the answer is to open up this whole hybrid workforce, which I love. I think that’s the secret sauce to compromise, to get that flexibility, whether it’s two days a week at home or one day a week at home—but to also have that office culture for collaboration, where you can just walk over to someone’s desk or holler over a cube and ask your question, versus composing and sending yet-another email.

For the state of Arkansas, this evolution to remote work really helps our workforce. It opens up tons of companies that previously had no presence here. Google wasn’t hiring here, Microsoft wasn’t hiring here. They don’t have physical brick-and-mortar offices in Arkansas. And so, as challenging and as terrible as COVID was, opening up more job opportunities here has been a good thing.

Let’s talk about the increase in skill-based hiring, and why that’s taken off and how it’s changing the workforce today.

Sure. Back in 2018, when we started the Arkansas Center for Data Sciences (ACDS), the state of Arkansas wasn’t graduating and retaining enough Computer Science majors. That’s why we came into existence. To be able to fill those positions, employers had to start looking at other hiring techniques and qualifications. So, lowering their minimums from that four-year degree to, “Hey, let’s open it up for our military veterans. Maybe they’ve only been out of the service for a couple of years and haven’t had time to use their GI bill, but guess what? They were boots on the ground in a cool telecom center doing logistics and cyber threat prevention.” So we started looking at the skills you can pick up that don’t require a degree.

ACDS—now Apprenticely—is working in sectors besides IT now. Are you involved so far in the other industry sectors, such as manufacturing and healthcare?

Manufacturing, being very close to construction, plumbers, electricians and so on, is a field that’s very familiar with the apprenticeship model. On our team, former career coach Jenny Sales has now spearheaded that sector and is doing a great job. I find it interesting that a lot of the manufacturing jobs that they’re looking to hire apprentices for are like cousins to IT. Think of a control room operator, someone at the facility who has all these dashboards and displays they’re looking at and who has to track the data to see if the assembly line is at the optimal, most efficient production state.

But think of what a great career path potential that is for someone who’s been working on the assembly line for, say, 10 years. Who better to train, through the apprenticeship model, to look at these displays, how to implement Lean Six Sigma and optimize their outputs. What really gets me excited is when manufacturing employers are willing to draw from their current general labor employee base, people who have the work ethic, who have checked so many of the boxes, but who just need some training on the techniques, the computer system, or the actual system technology.

As for Healthcare, about 45 percent of Arkansans live in rural areas, and our state’s rural areas in particular are experiencing severe shortages of healthcare services, impacting the quality and accessibility available to our citizens. In many of these communities, the hospital is the largest employer, and 30 out of 47 rural hospitals in this state are already running in the red. The apprenticeship model is a viable solution, however, offering current or new healthcare employees time while on the job to obtain the required medical certifications. The Arkansas Rural Health Partnership, spearheaded by trailblazer Mellie Boagni, is making great strides to support additional training avenues with their mobile training units. We hope to continue and expand our healthcare partners across the state to assist with apprenticeships for Medical Assistants, Patient Care Technicians, and more.

You’ve told me that “salary transparency” is a trend these days, and I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Were you talking about simply in a job posting or are you talking about everybody in an office knowing what everybody else makes?

On a job posting. But guess what? The reason many employers are still a little resistant to post that data is exactly what you said, because employees talk among themselves. I think it’s a good thing if you’re just disclosing the minimum salary range. In HR, there’s a minimum, a mid, and a max. If you just post the minimum, that makes sense. It leaves a little room to guess on as to what the rest of the range is, but when you add that full range, job seekers will often shoot for that high number, and sometimes you have to be a little humble when looking at the job description. How much experience do you really have in that industry, in that job? Many job candidates don’t understand that for them to get that max salary, or even the 75th percentile, they really have to check a bunch of the boxes and not require a lot of training.

But if this is your first time in this type of job, this type of industry, you’re going to have to come in at either the minimum or maybe at least under the 50th percentile. And again, going back to that application automation, if you go too high on your required salary, you can automatically get kicked out.

But where this salary transparency especially helps, I think, is with female applicants. Statistically, females typically undersell themselves on salary, or at least have more of a realistic approach to salary negotiation. Whereas the statistics show a man will always shoot much higher. So for the past 20 years we’ve been in this trend of men coming in at a higher salary, not based on skills and abilities, but just because of stronger negotiating power. So salary transparency helps level out the playing field to a certain extent.

We’ve touched on A.I. a little, but not in regard to jobs themselves. What new jobs is A.I. bringing to the workplace?

Have you heard about chatbot testers? Those are kind of cool. There have always been tester jobs within IT. Testers typically test a senior engineers’ code to save them that critical time. But now there are people who literally grade the A.I. technology that someone has built for a healthcare company or a customer service company, and you just try to break it or confuse it to make sure it’s effective for customers. We’ve all been frustrated with different virtual A.I. assistants or chatbots, and we end up yelling, “Let me talk to a human!” So chatbot testing has become a very new entry-level IT position, a way to get your foot in the door and get some exposure to technology. Within the last six months, we’ve added a new self-paced course, “A.I. prompting 101.” Quite often, these are project-based contract jobs.

In addition to the chatbot tester, we’re also seeing an increase in cybersecurity careers. With so many scams out there, whether it’s A.I. or the chatbot pretending to be a human, cybersecurity is continuing to be a hot field. And October is Cybersecurity Awareness month, as you know!

Yes, thanks for mentioning that. So in addition to cybersecurity, how have the core competencies changed for the people you’re trying to get jobs for?

There’s still a ton of machine learning. Anything within the kind of advanced data analytics side of the house, I think that’s still there. There’s this new focus on blockchain and Web3. No code development. The drag and drop is still a trend. Legacy systems still have a need for the blockchain technologies—your Cobalt, your Linux—versus five years ago, everyone wanted HTML, everyone wanted JavaScript, the fun, colorful front-end types of programming languages.

So while the preferred languages have changed, they’re still very heavy on Python, which is transferable within manufacturing and data analytics. It can also do your front-end and backend coding. So I think definitely there’s been a change on which languages are being hired. And it’s funny that these older legacy systems are coming up on all the job descriptions and these recent graduates are like, “Cobalt? They didn’t teach us that. They took that out of the curriculum 10 years ago!”

Lately we’ve talked a lot about the growing emphasis on younger and younger apprenticeship candidates and the challenges with that approach. Tell me more about that.

The biggest challenge is on the employer side. When they have such a diverse, experienced group of candidates to choose from, why would they choose someone fresh out of high school versus someone with five years of work history, a proven track record, and professional business acumen?

Meanwhile, the state of Arkansas has implemented a lot of really great programs, like Be Pro Be Proud and The Ford Foundation. So by their sophomore year, high schoolers can choose a career track and start getting real exposure to the careers that they’re interested in. They have employers who come in and speak to the students from freshman and sophomore year on: “This is what I do as a healthcare technician. This is what I do as an engineer.”

But we need more employers to step up and offer an internship or apprenticeship to someone right out of high school, and to be open to giving them that time to learn the professional business acumen, to understand time management and so on.

What do you think it’s going to take to get employers to do that?

Well, if someone would give me a $2 million grant, we would have funding to cover the cost of the internship. Because when the interns are on our payroll, it’s less burden on the employer and the benefit of a free resource to boot. All the employers have to do is give these young people meaningful work experience. Meanwhile, the interns have three months to show the employers that they have the right work ethic. So now they’re no longer this unknown resumé and they have some actual experience on the job. Practically speaking, I would say that real success in this area comes down to grants or private donations.

What else would you like to talk about related to the changes in the workforce and the workplace over the last few years…and in the future?

I can’t emphasize strongly enough that I believe A.I. is going to continue to grow and affect job seekers. Whether your credentials are from a university or an online certification, whether within IT, healthcare, or manufacturing, A.I. needs to be factored into your approach when you’re on the search and applying to new roles. Having background knowledge on A.I., such as familiarity with ChatGPT or prompt engineering, can be useful not only for your search, but they’re also key skills that employers are starting to adopt and implement in their businesses.

Finally, while technology is always evolving, one constant that will never change is the importance of your professional network. Surround yourself with others who can raise you up, both in your professional career and in life.
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Ashley French is Apprenticely’s Director of Talent Management and Recruiting.