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“TAP” into local talent

“TAP”  The Apprenticeship Program (of Morristown, Morris County, North Jersey, New Jersey, and beyond) …

When it comes to the training and employment of our children for a career, we often hear that education is the key, and I agree. The question to be asked is regarding how “education” is defined. In our country, the model seems to generally be that education for white collar jobs means college, graduate school, etc. and for blue/gray collar jobs it means trade school or on the job training. In many parts of the world there is an additional approach know as the apprenticeship. We often think, in America, of an apprenticeship to be associated with a trade like plumbing, carpentry, lock smithing, and the like. I would like to see this concept broadened to include white collar career paths.

We have all known very bright people that would be considered ”not book smart.”  There are many, many kids that grow-up in families that have not had the exposure to higher education, and as a result they don’t stress the importance of it to their children. There are kids that grow up in families that cannot afford a college education for the children, or need their children to contribute to the family income immediately after high school graduation. I could go on and on, there are a million scenarios, but my point is simple, what many of these people have in common is limited opportunities in the business world, thus by default they take jobs instead of pursuing careers.

Here in Morris County, we have many Fortune 1000 companies, as well as many other large employers of various sizes and industry types. The other thing we have here in Morris County is one of the highest ranking school systems in the country. So, we are in a position to offer many young, bright, and available potential candidates for employment.

What if we were to establish a program (let’s start small – start it here in Morristown) where we gain the support of 10 local employers to be fully involved with a mentor and apprentice program targeting kids like I described above starting with summer employment following their sophomore year of high school. In that first summer, these employers would agree to each employ three kids for ten weeks, rotating the kids after five weeks. This rotation would allow the kids to get exposure to two employers, and the employers would get to evaluate a total of 6 kids.  As part of the program, a mentor from each employer is assigned to each kid. This mentorship responsibility is to continue beyond the initial summer program, this relationship could extend through the student’s senior year. They could meet once of twice per month to talk about classes, the business world in general, goal setting, personal challenges, etc.

Following the summer program, there would need to be a process for giving input to the student, his family, the program manager, etc. As part of the feedback should be an evaluation of all the aspects of the student’s participation in the summer program – such as work ethic, interest level, communication skills, abilities, etc.  This would give all involved parties some of the necessary information to decide on the best company-student matches, and a place to begin to set some more educational goals for the student’s junior and senior years.

This program would then continue, maybe including a short employment stint during the Christmas break of the student’s junior year, then the following summer the student’s would be matched with the company where mutual interest has been expressed. This would further continue through the senior year.  Following graduation, there could be an agreement to a two year apprenticeship program, where the company and the student work together to build knowledge, skills, and outline potential career paths.

Obviously, this is an very general description of one potential approach. To get too much into detail would make this post just too long. The main concept is to encourage local companies to be good neighbors who are investing in local kids for the good of both the company and the community. By opening non-traditional opportunities to our children, we are helping our kids to get involved, think about their futures,  plan for their future, and to work toward achieving the goal of long-term career development.