We have spent several years and lots of time, effort and money to understand, "what apprenticeship is?" and "what can apprenticeship do?". This week has given us time to reflect on that in the many dimensions that we have experimented with developing strong IT talent over the last five years. It is always best to here from the benefactors in their own words #RealPeopleRealTechRealTalk:
Kia Gordon - Former Apprentice
Adrian Long - Pre-Apprentice Graduate
Latonia Williams - Current Pre-Apprentice
Many others via our KnowWon community
At the employer level, we have partnered with some extraordinary groups to begin to understand how we can bring about innovative solutions to the challenging problems employers face in finding great IT talent. The importance of partnering to find success cannot be overemphasized. From standing up our program to helping others to develop theirs, we get stronger as a collective the more we collaborate. This video inspired me and my team to explore apprenticeship as a vehicle to scale Talent as a Service for the Gig Economy and impact peoples lives in a substantial way:
Our journey started at the 2020 NC ApprenticeshipNC State Conference where I discovered that apprenticeship in the US is very mature and widely adopted in industries out side of information technology. We just celebrated 85 years and a rich and fruitful professional history. So why not apprenticeship in IT?
At the conference, I had the good fortune to meet an extremely talented coordinator, Tiffany Jacobs who subsequently helped us to establish our own registered apprentice program in record time. We have gone on to support this fine organization by speaking at their 2021 statewide conference (Skills Gap or Opportunity Gap)
Shortly after investigating apprenticeship, we discovered that our local workforce development board, GuilfordWorks was also developing a registered apprenticeship program and we are honored to be one of the first employer partners to be registered with their program. This week we spoke on a panel at their NAW event highlighting both Pre-Apprenticeship Program that we have helped to co-author.
We have also collaborated with other black-owned businesses involved in apprenticeship, like Innovative Systems Group with Mr. Tony Marshall; Nehemiah Community Empowerment Center with Pastor Randi Francis and Creating Coding Careers with Mike Roberts.
We are also in the business of working to expand apprenticeship through programs like CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech program where we are registered as a group sponsor that helps other employers accelerate their benefits of apprenticeship without having to set up their own stand alone program. They can use us as an intermediary for sponsorship, education and collaborate with local workforce boards to help make apprenticeship more affordable. This creates a greater ROI for all stakeholders.
Lastly, we are supporting Guilford County Schools and our other partners in their Dual Generation Workforce Initiative that includes the aforementioned partners, GuilfordWorks and CompTIA through our CompTIA Delivery Partner status we are delivering instructors. The feedback has already been inspiring us to innovate more in these areas.
We began the week with our: NAW 2022 Proclamation | RTriad
We ended in gratitude to the extraordinary collaboration and partnerships that are still developing and yielding impact in our community and most importantly people and organizations.