Bucks’ Industrial Skills Program Recognized

Bucks’ highly successful Metalwork Training Program wins award from the National Council for Continuing Education and Training (NCCET). Due to the success of the Metalwork program that started in 2014, manufacturers asked for another training program, Industrial Maintenance, which started in 2016. Both training programs were approved as pre-apprenticeship training in 2019. Stephanie Wenger, Assistant Director, is interviewed about what keeps the programs successful.

Evo: Who are some of the other stakeholders that need to be involved in the success of the program?

SW: Since we provide the program for FREE to students it often depends on the funding stream. Generally speaking, it's either the Bucks County Workforce Development Board (WDB), Bucks County CareerLink, or the Pennsylvania Department of Education or Labor and Industry. We work with the WDB and the PA CareerLink to access ITA funding to sustain the Program when we do not have a grant.

Evo: What role is the college playing in making sure that everyone's pulling in the same direction?

SW: The biggest thing is that everybody needs to have is the same goal, same objective. An employers’ objective is to obtain good employees, and our objective is to get our students jobs and give them a life-changing opportunity. We're training these students, getting them to work. The employers are getting someone that has an interest and an entry-level understanding of manufacturing, but has also been vetted over 12 weeks.

The employer knows that the student they are hiring has shown up to class every single day, worked with a career coach and a job developer, and had 12 weeks of full-day education. At that point, they can be confident that the student will understand their new position and show up to work every day and do a good job. This is the shared goal between us and the employer.

The funder has the same goal, in that once these students graduate, they can have a fulfilling career with a self-sustaining wage. That's the biggest thing; we’re not training these people to get a $10-an-hour job. We're training these people to have a job that starts at $15-an-hour or more, so that they have the opportunity to make $45,000 over their first year. They have the opportunity to make, $60,000 or more, in the future, without any debt.

Evo: The Metalwork Training Program has a 92% completion rate, and a high retention rate. How do you guys maintain this level of success?

It's the one-on-one connection. Each student that goes into the program has access to two instructors. Between the five instructors we have, there’s 167 years of experience. They’re retired professionals from the industry and their dedication to the students is tremendous. We would be lost without them.

In addition to instructors, all of our students are matched with a job developer/career coach who works one-on-one with students on their resume, interviewing skills, financial literacy, and then that person works to place the students. We function like a placement agency.

We also counsel students on a whole host of things. Things going on at home, how to handle your resume, an interview, how to talk about some of the things that you might not be most proud of on your resume. We then place the students by working with the instructors to see who's going to be a good fit where.

Instructors go on company tours with the students and have an understanding as to who will excel where. One of us is always meeting with the owner or the hiring manager, so we can have a pretty good idea of the personality of the company. From there, we get an idea of the personality of both the company and the student and find the right matches.

Evo: How do you manage scalability of the number of students coming through, with everyone’s interests, personalities, various skills and cultures?

SW: We have a vetting process for the students before being accepted into the Programs. We interview every candidate before they're accepted into the program, and also give them a mechanical aptitude test. There are different aptitude tests for the metalwork program and the industrial maintenance, but it's still the same framework. Depending on how that potential student does, we accept the person into the program, and do a criminal background check, which is a case-by-case basis, and a drug test as well, which is pass-fail.

Once the student goes through all of that, they are accepted. If the student's going to jump through all three or four of those hoops and make it, they're going to be pretty dedicated to the program.

For more information on the programs, visit www.bucks.edu/wfd or contact Julie Rita-Di Pietro at 215.968.8495 or Julie.rita-dipietro@bucks.edu.

This interview was originally published on The EvoLLLution; read it here: https://evolllution.com/revenue-streams/workforce_development/engaging-employers-to-forge-clear-pathways-to-sustainable-careers/

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