Hi, I’m Heather Moyer, President, CEO and founder of HNM systems. HNM systems is the leading tech enabled professional services group for the fiber broadband Association. We staff resources nationwide and internationally to help build communities, revitalize rural communities, and connect students to education and people to health care. HNM systems joined the fiber broadband Association just two years ago, wondering how we were going to support bridging the digital divide. It’s been such a wonderful partnership. We love coming to fiber Connect. This is our second year here, talking on workforce development panels, helping to talk about CO creating curriculum and how we’re going to increase top of the funnel access to new talent coming into our industry. We’ve developed numerous strategic partnerships. We’ve acquired a ton of new customers, and we’re really all in this to make the world a better place. That’s why we love being a part of the fiber broadband Association.
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00:00
Lead one of the most important topics in our industry right now. I think we can all agree that it’s the one that is evolving
00:08
and ever changing as different funding opportunities and different things that are presenting us
00:15
in today’s environment, from new construction, waiting on grants and all that you know, and everything in between. And then the next part of it, as after you complete your construction, you’re trying to get away from contractor, what they look like now, or next for you, rather, today’s panel,
00:34
we’ve got two really good panelists,
00:38
and imma turn over them. Just say, let them introduce themselves. My name is Brandon curry. I’m the network engineer at ACE fiber in Corinth, Mississippi, also ace power as well. And I’m also an instructor for Northeast Mississippi Community College in Booneville, Mississippi, as well as for Tennessee Valley public power Association, teaching the optic path. And so
01:01
I’m gonna turn it over to introduce herself, and then kind of keep going.
01:06
Well, thanks, Brandon, hi. I’m Heather Moyer. I am the president, CEO and founder of H and M systems. H M systems is a leading tech enabled professional services company that staffs resources internationally in telecommunications and energy. So effectively, what that means here to this audience is we are the broadband specialists in terms of talent acquisition and Workforce Solutions, and we have the privilege of being on a panel last year together with Brandon, and have had a lot of success this year. So grateful to be back and welcome you on this Sunday.
01:42
I’m Corey Lee. I’m from Wilson, North Carolina. So I’m operation supervisor for green light community broadband, which is a local government all fiber to the home operation. We have about 13,500
01:55
subs today. We started back in 2007 2008 range. I have a unique fiber story. That’s kind of why I’m here.
02:05
Been with green light for 20 years in the company, and currently I’m teaching the optic path at our local community college. Been doing that for seven years with the octopath. Is something I hold near and dear to my heart. My predecessor, Gene Scott, which kind of helped start the things with the optic path, and get going with Mark boxer and Debbie and all those was just a big part of how I got to where I am today. Just his vision. That’s how I got where today.
02:35
And today we’re going to keep this very conversational, and as we’re talking, you know, we are going to take the time for questions at the end. So please, you know, write it down, or just think, keep those questions, because I want to say at least probably five minutes, and we may kind of carry on. We’ve got a lot to cover here, but we’re going to kind of dive into it. And when you think about it, your current team building and strategy.
03:03
Heather, how can we shift our hiring focus from experience and trainability? Yeah. Brandon, great question. So this has been one of our key focuses. I think one of the issues that our industry is facing is anyone who’s familiar with sales, I think can agree that we have a top of the funnel issue, which effectively means we don’t have enough individuals coming into our industry, and we aren’t able to Up skill and retool them effectively to get them, you know, capable to meet our delivery demands. So if we think about we have 10s of 1000s of miles of fiber going underground. How are we attracting resources outside of our industry? Kind of that top of the funnel idea to get them interested in get
03:51
them interested in telecom, yeah, and for me, I think it’s the growth potential, getting these individuals and just, you know, hiring based on their willingness. I’ve had so much success hiring the younger 1819, years old, who are more willing to learn we’re smaller. You know, oversee like 12 five or technicians, and oversee 17 technical service representatives in our call center. But out of the out of all those that we’ve hired, that younger generation, the ones that were just willingness, had that willingness to learn to look outside the box and think outside the box, and being able to teach that we’ve had a lot of success with our industry.
04:34
And so I kind of asked two questions, because I think they kind of go in hand in hand together. So the first question is, in what ways can we better embrace and tap into under utilized talent pools? I mean, Corey, you spoke touched on like the younger generation, and then that’s where this next question does and what does the ROI based hiring Hall look like, and how can experience employees with green talent improve outcomes such as.
05:00
They are 1819,
05:01
year olds, yep. So we like to call them emerging talent and high potential talent, right? And so what we have been doing with our customers is saying, Okay, we understand that this is a mission critical project. We understand that this customer is very important to you. We understand that you need a fiber splicer with eight to 10 years of experience so that you can go home and sleep at night, right? Yes and right. So we’re not ever going to be able to develop that next generation of lead ISP technician or fiber splicers unless we’re able to get folks into the industry and to start mentoring them. So what we’ve positioned with our clients is in our an ROI hiring model. And what that means is, we’re going to take one or two very senior individuals, and we’ll talk a little bit later about, you know, where do those senior individuals come from? Some of them are retirees that we recruit back into the industry and have them consult for us on a part time basis. That requires flexibility from from each of our customers, right? Which is not always easy, but really what we’re doing is we’re putting together these teams, and we’re showing our customer that, hey, this blended rate is less than you would have paid with these senior people. And here are the benefits of that as well. So you know that ROI hiring model is something that we’ve seen a lot of success in.
06:25
I would caution that to say, with every one of our customers, and even with us internally, we do it as a pilot program in one market or one project with one hiring group. First, every organization has a different type of culture and DNA, and so you want to make sure that you understand what that looks like organizationally, and then also individually, with your customers and your hiring groups. So I think it’s important to look at it as a holistic strategy, but to start with a pilot program any really specific area,
06:56
yeah, for me and my perspective, I want to kind of be harping on the whole optic fast and kind of what we do
07:04
with younger generations. We have to make these jobs attractive to them. So one thing I have learned because of our partnership with us and the college is I bring in the technical service representatives. I bring in the network engineers that they’re the best islands, the GIS is all these jobs. I bring them in to let them talk to the students, and they sit there and talk about how their fiber story and how they got started, that they’re all fiber jobs. They started somewhere, and now that’s how they got from here. And so once they see that, once they see the value of how they can grow and take this job and move it to a career, they see potential in the industry. And they’re not just going to be out there on firework for years and years on, and eventually they can have this inside job, right? That’s kind of like how I got started coming you know, was a viral technical inside but I think just showing that value, and then also just
07:55
having a lay it out, as when we bring in technicians, having a laid out progression plan, like a day one to five years. This is what your career is going to look like first day. This is if you follow the right steps in the next five years, this is where you can progress to. And we also give them the resources, green light and the tools they need to make it but if they’re interested in doing networking or building networks on the soft skill side of things, right?
08:23
We want them to we want them to grow in an aspect. And I think it’s such a great point. You know, one of the things that we tout to our customers, and is so important in order for this to be successful, is is that growth has to be a part of your onboarding process. So it has to be a part of your culture. And you’re talking about, you know, what we call the career ladder, or career mapping, and you’re going one year, three years, five years, and we’re coming back to our customers in that ROI hiring model, and saying, we need 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. We need to know what success looks like. We need to know what done looks like. So I think doing both of those things at the same time, but really integrating what it looks like to have a culture of growth in your onboarding processes is really important. And to Brandon’s earlier point, it is not, it is not just an HR issue, right? This is a business critical issue for the industry right now. This is a business issue, yeah, and you’re kind of talking about, like the, you know, growth, I think Mark and I think you we’ve had some conversations and different things right now. We have more generations in the workforce, from Baby Boomers on still. And one thing that I’ve seen, based on some of the students that will come out of Northeast
09:39
is organizational hesitancy to hire that green talent and that, of course, that sometimes changes their whole hiring practices. Um, how can that be overcome? Because now again, until going back to the generation, everybody wants everything now and so, how can you overcome that from the baby boomers that understand that, take.
10:00
For a long time to the latest generation that they want it tomorrow and it’s or they want it as soon as they get there.
10:08
So how can that be overcome?
10:10
Well, guilty as charged first. I mean, I am. I’m a CEO first, right? So I have to do this internally within my own organization. It is very difficult when you’re talking about a mission, critical project within your organization, to think about putting somebody very green right in front of the customer or in charge of a very critical delivery. So what we’ve really done internally, and then we’ve focused on this message with our clients as well, is to shift the mindset from hiring green to investing in the future of the workforce, right? So you have to look at it like we’re not taking on risk, we’re mitigating future risk, and we’re making sure that we can deliver capacity. I think the name of the game for us, and we’re going to be talking about it all week this week is we have to be able to deliver capacity, and we cannot do that with the talent pool that we have today. So we have to look at these different areas. So really, just shifting that focus from, hey, it’s risky to hire a green individual to we’re investing in the future of the workforce, and it’s more risky to not deliver it to your customer. And I think, for me, and my perspective, is,
11:26
what you don’t want, is you don’t want to hire or get this technician and, you know, you get them trained up. The next thing you know, he’s leaving your company, you know, investing this time and money into him, because maybe he didn’t see the value. But I think you get them early on, and you showed them the true meaning and how they can go inside the company. I think you will have successful technicians that can then help out their customers. And that thing, I know we’ve had success in that, yeah.
11:52
And, you know, as we were kind of preparing for this panel, one thing that
11:58
you might have said it, and when she said it first. At first, I was like, oh, no, that’s didn’t make like, I kind of disagree with it at first, but then the more I thought about she’s right. Um, so that happens all the time, by the way.
12:14
Oh, so there’s a misconception about our industry that we’re in construction field rather than just a technology than a technology field, but in reality, we’re both. And so how can we address that misconception, and then which, which, in turn, makes it difficult to attract people into our industry. And so how can we attract people into the industry by addressing that of that misconception of that
12:42
I’ll start with just some examples. And I know Corey, you have some examples as well. We are both absolutely and I think that’s a great way to say it. We do have to change our narrative in terms of what we’re doing right? Are we putting fiber underneath the ground, or are we connecting and improving rural communities. Are we giving individuals access to telehealth and healthcare and education? We are the future of everything that we need in order to continue to grow and thrive. I don’t hear that a lot. I hear that here at FBA. I heard that here last year at the conference, but when we’re out doing the recruitment slog, right? That’s not what we’re hearing. We’re hearing we need a splicer. We need someone gritty. We need a rack and stack. We need this. No, we’re connecting the future. And so I think it’s really important that as we start to think about the types of people that we need, we tell the whole story. We are the future. So I think that’s, that’s one thing. There is a there’s a specific approach to recruiting people who are interested in being fielders, right? You said you were interested in your career map, coming to an inside job, and that’s wonderful, right? So there’s different approaches. And I think to your point, Brandon, we can continue to speak to the construction folks. We can continue to speak to the fielders. But I think in a more broad sense, we really need to readdress how we approach future generations. We want to attract people to come to our industry. We are a technology industry. We are the future. Yeah, and I think just to harp on what heat was saying is, you know, changing that narrative on how we bring field technicians in, you know, you’re not seeing trenches or bringing cable that kind of thing, but you’re building networks. You gotta make it more appealing to them. So they will want to come on, and they will want to get on board, and they want to stay long term, inside your company, inside your organization, and build these networks, but also see the potential for growth inside the Newport. You.
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Speaker 1 00:00
Both of them question. I told him I was going to ask towards the end, but since we’re on the recruitment standpoint, so I told them this story. So years ago, when I first kind of got left my job at seven years and we became a consultant trying to help co ops get into the five of the home business, one of the best watchers I’ve ever seen was woman, and there was a husband, wife team went out there, and we had, they were cutting in on 144 straight a butt slice, straight slot. Everybody has a different name for it. And so going in there, and he was like, watch her. She’s way better than me. And watching, she got that done in about four hours, and he was doing the other side he she beat him by two hours. And so in saying that, I’ve got a younger sister, and kind of as an instructor, is we have yet to see the first woman come through our class. And that’s kind of one of the goals, is we’re trying to figure out a way to attract women into our class. But what are some impactful ways that we can attract and then to retain women in this industry, and how can like our leaders from every level, drop that
01:17
you want to start, I think that’s more of your
Speaker 2 01:22
question all. And I told Brandon earlier, I’m like, Am I allowed to agree with that? But yes, so I it’s a multi faceted answer. I would say first, if I can go back and interview the moderator, right, if you haven’t had a woman come through and successfully complete the program, I’d love to see which women in tech organizations that you targeted. I’d love to see how many different organizations that were focused on women that you went out and actually recruited and attracted them to, you know, people, women, men, you know, aren’t just going to show up somewhere that’s typically reverse dominated, right? So it is intimidating to come to a conference, right? There’s 90% men and there’s 10% women. You get used to it eventually, and it’s fine, but you have to be really specific. I think, you know, one of my purposes in life is, I believe, to grow the table of women in business. It’s something I’m so passionate about. My girlfriend is a public company president, and we’re a part of an organization called YPO, very male dominated, and one of the things that we’ve had to share with the men is we, in order to get more women at the table, we have to invite them. We have to encourage them when they get to the table, we have to ensure that they speak up. When they do speak up, we can’t take credit for their work, right? We really have to be advocates. And there’s so many wonderful men who have been advocates of mine, but you need to be more assertive and more aggressive. And if you want to recruit women into any program or any organization, you have to make it a safe place. You have to make sure that they feel heard, and you have to be really intentional about how you’re recruiting those people.
03:12
Yeah, to be careful. But we
Speaker 3 03:17
COLLEGE OF THE Haverhill in edenson, North Carolina, they did have a female go through the optic path. So I’ll be I’m curious now, just to see, you know, I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I did go and teach a class for them, like one session on splicing or something like that. So I’ll be curious to see now, like what her intentions was, and maybe where she went today. So maybe next time I can bring that back, what.
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00:00
There’s a mindset that I’ve seen talking with various
00:05
students are going through our TVPA class or even our Northeast class, and just in general, a lot of people just look at things as a job versus a career. So what are some like some strategies that we can help shift that mindset from just a job to a long time career first, so you’re not like Corey, so, you know, investing someone, and then also they’ve been trained up, and also they’re jumping ship.
00:32
Courtney, yeah, I I’m going to brag a little bit, and it’s about my son. So my son just turned 18 in March, and he saw early on. And
00:44
I think that’s important for these, these younger generations who know early on about the fiber telecommunication. A lot of them, they want to get into the blue collar work. They’re like, Oh, plumber, electrician, heating in there. They don’t know nothing about this.
00:57
My son though him seeing me kind of
01:01
okay. That was a line climbing poles per year. Kenny became a fiber technician. Then he was a network security engineer. He’s a supervisor company. So my son being solid, he knew right away he’s like, I want to do what my dad did. I want to get into telecommunications. So what he did at 17 with three homes, I got five kids, I know,
01:21
but he took the optics path course, my optic back course at the Welles Community College, and he said that one turned anything good a job somewhere, fortunately, spectrum. But, hey, it’s good. He’s in there. He’s a spectrum
01:33
but, but you know, hey, he’s going to, I know he’s going to do great. And I can say, hey, that’s going to get your feet wet. You’re going to see what it’s all about. But just for me, showing him early on how you can just move up through the organization, how you can start somewhere, work hard and consistently, move up is, you know, we got the we have to show the younger generation. I
01:56
have so many great notes on this. So I was like, let me turn my pages, because I think this is so important, I think it starts at the top. And one of the things that we’ve been working really hard on in our organization is shifting the hiring manager viewpoint from gatekeeper to talent inquire or talent identifier, so really making sure that we’re hiring for the right capacities as we grow people making sure that growth and career mapping is part of your career plan. And I thought there were a couple of really cool, supportive pieces of data. I’m a data geek, and so I thought there were a couple of really cool pieces of data that talked a lot about when you promote internally, it actually increases retention by 41% right. If you think about the number two problem in our industry, outside of attracting new talent, is really retention. If we’re talking about the construction side of the business, attrition is 57%
02:57
right of the workforce. That’s unbelievable. So if you can buy, promoting with within improve retention by 41% if you can make growth part of your career path, if you can do these really, I’m going to say easy, but not simple things, you’re going to have a lot of success. But it takes a framework. It takes methodology. It takes people that believe in it to really be successful. Yeah. And one thing too, when we were preparing for this
03:30
quite this panel, one thing I brought up was recently, I had a student from our class the last fall, and he called me, was like, Yeah, you know, he knew he was going in for an interview, and he was one of those that think he’s 19 years old, and if you put him on the spot, he has a very hard time articulating that back to you. But when you put him, put fire in front of him, he can do it really well, hands on. Well, from my understanding in the interview, he said he got tripped up on a couple things, and I was able to talk to the guys that interviewed him, and they said, Yeah, he didn’t, he was, didn’t really do great on his interview. And so I kind of tossed this back to them, and so I kind of reword the question, but how can we prepare those entry level or green workers, or those that are coming out of the optic path course for interviews and help them demonstrate their training ability, from what we’ve seen as instructors to help that transfer over to a job.
04:31
Yeah, I know through the optic path,
04:34
you know, we try to do a good balance of, you know, in classroom and real world kind of scenarios and things to do
04:43
with, far as like, hands on, you know, we have actually polls set and where they can go up and actually go up the polls and do the fiber and do all the things. So I think that’s important for them to actually see that, to do that, versus just all classroom work, you know what I mean, and actually be able to, you know, get their hands.
05:00
30 and actually have some real world scenarios and doing those types of things.
05:06
Well, I think much like coming up on the panel right, you always do want to be prepared and role play. I think preparing candidates for interviewing is a slippery slope. I think we do need to teach people how to relate things that they’ve done before to different industry challenges. So I understand maybe you are outside of our industry, but let’s talk about a time where you overcame this. You know, when I started the business and I was hiring college graduates, I loved athletes and I loved people who traveled abroad, because the students who traveled abroad were able to work the subway systems. They were able to identify where they were sleeping. You know, they were in hostels. They were those kind of gritty, resourceful problem solvers, right? So we’re just trying to teach folks without giving them the answers, because that doesn’t do them or the organization any good. How can we determine with the matrices, you know, capability and willingness and initiative, I think is really important, yeah, and I think that’s some big keys, because, I mean, again, you don’t want them to go into an interview and just go and tell a story and like, you want them to actually articulate what they have learned and what their experiences are, like You said, it’s kind of skip ahead a couple of questions as well.
06:26
But
06:28
one thing too is when we’re talking about recruitment, kind of going back to the recruitment and retention side, but also the trainability side, how can we create effective collaborations with high schools, trade schools, Technical College colleges to wanting to get the object back course out there, but also helped us with the evolution of our like training our staffs today for tomorrow as well.
06:52
Yeah, I know for me, it’s kind of easy. I mean, we’re green light, and our name is community broadband, so we’re all about community, right? So anytime there’s career days at our school, I’m there speaking out that one a
07:05
few days ago last week. It was Thursday. I did sixth grade, all the sixth grade out of middle school, all of seven and eight. And I had a lot of good questions, because, like I said before, they don’t know that this is, you know, a job that they can get when they get out of high school like they have no idea until you go and you start talking about, they’re like, what? So I think that’s important. Just being involved. You’re involved in your community. Be involved with the career games and also the collaboration with the college for to have a successful hockey faculty, you got to have that, that partnership between the college and ISB can have that partnership with each other. I mean, that’s going to make a long term, lasting relationship for the two. Being able to bounce off of each other has worked great for us, and my company allows me to do this, allows us to do this, and work with the college, and they work with us. They find students that have taken their Cisco courses and networking or maybe even electrical, right? And they didn’t quite feel like it was figured in. They were sending them my way, and I’ve actually hired those students. They couldn’t quite figure it out, maybe on the network assignment. So it’s good to have those types of partnerships.
08:17
And the one thing I think I have to add to that is we have done a great job as an organization, partnering with our clients and CO developing the curriculum. And so as we look at this in a wider scope, at the macro level, the question I’ve asked myself and my team over the last 12 months is, how do we not just integrate with these learning facilities and these vocational entry schools. How do we work with them to co create the curriculum? Because that seems, in my opinion, to be the gap for real world, which you mentioned, versus kind of what they come back with. So I think that’s a that’s a real opportunity for us as an industry. And then one thing too, I’m out of getting better on this next question. One thing that I we’ve that I’ve noticed in our course in northeast, is we’ve had several people that are late in their careers want to make their career jump because they’re tired of whatever they they’re doing today. Um, one guy specifically, he’s a maintenance partner. He’s like, man, it’s just going to put me in the grade before I really want to. And he’s like, so that’s why I want to change. So how can we support, like, late career transitions, or career changers entering the industry, like, and it kind of goes back to like, how do we attract new industries, may not
09:33
new talent into our industry, but from someone that’s late career that’s going to transition? How can we support that? Yeah, I mean, I think we’re going to actively need to do that right, and we actively are going to have to go after these individuals that maybe are in some industries that are shrinking. I know retail is not everyone’s favorite, but if you look at the CSR role within what a lot of these organizations are going to need, retail is a great place to.
10:00
For those individuals, and they’re down 60% right? So that’s a great place. If we think about, how can we get people who have been low voltage security system installers? Those are great people to bring over to broadband. We can talk about utility locators, fantastic people, I can say, from experience, to bring over to our industry. So I think it’s, it is, again, shifting that mindset from this is a risk right to this is our this is how we’re going to have to deliver capacity. We have to do this. And so I think it’s inclusion. I think it’s thinking strategically. I think it’s looking at, hey, we’re not going to put somebody in retail out splicing, right? We’re not doing ribbon splicing with the retail CSR, that’s probably not happening. Maybe it is. So being smart and strategic about that, and really, we all have data. We have a ton of data. Each of your organizations has a ton of data of who works in what role and why that’s less about who they came from, even though that’s what a lot of the people departments are going to tell you, it’s really about who they are. Yeah, just in the show of hands. How many in here are from light rural Would you consider a rural area?
11:14
Okay, perfect. Right arm. One next. So what are the main challenges? And I’m going to focus whichever way I want to jump on first, because I know I’ve skipped some questions. And then I’m going to circle back up, because I want to make sure there’s a couple questions I want to get, make sure we head on. And this is one of what are the main challenges that in attracting and retain, really attracting and retaining the talent in rural areas that y’all have seen or hurt them.
11:41
I can’t speak much on the rural, small town, but if it was me, you know, prevent them from burning out, right? If you can get them in, get the technicians in and find them, you know, prevent that whole
11:57
get them burnout from being in the industry, maybe find them. Just showing that career path and that progression plan from the start,
12:06
we’ve seen success two different ways, and I really, you know, I credit my customer for the first one. So our customer has 18 months to 24 month projects in rural areas, and their vice president of people decided that he was going to look at the relocation package differently. He said, Okay, instead of a $30,000 relocation stipend, I’m going to tell them, hey, this is your role in this market for two years. You have a budget of $60,000 let’s call it. It’s a travel budget. You kind of go with a big four Monday through Thursday consulting schedule, you can use that money at your leisure. If you want to fly your husband, wife, kids in every other weekend to do that. So the flexibility in that kind of sign on bonus was really important, I think the transparency and how that particular customer recruited individuals. It was like, Hey, you’re coming to in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. You’re only going to come here for two years. That’s as far as you’re going to stay. So when you’re done with this project, you’re going to go to probably one of these other six areas that we see that are coming. So I think that customer did a really great job thinking about this isn’t a job, it’s a career, but this is what we’re going to do for you here, and this is how we’re going to make it work. The second thing is, is those, there’s a lot of strategic partnership companies that are receiving grants in different ways from the Department of Labor, and that’s different everywhere. And I know this is something we’re going to talk about a little bit later, but what happens in some of these programs is 80% of the individual’s time and training is covered by these Department of Labor grants, and one relocation is covered. So if your people department or your customers
13:58
can spend some time developing those strategic partnerships and those strategic alliances, I think you’ll have a lot of success getting talent into those areas.
14:08
I know we’re moving. We started a couple minutes late, so we’re running a couple minutes over, but we’re getting about what I’ve got, about six minutes all together. So I’m open up for a couple questions first before we kind of last. But yeah, so I work with skill teams in Scandinavia, and I’m actually really curious to see, what role do you see for international consulting or labor partnerships here in the US to solve their problems? So we currently work with a bunch of different organizations, and we’ve placed people in Costa Rica, Poland, Indonesia, Mexico and India now. So we are seeing it. It’s it can be complicated, but I found it to be actually rather simplistic. And it’s been a big success. Have you tried or have you had been in six.
15:00
Us with onshoring.
15:04
Yes,
15:09
I’m on the vendor side. So kind of, from all the advice you’ve given, what’s one thing I could say we should keep doing for workforce development, and one thing we should stop doing anytime that we’re working with ISPs and kind
15:25
of helping them. I say one thing that we need to stop doing is when hiring, maybe new talent into the workforce, is finding those who
15:37
have the willingness to learn.
15:40
You know, not just hiring a body just to get a body in, just to get a proper technician in, I’m probably guilty of that before, just trying to get the work done, but those that are willing to learn and to grow within the organization that you can tell that they’re passionate about where they’re coming from their current job I’ve had, like electricians, like just out of high school, come to me and they’re just like, they just want to work. And to work, they want to work hard, but they have the willingness to learn those many just awesome ones to work with. So I think that’s important. Just, you know, shifting that, you know, just stop hiring bodies, maybe they don’t have that willingness.
16:15
The Department of Labor actually reports that for every $1 that you spend with an apprenticeship, you receive a return of $1.47
16:25
right? So that’s that’s awesome. It’s really well known for electricians. It’s really well known in some of these other positions. Let’s make that our reality, right? That’s part of our ROI hiring model, and I can speak to that a little bit too. It’s one thing that I think we should definitely start is from my experience, co ops,
16:47
specifically as one of our ISPs tier ones, they do internships or externships a lot more frequently. But from the cover lower tier two and below, very seem to be scared to do internships. But I think partnering with
17:06
colleges and grant and other programs that are
17:10
doing programs like the optic bath, I think that’s another part too, as far as like, but we really need to start doing more, and that kind of leads me into one of the last, the next and last question I’m gonna ask, and then we’ll be we’ll wrap up. But you know, Corey, as you’ve already partnered with Wilson today. But how can we partner with colleges and other programs that may be Workforce Development debt to not only just
17:39
work on those internships, but also leverage grants for the training such as the Department of Labor. And then also, one thing that Heather touched on, I believe, outside, was engaging alumni of the or graduates of the programs such as the optic path. Yeah, I’m not big on the whole grant side, but I can’t say that, you know, that that partnership with that local community college, I mean, it is crucial to just having a successful bath,
18:09
to be able, being able to work with the college, you know, because most of the time I don’t have to go out and look for students, because I’m always looking to hire technicians and TSR. So I’ve hired both from the path, which I’ve heard in the building that come in the new fiber, and maybe the train and the road. I’ve hired them as a technical service representative in our call center, or if I don’t have a fiber technician. But it is, it is definitely important to have that partnership,
18:39
just from a local perspective. It just, it makes it, it makes my life easier, right? And I think that’s just
18:46
having that
18:48
sometimes we shy away from that because, and I mean we as an industry, we shy away from that because we don’t know who to call, right? So one of the conversations that we were having out the hallway was, we’ve had so much success recruiting folks from colleges, or, you know, community colleges. And yes, of course, we’ve worked with the alumni centers. We’ve worked with the student centers, but mostly we just called the dean of engineering, or we’ve called the dean of construction management. We’ve called the Dean of the University and said, This is what’s happening. Who do you have? What are you hearing? Who else should we talk to? So it’s just really focused on continuing to focus on building those relationships and being curious and gaining knowledge. Awesome. All right, we’ve got a minute left, so I’m gonna give you 30 seconds each. But Heather, what’s one thing you would want every attendee you want to walk away with today. What my I really want everybody to walk away thinking differently about hiring emerging talent is one of the strongest ways that we can grow our success, where we can deliver capacity, and is also something that we have to come up against with each one of.
20:00
Our customers, so I’m really excited about our our ROI hiring model, and I really just encourage everybody to think about yourself coming into the workforce. What a great investment you were specifically and let’s give some people the same opportunity. And I’m a local guy, like I said, I think being local and having that partnership with the ISPs or ISP and with the with local college is just to make a long term training is important, but also just taking that it’s a job kind of mentality of these students, and showing them that this is a career that you can grow and that you can last in, that’s important. Thank you both, and thank thank you all for attending one thing too, that I’ll I’ll end it with this is if you are somewhere near an optic Mathis program or a training program of some sort, and your company’s involved, don’t be scared to give them constructive criticism they want to hear. That I know from my standpoint as an instructor for tutoring first, I want the constructive criticism. I found some hesitancy from different companies that have sent that I don’t have all inside the training or have. They’ve come in and they’re very, very reluctant to but I think we’re starting to break those barriers down. So please reach out to your programs. And nobody’s here to give them some feedback, because they definitely want it again. I want to thank all the panelists, and thank you all for attending.
