Nonprofit ‘Apprenti’ offers tech industry apprenticeship programs

Plumbers have them. And so do carpenters and electricians. Even Donald Trump had them on his TV show.

So why doesn’t the technology industry have apprenticeship programs?

Well, it turns out there is an apprentice program for geeks. It’s run by a not-for-profit company — that’s referred to as a 501(c)(3) company, if you care — called Apprenti. It’s based in Seattle but is already operating in 15 different markets throughout the US.

This was news to me.

And considering on Friday we’ll hear about job growth for November from the Labor Department, I thought telling you about this apprentice program would be a good change of pace.

Technology, of course, has been one of the biggest job providers in this country for decades. So, it seems pretty logical that companies would want to find an easy way to fill positions with qualified people who might have wasted years in school only learning things like readin’, writin’ (that would be me) and ’rithmatic (not me).

Jennifer Carlson is the executive director of Apprenti. She explained to me by phone how these apprenticeships differ from internships, which most companies already have available.

“Internships are typically tied to college and are usually short term,” Carlson said. With an internship, a company tries out a person before it considers hiring him or her, according to Carlson.

“Apprenticeships are ‘train to retain,’ ” she said.

Apprenti’s program focuses on “people of color, veterans and women,” but anyone is eligible.

In the three years it has been in operation, 704 people have been placed in tech jobs including positions as software developers, cloud administrators and data analysts, says Carlson.

That total includes 80 people who have gone to work for Microsoft alone. Other companies that have hired from the program after apprenticeships include Amazon, Wayfair, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Liberty Mutual and JPMorgan Chase.

Here’s how it works, according to Carlson:

People picked for the program spend 40 hours a week in the classroom for three to five months. The cost is picked up by a company that’s already interested in them and by government.

If they pass the education part, the candidates get a guarantee of one year of employment at a minimum of 60 percent of what the going rate for that job is.

After that year, the employer can retain them at full salary and they get a mentor for one year. Following that year, Carlson says, 80 percent of the people in the program are being kept on by the company at full salary.

Of the 20 percent who aren’t, many go on to be employed by other companies in tech positions.

The median salary of those retained is $84,000. The median age is 33 years old, and the eldest in the program is 63.

The minimum education requirement is high school diploma or a GED. Forty percent have a four-year college degree, 9 percent have a two-year degree. The rest have either some or no college.

If you want to know more, go to: apprenticareers.org and click on “Become an Apprentice.”