Apprentice Interviews Yield New Faces

photo: UMCA contractors and UA Local 140 members interviewed 90 candidates for the spring semester at the UCC. Applicants hope to follow the path of these apprentices shown above.

 

Just before Thanksgiving, contractors and union members sat down to conduct almost one hundred interviews for the next wave of apprentices in both construction and service industries.

It’s not an easy path to get that many candidates to the table. According to Will Nickell, Director of Training for the Utah Career Center, staff of the Center has gone out to at least 16 job fairs in the last 12 months, hosted tours for community groups like Boys & Girls Club and Boy Scouts, and brought in a handful of career counselors from across the state. Will also works on school district advisory boards to help get the word out about the school.

“And out of all that time and effort, 50 percent of all applicants are a direct referral from somebody we know,” he added.

Ninety interviews took place over four nights at the UCC, three nights for construction applicants and one for service. Each interview lasted about seven to 10 minutes, and every candidate faces a panel of eight interviewers and Will.

Who Will Succeed?

Applicants answer the same bank of questions: open-ended queries that don’t have right/wrong answers, but instead give a sense of the type of person the candidate is. The panel itself was made up of UMCA Executive Vice President Robert Bergman, Jason Bleak from Industrial Plumbing and Welding, Andrew Mollerup from CCI Mechanical, Weston Beckstead from Alternative Mechanical Contractors, and four union members.

Although Will is not among the panel members who scores the candidates, he has a sense of what kind of person will do well at the school.

“From my point of view, a successful candidate will be someone who understands how to go to work every day; who likes to be outside; who likes building, making, and fixing things with their hands. And someone who is able to take constructive criticism, even when it’s not put very constructively.” He added, “If they’ve got all that, then we’ve got a pretty good shot at making them what we want them to be.”

One thing that is not an indicator of success is age. The school currently has almost a dozen apprentices over 40, and a couple over 50. The older apprentices can appreciate the opportunity more than their younger counterparts, although not always, said Will. A younger worker who knows what they want has the benefit of being in the industry for a long time, but others come in because “they’re just doing it to make someone [else] happy.”

Before any new candidates can be accepted in the school, they need to find a position with a local mechanical contractor, and that determines the class size, said Will. He has already made the list of both construction and service apprentices available. The ones who can find a position by December 23 can start the semester in January. To access the list of available apprentices, contact Will Nickell at will@ucctrades.com.

 

Next Round of Apprentice Interviews:

Deadline for Completed Apprentice Applications:
March 14, 2017*

Construction Apprentice Interviews:
April 11-13, 2017*

HVAC&R Apprentice Interviews:
April 17, 2017*

*dates subject to change