When timing the launch of a new collar tech apprenticeship initiative I would suggest to line up the internal champions and let that guide when you can start. You need to get buy-in from the critical stakeholders in order to get the heavy lifting of the program off the ground and a maintain a smooth pilot program.
Here are some signals that now might be the right time to explore operationalizing an apprenticeship program:
1. You’re losing talented employees to other organizations.
2. Your talent pipeline is missing underrepresented individuals that have barriers to entry into tech.
3. You have the resources in place (or can pull from existing recruiting budgets) to support an apprenticeship program, including staff, funding, and facilities.
If you’re seeing one or more of these signals in your organization, it may be time to consider launching an apprenticeship program. With the right planning and execution, apprenticeship programs can be a valuable tool for talent acquisition and workforce development.
My recommendation for most teams is to start small. This can be counterintuitive in larger organizations that are seeking quick fixes. If folks in the leadership team are only interested in short-term solutions or immediate impact then hire Sr. Engineers (or at least try to). Throwing money at a complex talent pipeline problem isn’t realistic and could be a recipe for disaster. Instead, if you’re team has the long game in mind and everyone is on board, you have one of the most critical components. I would suggest you don’t make a new project harder by trying to go big or go home.
Taking a more agile or lean approach to grow a tech apprenticeship program will allow your organization to start faster, with fewer resources, and expand after validating that the model works for a few smaller iterations with your teams. You don’t need to get it perfect. Making progress is far more important when fixing large systemic tech talent gaps.
Are your engineering teams ready? Will they view these new developers as a burden, or look at them as an opportunity to build their cultural competency, leadership, and mentoring skills. In my experience when you ask experienced engineers working on teams what they think about creating these types of pathways you get positive responses. Sr. Engineers will typically complain about having to coach newbies when they are not given the support and bandwidth. This can not be extra responsibility on top of the same volume of existing development work. But, given an opportunity to work with diverse candidates, I consistently hear engineers on teams welcome that effort.
You can also partner with a program like Creating Coding Careers that can manage a pilot program with as few as one full-time apprentice. CCC has designed a program that includes recruiting, training, mentorship, as well as program and compliance management. If you are experiencing a tech talent shortage, there is help, and the right time to start might be right around the corner.