Dan Holterhaus 0:02

Okay, we’re back. careers and coffee. The Morning Edition

Liz Kennedy 0:07
of Morning Edition.

Unknown Speaker 0:08
Good morning this

Liz Kennedy 0:09
morning. It’s very early.

Dan Holterhaus 0:12
It is very early. We have busy days. So we are recording this right to start our day. So yeah, coffee coffee is blowing over here. Are you on coffee or tea this morning? Most?

Liz Kennedy 0:25
I’m on water right now. I’m getting coffees shortly. So it’s a little early for coffee yet

Dan Holterhaus 0:31
hydrated before caffeine.

Liz Kennedy 0:32
hydrate. Yeah.

Dan Holterhaus 0:33
Good call. Good call. This morning, we want to talk about education opportunities in our area and continuing education was what what kind of opportunities are what trends are you seeing in education right now?

Liz Kennedy 0:52
Well, I think the biggest trend is free, right? Like opportunities to get free training, and maybe even paid training are are trending right now. Because I we’re has a limited pool of candidates like there aren’t as many people working as there are jobs to be worked. They’re doing their darndest to get people into some of these trades that need more people. And it isn’t all welding and electrician and plumbing jobs. There are apprenticeships for it positions now that offer paid training and so in the shownotes will link to some resources that you can click on to to learn more about these programs. But I think it’s a really exciting time to be thinking about maybe a career transition or maybe your beginning at the start of your career. What kind of paid training or free training is there available to you?

Dan Holterhaus 1:52
Right, yeah, and we have some paid apprenticeships listed on quarter careers right now, don’t we?

Liz Kennedy 1:57
Yeah, in our Career Resources section, that’s corridor careers, comm slash career dash resources. We have a bunch of little buttons on there that have a variety of topics. And one of them is apprenticeships that can get you connected to our works, which is kind of the main source of connection when it comes to a paid apprenticeship. But it got me thinking this week, when we were talking with our developers about how they got their start in developing, and I think there’s a lot of mystery around who learns to code and how to code and there’s a lot of it’s a hot topic right now learning to code. And it’s interesting that many of our developers are creatives. So they were either designers, writers are, had an interest in art, and then transitioned to coding. So if you think of yourself as a creative, so let’s say you’re a graphic designer, I mean, it’s very, it’s a very creative field to work in code, because you’re just using the instrument of code to make your design become a reality. And so I just think sometimes when I talk with graphic designers who are looking for graphic design, and you Yeah, if you have those skills, and that is the job that you want, focus on it and go for it. But there is a limited number of graphic design jobs in our market, especially if you just turn on that idea, okay, like, well, I’m just going to add some skills to my already awesome skills as a graphic designer. I’m going to learn to code CSS and HTML, which is the the building blocks of making a design come to life on the web. There are free training and other low cost training options, right in our market like delta V Code School, you could talk to Kirkwood, again, look at some of those paid internship options, where you could really add to your skill set, and just open doors of opportunity for yourself so that you can you can try some of these things and it doesn’t doesn’t have to work out. That’s the thing. It’s like education is beneficial, whether you decide to progress in that area or not.

Dan Holterhaus 4:07
Yeah, absolutely. And going back to what you said about free education. I know I had a friend. It was almost a year ago now. But they sent me a couple courses from an Ivy League school that were free. As long as you committed to the six week class and you committed to doing the work. It was completely free. And you know what, what amazing education opportunities are out there right now, um, for free or like you said, getting paid to learn.

Liz Kennedy 4:38
Yeah. And so, summers coming up. What were some of the topics of those coursework? Do you recall?

Dan Holterhaus 4:44
Gosh, that’s a I was trying to think about that. And I don’t remember off the top of my head. They were fairly general, I want to say

Liz Kennedy 4:55
yeah, it was like a communications class. Yeah, amazing, right to get the Ivy League point of view on communications, that would be really killer. Um, but yeah, you have to have to have a little bit of curiosity and level of learning for this to be a good choice for you, I think. But even someone who’s not necessarily great at learning could benefit from an entrepreneur, apprenticeship because that’s hands on training. So if you’re kind of turned off by online training, or like, I don’t do I don’t do well in tests, and I didn’t do very good in school, that doesn’t mean that you’re turned off from learning forever, it just means maybe you did find the right fit of learning. Maybe you’re just more of a hands on learner. And a lot of times on apprenticeships are project based. So you’d be working on something that at the end of the the course, you would have something that is completed in the form of a project versus like, very heady, like, theoretical training, which you may not be good at.

Dan Holterhaus 5:58
Yeah, absolutely. kind of learn by fire instead of learn by book. Right.

Liz Kennedy 6:02
Right. Right. But then having a coach there to help you throughout the way, you know, throughout that project is really what’s important. What are the trends is that you know, a lot of people ask for on the job training, right, I can’t have, I can’t just have on the job training. And there are some jobs out there that have on the job training. So like, for instance, if you are willing to work in communications, you know, interconnecting internet and connecting people’s modems and all that stuff. And those those field technician jobs, those pretty much all have on the job training, and it’s paid, and you get a company car, and all that good stuff. So if that’s a field that you’re interested in, there are opportunities for on the job training, customer services, again, generally, a customer service option, they are going to have a very disciplined onboarding for their employees to learn how to provide customer service in the way that they want that customer service to be provided. So that’s another opportunity for on the job training.

Dan Holterhaus 7:02
Absolutely. That we have, we have plenty of those field technician and customer service jobs on corridor careers. COMM. Yeah. Let’s go ahead and wrap it up unless you have anything to add at the end here. But that was that was really good. Liz. Enjoyed enjoyed this little chat on vacation and opportunities.

Liz Kennedy 7:23
Yeah, I mean, we kind of focused on more office jobs in our chat, but like healthcare, there’s plenty of on the job training for healthcare too, especially if you start at like the very entry level. And then you could potentially get education through your work over time. So don’t discount that if you have no training in healthcare. If you care if you like caring for others. Health care can be definitely a decent option for you to work into. It’s very interesting time with such a need for health care workers to discount it like oh, I’m not sure that’s right for me, but you never know until you try sometimes. And there are entry level positions available in healthcare that you can get your foot in the door and really just kind of get paid to figure out if that’s what’s right for you.

Dan Holterhaus 8:08
Right, awesome. That’s gonna do it. Check out quarter careers comm for all of our latest job postings here in eastern Iowa. And any questions? Go ahead and reach out to us our email is contact at corridor careers comm

Liz Kennedy 8:23
Yeah, let us know in the comments below. What what on the job training Would you like to have?

Dan Holterhaus 8:29
Cool. All right. Cheers, les. All right. Let’s

Liz Kennedy 8:32
have a great day. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai