Desperately seeking apprentices? – How to make your trade business attractive to apprentices
Do you have apprenticeships to offer, but the thought of the upcoming search for apprentices makes you feel sick? It doesn’t have to be that way. The basis for this, however, is that you also offer an attractive apprenticeship! And digitization is part of that.
My name is Manfred Frietsch and I teach at a vocational school for metalwork. I am in touch with several metalworking businesses and locksmith shops. The problem of missing apprentices in trade businesses is not new. Together with a working group in my class, I am discussing: “What makes a trade business interesting, and which businesses fall short?” Neither has anything at all to do with the quality of the work. What matters to every potential apprentice is, on the one hand, good career prospects and, on the other, a digitally minded business. Digitization is an essential part of an apprenticeship.
The goals to be achieved are:
- networking all trades and machines,
- optimizing processes in all construction phases, resulting in higher productivity,
- and strengthening competitiveness, etc.
To get closer to these goals quickly, the appeal of apprenticeships and the career opportunities that come with them must be increased in the construction industry as well as in the trades and businesses concerned. Developing modern, digitally supported training concepts through the trade organizations is certainly an important step. In addition, however, it is also important that your business not only accepts digitization in the training of future skilled workers but also lives it intensively and leads by example in day-to-day operations.
As part of our project group, for example, I talked to Tim. Tim is 16 and is looking for an apprenticeship at a locksmith shop. Tim says: “I applied to several locksmith shops within 30 kilometers and got 3 interview invitations from 5 applications. After the interviews, 2 businesses were left, which I then shortlisted. Unfortunately I couldn’t decide, because both businesses seemed quite attractive to me. So I decided to do an internship at both. These internships were meant to help me make the right decision for my future and my working life.
The first business, Bohnert locksmiths, was a well-established family business in a small town. The staff were very friendly and made it very easy for me to settle in. Bohnert had its hands full, as it was the go-to locksmith in town and so had a wide range of jobs to handle. In terms of craftsmanship, I learned a lot from the journeymen and by the end I could already do smaller jobs on my own. Unfortunately, I couldn’t learn much about how the business was run, because it wasn’t very transparent.
My second internship took me to the metalworking company Panther. Here, too, everyone was very friendly and explained a lot to me. What struck me about this company was that it was very well organized digitally and therefore transparent. There was no more paperwork chaos. Every employee could quickly call up the information they needed on a mobile device. This made it possible to make better business decisions and to come across more professionally to customers. I think I will sign the apprenticeship contract with Panther, because I can see myself working in a future-oriented way.” Within our project group, we came to the conclusion that digitization in a trade business is fun and at the same time makes the business more attractive.
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