"K.I.S.S. Principle" - John Hall & Patrick Hall

Patrick Hall didn’t know what he wanted to do when he was in college. He tried accounting before falling into a job with Joliet Junior College, and after almost a decade, he is now the Manager of Work-Based Learning and Outreach. Patrick describes his role as one that “fills his cup,” finding fulfillment in helping students navigate their early career experience. Patrick’s dedication and passion for his work were what led his brother, John Hall, to his role as a Business Service Supervisor at the Workforce Investment Board of Will County. After school, John tried working in sales before Patrick heard about an opening as a Business Service Liaison and encouraged him to apply. 

The Workforce Investment Board of Will County, one of the American Job Centers in Illinois, is supported by the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and provides free career support for job seekers and gives businesses a touchpoint to reskill and grow their current workforce. Together with the workforce development division of Joliet Junior College, they aim to collaborate to maximize the resources they have to help Will County find and keep family-sustaining careers.

You can hear more about all things workforce in Will County on the Will Works Podcast, hosted by Patrick Hall, available on all streaming platforms.  

To learn more about apprenticeships, go to ApprenticeshipIL.com and follow Apprenticeship Illinois on LinkedIn. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today's episode of the Apprentice Perspective is a special feature covering how the Workforce Investment Board of Will County collaborates with Joliet Jr. College to provide family sustaining careers in their region. To hear more about everything Workforce Development Will County, we encourage you to subscribe to the Will Works podcast, available on all your favorite streaming services.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Apprentice Perspective. I am John Hall with the Workforce Investment Board of Will County.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

And I am Patrick Hall with Joliet Junior College Workforce Development. And yes, we have the same last name, we are brothers.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Yep, we probably sound alike too, so you might get a little confused throughout this, but we'll try to keep it easy on you. But yeah, let's just get right into it. Pat, can you tell us a little bit about the work that JJC Workforce Development does? And then if you wanted to go into a little bit how you got started there.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Absolutely. So I'm going on nine years at JJC. My title is manager of work-based learning and outreach, but I started as employer relations coordinator. I kind of fell into this industry, so to speak. I went to college, didn't really know what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was 18. Started in accounting, eventually figured out accounting wasn't for me, and I had some decisions to make. I was much more of a reading, writing type learner. So I switched over to sociology, which I gravitated towards much more so. And part of why I really liked this field is exactly that. I didn't have it all figured out when I was 17, 18, 19 years old. It felt like a lot of pressure to decide then what I want to be for the rest of my life. So I get a lot of fulfillment. It really fills my cup to help students navigate their early career steps when I know I speak for myself, I wasn't as comfortable making those decisions at that age. So that's kind of how I got here. Um JJC workforce development. I'd say we do a lot. In essence, we're a connector to the workforce. We like to um transition students and job seekers into viable career opportunities, but we also house grants and then primarily connect with the local workforce on internship opportunities, apprenticeships, et cetera. So talk to me about uh how you got started in workforce development and what you do.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

All right. So I uh I'm the business services supervisor here with the workforce investment board of Will County. I'm housed here at the Workforce Center. Um I'm going on about four years here. Um I actually got started thankful to Big Bro on the call here today. Um I had my first job out of college was a sales job uh at a sales internship. Um so that's kind of all I really knew. And then first job out of college wasn't really working out, I guess you could say. So started looking for other things. And and Pat, thankfully, I they worked closely. JJC worked closely with us at the workforce center, and he noticed a position opened up to be on the business services team as a business services liaison. So I applied for it, I got the job. And then about a year or so in, um, my boss at the time, the supervisor at the time, retired. Uh, and I applied for his job and got it. So now I'm in the supervisor position. Um, and what we do at the workforce center. So on the job seeker side, on our career services side, we have career planners on site that can assist job seekers with whatever they might need in terms of getting back to work, getting a new job, getting a new certification. And I'm definitely biased in saying this as the business services supervisor. I say our main customer in Will County is the business. We can train all these employees and these job seekers up all we want. If we don't have uh a business to refer them to, that's there's it's really for nothing, essentially. So we do an employee training. So if they want to train, upskill their current workforce, send them to training, we can pay for those sort of things. Um, we have some recruitment assistance grants as well, where we can kind of offset some of the wages of a new hire. And then a really big one as of late, why we're on the podcast today, is the apprenticeship framework. So I'm also Will County's local apprenticeship specialist. So what that means is I go into businesses and essentially pitch them on the idea of apprenticeship. And if they're interested, I walk them through the whole process of building it, registering it, enrolling their apprentices, anything that goes along with all that. Moving on to our next question here. A massive factor in a successful apprenticeship is working with businesses to make sure the apprenticeship fulfills their needs. When you're working with businesses, what hesitancies do you tend to hear? And what's your response to those hesitancies?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Most commonly, I'm gonna hear bureaucracy, all the layers of bureaucratic approval that you need to go through, whether it's preconceived or true. The paperwork is a big hurdle. Companies don't want to take the time filling out paperwork, lack of time in general to address this, don't want to have these all all these meetings and calls about it. They want kind of like quick, quick, quick, streamlined approach. Um, what I usually say to address these challenges, I try to keep it as simple as possible. Um, on the paperwork component, filling out pre-filling out that paperwork as best we can. As you know, John, a lot of that information on the paperwork, you don't even need the business owner or HR manager to fill that out. A lot of that is just looking up general demographic info, address, location, et cetera. You might need a couple things from the employer, but really pre-filling out that paperwork ahead of time helps. Sharing the advantages. I don't think all employers realize that there are tax credits you can receive by having an apprentice or having multiple apprentices. You could you could get up to $5,000 tax credit per apprentice. Um, I think the typical number is $3,500, but it goes up to five grand if you have an apprentice from an underserved community. Um, so there's also tax incentives. That's kind of where I go towards when we're responding to some of those hesitancies. Do you have anything that comes to mind?

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Oh, the classic acronym KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. That always helps. Same experiences you've had where with like the bureaucracy or they hear government and they're like, oh, geez, I'm gonna be going through every hoop imaginable now just to get some this apprenticeship off the ground. So I really tell the businesses when it comes to apprenticeship, I do not want much for much to change for them at all. Most of the time when I'm working with them, they give me a rundown on their daily operations, they give me a rundown on and what they're doing now in terms of training. And I tell them, like, hey, you're gonna keep doing that. And then when the government comes in and they want to report on what apprentices are enrolled, that's where I come in. I'm doing all that heavy lifting. You guys would just maintain your current operations as you normally would. All we're doing is adding a little bit of structure uh and an outline for what this program would be.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

And again, this is we don't have to make this overcomplicated. Apprenticeships have existed for 500 to a thousand years. It's a simple concept that we can explain and make digestible to employers. It doesn't have to be this overcomplicated mess. Okay, so walk me through your first contact with a new business. What does your process look like there?

SPEAKER_02 7:03

First contact with the business, most of the time, it's usually a business reaching out to me about recruitment assistance, I would say. Either that or one of our most popular programs is incumbent worker training. So upskilling your current workforce essentially, usually plan a meeting with them to really go over what they what they reached out for originally. So if they're they were reaching out about recruitment, I'd set up a time where we could talk over our job board or job fairs. We'll get started on that conversation. And then as the conversation moves along, you start to uncover some of those things where an apprenticeship can really fill in the gap. So if they say, man, I just have this role that the turnover just I just can't solve this turnover issue. Like people just keep leaving, they start and they leave. Employees are saying they need more training, blah, blah, blah. Then we start to talk about apprenticeship. We go over what we just chatted about, those misconceptions of apprenticeship, really simplifying the idea to them. I don't want to throw everything at the business right when I sit down with them. Um, I want to just kind of have like a human approach where we just talk about it and say, sit down and just say, hey, all an apprenticeship is is the education in the work. You're already doing the work, uh, and you might already be doing the education now. So all we're doing is uh making it official, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Um you're not just throwing everything at the business. You're you're kind of having an introductory conversation, doing some active listening, and then deciding, okay, apprenticeships probably make sense because of the turnover in this role. Or, you know, they really need recruitment assistance, so we want to connect them to job fairs and so forth. It starts with active listening.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

And it took me a while to learn that too, because early on in my role, I'd go into a meeting and I just have a folder full of everything we had. And I would sit there, the employer wouldn't even get a word in. I would just spew out, oh yeah, we have incumbent worker training. You can learn how to train your employees, and we can reimburse you up to $19,500. And if you want to do the on-the-job training as well, we can reimburse up to $5,000 per employee, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the employer is looking at the end at the end, like, right, I just need to get this. Like, what are we what are we doing? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Similar approach, start with a a quick caller, um, virtual meeting these days, typically virtual, not to say I'm opposed to in person, um, but start with a call. Um, really start with that active listening, kind of hearing their pain points, and then determine where you go from there. Um, I was similar to you in my early stages of my career where overpromise and and throw everything at them that they got they come out of the meeting confused and not even sure what the central focus is or what the next steps are. So trying to figure out what we can address if anything needs to be addressed, not just throwing spaghetti on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

And so, how do you keep businesses engaged long term from that?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

I think it it kind of goes back to what we were saying. It starts with active listening um and making strong relationships and then honest feedback both from both sides. I'd rather underpromise and over-deliver typically than promise the world to an employer. I think that creates trust. And don't be afraid to say, I can't do something, or I I don't, I that service isn't totally um makes sense for us right now, or I don't have a ton of students in this area. I think earlier on in my career, like you alluded to, that you don't want to disappoint employers. You want you want to have a solution to everything they have, but I think long-term in relationship building, honesty and trust goes way further than I don't know, uh surface level um yes man type energy.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah, for sure. Just being a human and and and like being there and not just being a government robot that can answer every question. And we have chat GPT for that now. Like our jobs now are to be the be the people and you know, like when it comes to keeping businesses engaged, like I'll just stop in at a business. Like if there's one out by my house on the way home from the office, I'll just stop in and be like, oh, how's everything going? Like, I'm only gonna be here for five minutes. How's it like just wanted to check in? Do you guys need anything? How's the apprenticeship? Do you need more apprentices? Things like that. Or another great one is going to the apprentices journey worker graduation. It's a great way just to reconnect with the business, meet some of the apprentices that we're hired on, probably get a free lunch out of it too. Um, it and it's just a great way to you know show your face to the apprentices, to the company and all that.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Right. You don't you don't have to treat every interaction as if it's a transaction. No, and we we this comes up a lot be transformative rather than transactional. And I that really resonates for me. Employers can can pick up on phoniness just like you and I can. So being authentic and honest um helps build that trust. How do JJC and the Workforce Center of Will County partner to provide broader services to the Joliet area?

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Pat, you you kind of alluded to it earlier. Whether it's the youth program with JJC, you guys take the youth for career scholarships and things like that, and we take the adult population. But beyond that, we do a lot of different things partnership-wise. Whether it's workshops, we'll have JJC employees come out on site and give workshops to job seekers. I mean, if a job seeker is needing a GED or English second language classes, we refer them over to JJC. And then beyond that, more on the apprenticeship side, this past year we actually in partnership wrote for a new grant, an apprenticeship intermediary grant, where we built apprenticeship programs within Joliet Junior College. So it's like an early childhood educator apprenticeship, uh, child center director role. The workforce services division of Will County, we wrote for the grant. We manage the funds. I'm kind of like the project manager of all that fun stuff. Uh, and then the JJC people are boots on the ground doing the work, building out these programs.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yep. Well, write grants together, subcontract. I think that's huge. I don't know if other areas have such a thriving kind of interrelated partner network.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

It feels like the company is workforce development and the departments are workforce services and Juliet Junior College more so than it is like the company is JJC and work if that resigned.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Well said. It almost feels like John and I are co-workers at times because we're doing this going to similar events, going to conferences, kind of doing similar things with local businesses. And selfishly, it's kind of cool to be able to work with your little brother.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yeah. And then I'll be having conversations with people. We work so closely together. I'll be having a conversation for some with someone for 10 minutes, and halfway through I'll realize, oh my God, they think I'm Pat. They don't even think they don't even know who I am. Yeah, that happens. How can we keep up with everything you guys are doing? We're doing, I guess we could say.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

First and foremost, it's a good chance for me to plug our podcast. We have a workforce podcast called Will Works, where we just discuss really all things Will County Workforce. We'll talk about the local grant opportunities like Wi OA, CJA, um the apprenticeship expansion. But we'll also bring on local leaders, local politicians, small business owners to shine the spotlight on them and promote their brand. Um, but really good way to kind of keep the pulse on the Will County workforce arena. Um, we also we're also on LinkedIn and social media. We get, we keep everything, everyone up to date on there. But yeah, the podcast, I would say, is our our biggest outlet where we're really we're recording um usually about one to two episodes a month. I encourage people to to tune in. You could find the Will Works podcast, you could find it on LinkedIn. We have a Willworks podcast page, but also on will.works backslash podcast and also where you stream your most of your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Not much more to add than that. I mean, the podcast is huge. We try to plan a lot of job fairs and hiring events. If you ever want to come out as a company or a job seeker, it's an excellent way to get a feel for the job market in the area or even just stopping into the workforce center. You never need an appointment. We're open Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 4:30. You just come on in, uh, tell us what you need, and we'll sit you down and try to help you out the best we can. All right. It looks like this is the last one. So let's close it out. What would you say to businesses looking for partners to start apprenticeship?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Do it. Keep it very simple. Do it. I promise it won't be as cumbersome or as much of a burden as you'd think it will be.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Probably the biggest thing for me is don't assume that apprenticeship isn't for your industry. I've helped build apprenticeships in healthcare for nurses, I've helped build them for accounting tax agents, I've helped build them for manufacturing roles. Don't assume that just because you're a professional office job that you can't make an apprenticeship, we absolutely can. They really are the future. Pat Pat could tell you they they've been doing them overseas in different countries for years and years and years. The model works. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Tune in next time to hear an education focused episode featuring Joanna Caballero, Apprentice Ambassador at Educare West DuPage, and Whitney Thompson, Deputy Director of the Illinois Community College Board. To learn more about apprenticeships, go to apprenticeshiplinois.com. Thanks for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to seeing you next time on The Apprentice Perspective.