I was rereading an article by Peter Capelli, a professor at the Wharton School, written in 2011. He made a case that is even more compelling today in a time of growing unemployment for Millennials, a time when companies claim they can’t find workers with the skills necessary for the jobs they have open. I read recently that Google, Facebook, and Apple alone have 10,000 job openings they cannot fill.  Why not reinvent apprenticeships?

Peter Capelli, Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need

There are plenty of people out there who could step into jobs with just a bit of training—even recent graduates who don’t have much job experience. Despite employers’ complaints about the education system, college students are pursuing more vocationally oriented course work than ever before, with degrees in highly specialized fields like pharmaceutical marketing and retail logistics.

Unfortunately, American companies don’t seem to do training anymore. Data are hard to come by, but we know that apprenticeship programs have largely disappeared, along with management-training programs. And the amount of training that the average new hire gets in the first year or so could be measured in hours and counted on the fingers of one hand. Much of that includes what vendors do when they bring in new equipment: “Here’s how to work this copier.”

The shortage of opportunities to learn on the job helps explain the phenomenon of people queueing up for unpaid internships, in some cases even paying to get access to a situation where they can work free to get access to valuable on-the-job experience.

Companies in other countries do things differently. In Europe, for instance, training is often mandated, and apprenticeships and other programs that help provide work experience are part of the infrastructure.

The result: European countries aren’t having skill-shortage complaints at the same level as in the U.S., and the nations that have the most established apprenticeship programs—the Scandinavian nations, Germany and Switzerland—have low unemployment.

I recently wrote about Enstitute (see Enstitute wants to remake higher education, right now), a small non-profit that is matching young people who want to get on-the-job training integrated into a college-like experience, and being paired with a ‘master’ practitioner at a partner company, for example, working as an apprentice to my friend Hillary Mason, the Chief Data Scientist at Bitly. But Enstitute is currently a small program, dealing with only a few dozen people at present, and while it could scale up, it won’t be reaching out to the non-professional, no-college-needed kinds of jobs that make up the bulk of the economy.

My prediction: based on the rise of placeforms (marketplace + platform = placeform) and the market needs on both sides of this equation, someone will develop a placeform. Let’s imagine that some social crusaders read this post, and go off to build Apprenti.cy. What would it provide? Based on the existing model of placeforms (like oDesk, Work Market, HireArt, Everwise, and so on), it would include the following:

• The company life cycle would be supported: companies register, characterize the company’s business and operations, and describe various paths to paid work in the company, and  define minimum sorts of training or educational prerequisites based on these paths. For example, a lighting manufacturer might have three different apprenticeship paths: manufacturing, sales, and finance.
• The apprentice life cycle would be supported: individuals register, characterize their education, work experience, training, and aspirations.
• The placeform’s tools would allow the candidate apprentices to search against jobs, as well as using algorithmic and human guidance to direct candidates toward apprenticeship paths or categories that suit their temperament and skills. Apprenti.cy might also assess basic skills — like algebra, electronics, or food preparation — and determine supplemental training needed to meet a company’s minimums. Once placed, Apprenti.cy would monitor progress, respond to feedback, and actively remain engaged as the advocate of the apprentice and as a trusted partner to the company. Apprenti.cy would also run the apprentice program on-site for the participating company, involving full-time workers as necessary, but minimizing the impact of the apprentices on the business to the greatest extent possible. Over time, as apprentices progress in their training, they could be melded into the workforce of the company, causing the least disruption.

The biggest concerns of many companies relative to training workers is that they will leave before the investment is paid back. My hope is that Apprenti.cy could be managed in a way to minimize the likelihood of that happening. This would be done partly by better understanding of the needs of the companies and the apprentices, and partly by acting as a relief valve for ‘bad fits’. If it becomes apparent that a given apprentice is not a good match for their sponsoring company, Apprenti.cy could move that apprentice to another company, and vice versa. If Apprenti.cy grows large enough, a small pool of ‘bad fits’ could be managed better than an individual company could handle on its own, since Apprenti.cy can move people across different company cultures. Also, Apprenti.cy could have the candidate sign a contract, binding them to a three-year term of service with Apprenti.cy, and the penalties could be fairly serious, like the requirement for some of the apprentice’s pay to be placed in an escrow account, which would be be lost if the apprentice completely bails on the program.

Placeforms, I have argued, are emerging at a furious pace in the world of business, filling a vacuum left by the retreat of several player in the postmodern era.

• The federal government has opted to not take a stand to counter the growing unemployment of our young people. We have no Civilian Conservation Corps, and no Works Progress Administration. Even the supposedly liberal Obama administration seems content (or resigned) to rely on purely market forces to some day, some how counter this devastating threat to the future of young Americans.
• American business is unwilling or uninterested in training new employees, as Peter Capelli pointed out in 2011. They expect workers to be overqualified and to accept less than market rates for their labors.
• The unions, trade schools, and community colleges are not meeting the needs of the present day, or are more interested in continuing in the techniques of the 20th century.

I hope that those activists out there — people like Sara Horowitz at the Freelancers Union, the founders of Enstitute, or Peter Capelli — might take this half-baked handwave of an idea and run with it. I’d be willing to help.