Building a career on firm foundations: more than having a job.
Trade apprenticeships still form one of the most powerful learning and development pathways available.
I’m a prime example.
When I was 15 I started my career as a vehicle body maker. I didn’t know then that I would one day be debating policy with the Australian prime minister, that I’d be developing initiatives that positively affect all motorists, or that I would be representing one of the country’s most important industries in the houses of Parliament.
But I do.
And what set me up for this was an apprenticeship.
Irrespective of the bashing the vocational training sector gets from time to time, there are thousands of successful apprenticeship opportunities across Australia, provided through employers, that set people on a great development pathway.
Apprenticeships still provide the best mix of on-the-job learning supported by underpinning technical theory.
Trade apprenticeships aren’t about narrow skill sets, they’re about learning for the whole-of-job, from the beginning to the end, including nutting out the problems along the way.
These skills are highly adaptable and transferrable – highly desirable in an era in which people are changing careers so often – and I can provide many examples of senior managers, business owners and leaders who have based their career development on what they learned as an apprentice.
There’s another big benefit for going the ‘trade route’. Unlike a university graduate who might enter the workforce massively in debt, an apprentice actually gets paid to learn skills that will set them up for life.
That’s pretty hard to beat.
Words: VACC CEO, Geoff Gwilym. As featured in the Herald Sun 29 November 2019.
Share your thoughts! E: ceo@vacc.com.au