The comments were timeless — and good reminders for what we all know: What you are on paper is a good place to start, but it’s hardly enough to make a success or a failure of your life.
A race horse may come from a proud lineage, for instance, but those conditions mean little if the horse doesn’t really like to run and falls short time and time again. And of course the opposite can also be true.
Not that people are race horses, but the same rule of life holds true for us two-legged runners.
“I’ve seen people with advanced college degrees that never get off a forklift, and I’ve seen people with a high school diploma end up being a shift manager or production manager. Certificates are good, kind of an early-stage indication of what someone is willing to dedicate to achieve something, but it’s not the end-all.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The speaker was Jeff Vanderpool, manufacturing and operations executive vice president at Graphyte. He and Kris Kline, vice president of Strong Manufacturing, and Garrett Lee, components plant vice president at Central Moloney, were on hand last week to talk to area teachers about the workforce needs of local industry.
The three talked about a person’s dependability and their ability to be trained. Kline said he would consider automating some of his company’s work but that doing so is not feasible.
“For us, we’re not a high-production company,” Kline said. “A lot of ours will be small runs. For me, it’s going to have to be trained individuals. I can’t automate it. … For us, it’s all about, can I find somebody who’s willing to learn and able to teach them? It’s all about training.”
The teachers had their ears open.
“Most of it is soft skills,” said Latoya Conway, a teacher at Lonoke High School, referring to what students are exposed to in the classroom.
David Tollett, a Stuttgart teacher, said the most important aspect is knowing what skills the industry needs.
“Basically, what schools fall back on are soft skills that can be used by any employer, anywhere. The challenge to specific labor demands are depending on that company, but in a general setting, it’s more reliant on soft skills. … We can help industry greatly in public education if we know what specific things industry needs from us and if industry is willing to work within the public school system.”
We recall that Central Moloney has partnered with the Watson Chapel district to offer a welding program. And in the Sheridan School District, Kohler donated $130,000 in equipment a few years ago as part of the creation of the Kohler Academy, where students train on equipment in use at the facility.
The takeaway is that educators and industry executives are eager to have help from each other. Educators want to provide what students need for tomorrow’s world, and executives need employees who have both the training needed for those jobs and the wherewithal to be successful in the workforce. Meetings like these between the two sides are a good way to make all of that happen.