The Big Idea
F
iona McDougall never thought she’d
hire an apprentice. The practice was
common in her native Australia, but as
a principal at the marketing company
OneWorld Communications in San
Francisco, she had no time. Plus, here
in the U.S., the concept of it seemed
like it was for...electricians? Plumbers?
Certainly not her.
But in 2017, she was invited to an unusual
roundtable series with other local business-
people. It was organized by the city of San
Francisco to help them develop an appren-
ticeship program—which is to say, paying a
potential employee to work part-time while
also providing on-the-job training and educa-
tion. McDougall came away thinking it could
work for her.
“Small businesses have limited resources,”
she says. “You wear many hats, and we expect
people to be specialized but nimble andresourceful.” So why not train someone
specifically for the role? About a year after
the roundtables, the city started distrib-
uting small grants to help companies hire
apprentices. McDougall’s firm received one:
$2,500 to pay for her time to manage the
apprentice, plus tuition for outside training
costs. The goal was to fill a digital market-
ing position.
Stories like this are becoming more com-
mon, as businesses of all sizes discover (or,
in a way, rediscover) the value of appren-
ticeships. The conversation is being pushed
along by public initiatives, policymakers,
commercial education companies, and entre-
preneurs themselves, who are now preaching
the value of earn-and-learn arrangements.
They say it’s an affordable way to train
employees or upskill existing staff, and that
the long-term effect is strong. According to
the Department of Labor, every dollar spenton apprenticeships returns $1.47 in increased
productivity and innovations.
To understand why apprenticeships sud-
denly became so popular, look no further
than the tech skills gap. There just aren’t
enough candidates to fill the open jobs in
fields like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity,
and software development. Currently, more
than 500,000 of these “new collar” jobs are
unfilled, and analysts predict the number will
grow by 20 percent in three years.
As Silicon Valley tech giants wrestled with
this problem, some came to the same con-
clusion: If we can’t hire great employees, we
have to create them. And so, a new interest in
apprenticeships was born. Between 2013
and 2018, the number of apprentices in the
U.S. increased 42 percent, and the programs
to facilitate them more than doubled, accord-
ing to the Department of Labor.
From there, enthusiasm for the conceptCould You Use an Apprentice?
The old plumber and electrician trainee model has been reimagined for the new world—and could be exactly
what a bootstrapped, growing startup needs. by MAGGIE GINSBERG24 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / March 2020 Illustration / VIKTOR KOEN