Stickley, PPC Broadband working with OCC on paid training for job openings

ONONDAGA — Stickley Furniture and PPC Broadband have teamed up with Onondaga Community College (OCC) to help fill openings for jobs that will require worker training.

The companies have immediate openings for CNC machinists and toolmakers. Workers are needed for a total of six to eight positions, OCC announced.

 To fill those needs, the companies are working with OCC’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development on a paid-training program.

An information session is scheduled for Dec. 16 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Storer Auditorium on the OCC campus. Those planning to attend are asked to register in advance at https://www.sunyocc.edu/apprentice-paid-training.

OCC will host the training sessions, which begin in January and continue through April. Participants will earn $12 per hour during training. The pay will increase to $14 an hour once the training is complete.

The training payments come from federal grant funding and one grant from New York State, says Michael Metzgar, associate VP of economic and workforce development at OCC. 

“There’s lots of money out [there] to support apprentices,” he adds in a Dec. 6 phone interview with CNYBJ. 

The process

The information session outlines how the process works, says Metzgar.

The candidates then deal with a “fairly rigorous” selection process. If they make it to the end of the information session, they’ll be invited back for some testing. 

“We test on math, reading, mechanical aptitude, and soft skills,” he notes.

Those who advance are brought in for a set of internal interviews, which are usually conducted with some community partners and an OCC instructor. In those sessions, interviewers are really looking for two things. “Do people have the horsepower to make it through an intense program and are we pretty convinced that they are thinking career, not job?,” says Metzgar.

In the final stage, the candidates will come in and meet with both employers in 20-minute sessions. After the session, the companies rank the candidates they would want to hire and the candidates will determine the employers for which they would like to work. 

Organizers structured it so that pay is the same across the board when they start, so everyone’s picking just on fit. But it’s the employer who actually makes the selection. Once employers choose the candidate, they complete their hiring process, which could include a background check, drug test, and credit check. 

“So, on day one of the program, you simultaneously become the employer’s employee; you become the college’s student; and about a week-and-a-half later, you become the state’s apprentice,” Metzgar says.

As the 12 weeks of training continues, the candidates will be at OCC four days a week and spend one day a week on site with their employer. At the conclusion of 12 weeks, those involved will then transition to five days a week with the employer. Metzgar also notes the new employees are apprentices, so they’ll have obligations over the next four years. 

“They’ll have to come back to take two classes a year, or 144 hours of related instruction to satisfy the state’s requirement,” says Metzgar. 

Both Stickley Furniture and PPC Broadband have worked with OCC on similar training program in the past, according to Metzgar. In addition, the Manufacturers Association and the Workforce Development Institute are both partners in the process.

OCC typically focuses on companies that would prefer four-year apprenticeships because it’s a “requirement” of their grant funding.

But the reason the school is a “fan” of apprenticeships is that everyone involved has “commitment in mind.”

“The employer’s looking at it as a four-year investment. The employee is looking at it as four years of commitment,” says Metzgar.