Bill Kerr: Jobs openings in the US are at an all-time high of 6 million. One reason is the booming economy. But another is that companies can’t find the workers with the skills they need.

This was a big problem for power companies. Most of their workers don’t need to go to college, but job applicants with a high school degree often lack the math and computer skills they need. To address the problem, utility companies across the country joined forces. They started training students as early as grade school to develop the skills needed to work at a power company when they graduate from high school.

Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast. I’m Harvard Business School Professor, Bill Kerr. I’m joined today by the executive director of the Center for Energy Workforce Development (CEWD), Ann Randazzo. The model she created could help address the skills gap that threatens to drag down the American economy. Welcome, Ann.

Ann Randazzo: Thank you.

Kerr: Ann, many industries have difficulties finding skilled workers. What forced the utilities industry to address this problem?

Randazzo: Back in 2005, we were facing a looming crisis with our workforce. We had about 50 percent of the workforce, over the next five years, at the potential to retire. So we were looking at losing half of this very experienced workforce. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a plan in place for how we were going to replace them. So the industry came together as we do on any kind of major crisis, and said, “What can we do better together than we can separately?” When we first started looking, we approached it very much like we do a storm. During a storm, everybody gets in the trucks and they roll, and they get the power back on. And that was the way that we decided to tackle this issue.

Kerr: A lot of jobs in the utilities industry pay six figures. Why is it hard to fill these jobs?

Randazzo: It had been years since we had actively hired, so we didn’t have pipelines in place to fill the jobs. Faced with this situation, where we knew we were going to have to bring in tens of thousands of people to fill these very specific jobs, we knew we had to do something about it.

Kerr: Many of these jobs you needed to fill are so-called middle-skills jobs. How much education do you need for a middle-skills job?

Randazzo: In general, middle-skills jobs are defined as those that need more than a high school diploma, but less than a bachelor’s degree, or a four-year degree.

Kerr: Can you give us an example of a middle-skills job and the specific requirement to that role?

Randazzo: Certainly. One of the jobs that we have is called “instrument and control technician.” These are people who might work in a plant. They might work out in the field. But a specific skill or competency they need is to be able to troubleshoot and to be able to repair things like circuit boards, turbine systems, a variable-speed pump. It’s a specific skill that you need, not just to learn in the classroom, but also with hands-on training. One of the things that we did when we first started was to ask, “What do you need to be able to know and do to get these jobs?” What you end up with is a set of foundational skills, employability skills, if you want to think about them that way, that cover everything from academics—like math and English and technology—but also include the skills that you need to actually get a job—team building, collaboration, those kinds of things.

Kerr: What percentage of jobs in the US are middle-skills jobs?

Randazzo: It’s about 50 percent. In our industry, we have about 40 percent of our jobs that we call “critical skills.” These are the field forces. These are jobs like line workers, skilled technicians. Also people who work in a plant, plant operators. They need an associate’s degree, for the most part. A line worker needs an apprenticeship that sometimes is a four- or five-year apprenticeship. These are jobs that we would consider to be middle skills, and they make up about 40 percent of our workforce.

Kerr: At the executive end of the job market, there isn’t a labor shortage, nor is there one at the least-skilled end of the job market. Why is there a shortage at the middle-skills level?

Randazzo: One is certainly awareness. Having had two kids who have gone through the public education system, I know that they didn’t have anybody talking to them about the kind of great jobs you can get with a community college degree. There’s a lot of focus on bachelor’s degrees, a lot of focus on very specific types of careers. But they didn’t include the type that we’re talking about. We found, after doing a pretty brief survey, that students not only didn’t know about our jobs, they didn’t know who the utility companies were. We started there. The other piece of it is that there’s really not a good system of education pathways for these types of jobs. We looked around the country and said, “Okay. Who’s teaching the type of curriculum that would lead to careers in utility technology, or generation technology.” We didn’t find very many.

Kerr: To what extent do you think the term “middle skills” mischaracterizes the type of jobs these are?

Randazzo: Anybody who talks to me for very long knows that I don’t like that term, “middle skills.” The reason is because the jobs that I’ve described so far are high skilled. Middle skills, when you look at the definition, relates to education. It’s middle levels of education, but not necessary middle levels of skill. I think the term, itself, can start to turn off students or job seekers who think, “I want something where I have a high skill. I want to go to school so that I can do something that is highly competent.”

Kerr: What would be a more accurate name for the jobs?

Randazzo: I would say middle education, because the skills themselves are very different. Sometimes, even with a short-term certificate, you can enter a career that leads to a very high-skill, high-wage position.

Kerr: What are some of the other industries facing a mismatch between the demands of employers and the skills that workers can provide?

Randazzo: Just about every industry. We belong to a network of industries. It includes groups that cover everything from metalworking to healthcare to IT. All of us are facing the same types of issues when it comes to the workforce. The level of skill is one of the biggest issues that we talk about and that we address.

Kerr: To what extent are schools failing to prepare workers for these jobs?

Randazzo: I think it starts very early, because students make a decision very early on in middle school, or sometimes earlier, about what they’re going to take. Students who are on an education track that might lead to engineering—or to jobs that need a four-year degree or a bachelor’s degree—very often don’t end up taking the math or the science or the other courses that they need. As jobs have changed, that basic knowledge of math, science, technology, engineering—that’s often called STEM—is foundational to every job we have. Students will get cut off from the pathways that they need in order to enter these jobs. Very often, there’s a lack of discussion about the world of work. Students in middle school are not looking for a job. But what we need to be able to do is to guide them down an education path where they have foundation skills, where they have those employability skills that I mentioned earlier, like team building, problem solving, critical thinking. Those are the kinds of skills they’re going to be able to use later on.

Kerr: What are some of the steps the utilities industry took to make sure you had enough qualified workers?

Randazzo: We started with some basic questions: “How many line workers do we need?” We had to back up because we didn’t have that answer. So we asked, “How many line workers do we have?” And what kind of forecast can we put to that to figure out “How many might retire? How many normally leave? How many of them will we need for new projects?” We were able to get a pretty good idea about how many students we might need in an education pathway to meet the demand over time. You have to back up so far, because students who are starting an associate’s degree don’t necessarily end that pathway in two years. It might take four years or six years because they’re working. It takes a while to develop a program, so you have to add years to that. We have to be able to forecast out, “How many do we need and when? And where is the supply going to come from?”

Kerr: Was it obvious which skills workers needed to prepare for the middle-skills job?

Randazzo: What we have seen over the years is the foundation skills have become more and more important. We saw after the recession in 2008, 2009, the jobs changed because technology changed. Technology is changing faster than anybody can keep up with, in terms of curriculum. That was one of the drivers for us, to be able to think more about what we call “the common denominator”: What does everybody need to know? Then, toward the end your education pathway, you can add on skills, because it’s closer to the time when you get the job. We call them “snap-on credentials.” If you have that basic level of knowledge, then you can learn something specific or a change in technology or systems. That’s where you have to start.

Kerr: How important is it to have credentialing so that workers can prove to employers they have the skills?

Randazzo: We think it’s pretty important. One of the things that’s really taken up a fair amount of our time and effort is to be able to identify what are the competencies that you get with that degree. That’s where credentialing is so important. Certainly, the associate’s degree is important. That is a credential. But it’s the things that stack up to that degree that are equally important.

Kerr: How are you working with the schools and community colleges in order to give students the skills they need?

Randazzo: One of the things that we’ve done is to create what we call “State Energy Workforce Consortia.” It became apparent very early on in our process that this isn’t something that you can do at a national level because these jobs are local. We began working with our members and started creating many centers at the state level. It’s utilities, it’s contractors, it’s educators, it’s government agencies, it’s whoever needs to be in the room in order to balance the supply and demand. We have 30-something states now, that have State Energy Workforce Consortia. They all work on a variety of things, depending on what the needs are in their area. If you have that kind of partnership in place, then you’re much more likely to be able to adapt curricula to be able to change so that you can balance that supply and demand.

Kerr: It’s rare for industries to approach schools for training. What was the reaction from the hundreds of schools that you reached out to?

Randazzo: Some were very open, and some were not. So we chose to work with the ones that were open. We are fortunate in many ways that we don’t need millions of people. We need a few hundred thousand. We have about 600,000 employees in utilities across the country. We worked with people who wanted to work with us to establish programs.

Kerr: What specific things does a high school student need to know or be able to do to work at a utility company after graduation?

Randazzo: First of all, there aren’t many jobs in utilities that only need a high school education. Many of our jobs need, at least, an associate’s degree, or some level or certificate. We also have a good many jobs that need an apprenticeship. In our industry, apprenticeships have been established for many, many, many years. It’s the way that we train. But we hire people in first. They’re hired by a company, and then there’s an internal training program, like an apprenticeship, that helps them learn and earn as they go through the process. So if you are interested in a program that is an apprenticeship, then that looks a little bit different. For example, with line workers. What we have found is the best way to get a line worker job is to go through a boot camp. It’s a six-week program. You learn how to climb, which is particularly important. If you’re afraid of heights, this isn’t the job for you. It also means that you learn the culture. We are the ones who are going out when everybody else is scurrying to get home because there’s a storm, or because the power is out. We’re the ones that are moving out. Particularly the line workers that are the first first responders, need to have that kind of ability to be able to jump in the truck and go. You learn those kinds of thing and then you get hired into an apprenticeship as a helper, and you learn from there. The best way to find out what you need to do is to actually look at a job posting, because every company is a little different. Some of them might require a commercial driver’s license, for example. Some of them might require particular certificates, like a safety certificate. Something like that.

Kerr: At some point you realized you had to start working with middle and grade schools as well. What do you have to do to get the younger students interested and on the right track?

Randazzo: We work with organizations like FIRST Robotics, or we have companies who have summer camps in energy, where they actually bring students in as early as first, second grade, and introduce them to fun things about energy. Then later on you can talk about what the jobs are. But you have to get kids interested enough to be willing to take the courses and to see that science is fun.

Kerr: What are the challenges helping young girls prepare for a career in the utilities industry?

Randazzo: Girls decide very early—some as early as elementary school, lots of studies say fourth grade—girls decide if they’re good at math, if they like science, so they self-select out. They take things that don’t relate to math and science or that type of thing. We have to get to them pretty early, because they’ve lost their confidence at that age, and they don’t understand that they can do this. Great program from Alabama Power. One of the things that they have done is to start with girls in elementary school. They bring them in for a day, an afternoon, of fun. They do things like create lip gloss. They have all the ingredients at hand, and they have these young women who are helping them to make lip gloss. After they have created it, then these young women talk about the fact that they are chemical engineers, and this is what a chemical engineer does. Another one of the activities is creating a high heel shoe. They have lots of fun because that’s fashion, but it turns out it’s also structural engineering. So they have a young woman who talks to them about that, and it’s get them interested. And then they realize they can do it. We also do things where we connect from one grade to the next, where they might start with something like that, and then they move into a FIRST Tech or a FIRST Robotics team, where they actually build and complete a robot. What does that have to do with our industry? Everything. Whether it’s about robotics or not, it’s about building, it’s about problem solving, critical thinking. We have to work with girls early and all the way through to get and keep them interested.

Kerr: Minorities are also under-represented. What are you doing to attract them?

Randazzo: We focus on a number of different demographics. Girls and women certainly. We also focus on youth. Low-income young adults. And minorities are a part of everything that we do. We look at the military. We have Troops to Energy Jobs, and that’s a great way to attract minorities. What we’ve found is that it’s a long-term process—as I mentioned earlier, starting early, and looking backwards, for the most part. If we want to hire minorities, then we have to look in those classrooms where we’re preparing students and see if they have the diversity that we’re looking at. Whether we’re talking about women, or we’re talking about people of color or we’re talking about people with autism. We have great programs now where companies are hiring in people with autism. We have one company in the Southwest that has hired blind engineers. Once you open your mind to the possibilities for diversity, then you start this process. Look backwards. Is the diversity there in the classrooms? If it’s not, back it up. Make sure that it’s there in the programs that you’re doing in the middle schools or in elementary schools. Make sure that you have teams that have minorities on them, so that you can connect—that’s to strategic linkages—so that you connect place after place. But it’s not just a matter of having them graduate, it’s a matter of hiring them, connecting our systems—our human resource systems—as well as making sure that we have programs in place to keep them.

Kerr: As a result of your efforts over the past 12 years, has it become easier for power companies to find qualified employees?

Randazzo: I’d like to think so. We certainly have done a lot, to be able to smooth the path. But I think one of things that we have begun to focus on more and more are metrics. We don’t know that all of these things work. We feel like they do. We have companies telling us that we do, but we can’t prove it. We want to do more in the future in looking at how we measure the impact of working with girls, for example, all the way through the process. In looking for people who have these skills. Do people who are part of our education network—students who graduate from those networks—are they hired more easily? Do they do better in the long term? Those are the things that we have to look for.

Kerr: Industries from healthcare to manufacturing also face this middle-skills gap. What would you recommend they take from your example?

Randazzo: I would say the most important thing is to work together, to collaborate. We had very early on, one of our members said, “Collaborate in the classroom, compete on the grid.” That’s been one of our mottoes. If we collaborate in the classroom, then we are able to create a talent pool that everyone can access. There will be enough jobs, and there will be enough of a supply, in order to be able to have students—to have job seekers—choose where they want to go to work. But if we don’t work together to create this talent pool early on, then there won’t be enough. Work together! It really works.

Kerr: Many industries are confronting the middle-skills gap and trying to figure out how to develop the workforce for the future. We appreciate Ann Randazzo, the executive director for the Center for Energy Workforce Development, for having joined us today on the Managing the Future of Work podcast series from Harvard Business School. The energy industry has been at the forefront of creating new programs where companies come together to create the workforce, and we’ve talked about the applications for other industries. Thank you, Ann, for joining us.

Randazzo: Thank you.

Kerr: And thanks, everyone, for listening in.