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The Apprentice Ambassador Program selects an annual cohort of star current or former apprentices to represent a wide variety of industries throughout Illinois.
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During their year in the cohort, Apprentice Ambassadors serve as guest speakers at business events to showcase the impact apprenticeship has had on them, their families, and their companies.
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The Apprentice Perspective brings their stories to you, our listeners.
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Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Apprentice Perspective.
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My name is David Yeager.
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I am the program and operations lead at Zurich, North America for the Office of Apprenticeship.
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I'll be your host for this episode, and I'm joined by our Apprentice Ambassador, Peter Tobin.
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Hello, my name is Peter, and I am a bachelor's apprentice at Zurich based out of Schomburg, Illinois.
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The Zurich Apprenticeship Program is a two-year program, and you're about halfway through your program, but let's go ahead and start at the beginning.
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Tell us about the journey to taking the leap to starting an apprenticeship program.
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I was studying computer science at Harper College, and I finished my first two years, and then I decided to start looking for internships.
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And then when I was on my internship search, I found a Zurich Apprenticeship Program.
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And then I saw that they, you know, provide on-the-job learning.
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They also offer to pay for your bachelor's degree in information technology while gaining experience on the job.
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For me, that kind of stood out.
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I'm completely jealous that that was not available to available to me when I initially was looking into college options.
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But for me, and Peter, I think I've shared this with you before.
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I also joined Zurich through the apprenticeship program back in 2018.
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Um, so I had that very same and similar experience of going through Harper College, learning about apprenticeship, and growing up in the Chicagoland area, Harper College just had such a tremendous reputation that I knew that going through a program that was partnered between Zurich and Harper College would be a great opportunity.
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But what do you think about the person you are today?
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How much of your growth ties back to that decision?
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I think there was a lot of growth tied back to that decision because when I started school, I was 22.
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I had recently got out of the Marines.
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I was seeing people from my graduating class, they're already starting working, doing all these other things.
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And I feel like I just got started again.
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Now I felt like okay, now I'm starting to accelerate a little bit in my career as well because I can get some experience and finish my studies.
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I was very thankful for that opportunity.
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I also grew as a professional, it's pretty similar to the military in some ways with the corporate structure.
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I remember like the first day I started and I was at my first meeting, and I had no idea what anybody was talking about.
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And then now looking back, it's kind of funny to look back and see how much I've grown from that first day.
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A group intended to uh create community amongst veterans as well as advocates and supporters.
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I got out in December 22, and then I started school like two weeks later.
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And it it was quite the it wasn't as big of a change as I thought.
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And then it was just like, okay, like school is my job.
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So then I just treat it like a job.
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Like, you know, you show up to class, you do the homework, and you study, you get an A.
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That makes a lot of sense.
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Did you ever think while you were in the military that your next career was going to be apprentice?
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Maybe not really, honestly.
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Like at first, I wanted to do policing, but then I decided to do computer science, and then I didn't really know there were like apprenticeships in the field that I wanted to do.
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All the people that I met who worked in tech, they either had a computer science degree or they had a lot of experience to back it up.
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It was like totally new.
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I didn't know anybody who had done an apprenticeship before.
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So, one more military-related question.
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Now, knowing what you know now, would you recommend other veterans or people soon to be coming out of the military to consider apprenticeship as a possible career path?
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Yes, I would definitely recommend doing an apprenticeship because I feel like a lot of veterans might feel the way that I felt where I was like, you know, I'm a little bit behind compared to my peers in their careers.
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I feel like you leave the military with a good, let's say, discipline and in work ethic, you could apply that to the apprenticeship.
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You already have like a good amount of work experience that you could apply, even if it's something completely different, like uh infantry, marine to IT in corporate America.
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Absolutely.
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And as like an employer for the Zurich Apprenticeship Program, one of the uh groups of individuals that we look into hiring, one of our preferred groups are veterans for all those reasons that you just listed.
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And as an employer, we really get to benefit from that discipline, that structure, that foundational experience that you come into Zurich with.
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So when you first started, you know, for some people, it's not just them.
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A lot of people will say, hey, this sounds too good to be true.
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What do you mean you're paying me 40 hours a week, a full-time salary?
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I get full benefits just like any other employee at your company.
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Um, I get a 401k health benefits, all of that.
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What worries did you or any of your family members have in the back of your mind that might have prevented you from wanting to explore apprenticeship as a career option?
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Switching to IT, I was like, I don't really, I don't know a whole lot about IT.
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Like, am I going to be doing networking?
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Like, uh am I gonna be doing help desk stuff, helping people with their computers?
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Like I was concerned about that.
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And another concern that I had would be would all my credits transfer?
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Like, would I have to take remedial classes or anything like that?
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And then most of them, most of them did.
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I had a few classes where I didn't, but Zurich does have Sophia learning, which I used a lot.
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I I caught up pretty quick, and then I'll be graduating at the end of this year.
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Those those first two concerns that you shared were some of the concerns that we had as a company.
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You know, we we we have this talent solution or a need and this idea of a talent solution called apprenticeship that we started back in 2016.
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So we're almost at a decade of apprenticeship, proving that it does um help us to meet our business needs and our business goals.
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And apprenticeship is absolutely a talent solution.
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But we had those concerns saying, hey, when we reach out, you know, which education providers do we want to use for our apprenticeship program?
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And uh, you know, it will probably be difficult to get what we need out of them.
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But what we found was the opposite.
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Like you were saying, you were worried about your credits transferring.
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They really met us where we were at and uh helped to design a program that would fit our needs.
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We didn't have to necessarily fit into their model.
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So that really helped open up apprenticeship to more and more apprentices and individuals who maybe thought, oh, I don't know if I could restart my career or start over somewhere else by offering this flexibility, like you mentioned, taking on more and more credits that you could transfer in.
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It meant that people could kind of join apprenticeship based on where they were currently at.
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You know, looking at the value of apprenticeship to the business, what is one thing you would want a business that is considering an apprenticeship model to know about?
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I would want them to know that it is a scalable model.
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You could have one apprentice or you can have many.
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I think that a lot of people going into apprenticeships are eager to learn, they're eager to work, and I think it's uh it's a nice path into growing as a career.
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And if someone's on the fence about, I would say go and do it.
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I I thought it was a great path for me.
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As an employer for other businesses, uh, I think it's important to know that, like you said, it's scalable, you can start small and it can spread like wildfire across your company.
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How our model works at Zurich is we go out to the business and we say, Hey, what are your talent needs and can apprenticeship be a talent solution for you?
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And some areas of our business say, Hey, we're really interested in this, but I don't think it's going to be a fit for us right now at this time.
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Come back to us next year.
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And we do.
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We come back, we come back to every business unit every year and say, Hey, is this the year you want some apprentices?
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Or did it go well?
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How many do you want next year?
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And that's allowed us to host apprenticeships and business units outside of our initial investment and apprenticeship.
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So we were first just within two business units at Zurich, and now we are in uh 14 different business units or functions, things including claims, IT, cybersecurity, communications, human resources, finance could really be a talent solution to a variety of needs.
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And we believe that every unit at Zurich has work that is apprenticeable.
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And that's not an actual word.
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We made that up, but that's the best way that we like to define it, to go to our businesses and say, hey, there's work that you can do that someone coming in with very little experience will be able to contribute to the company.
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Try to identify that work, and then how can we create a talent map that will help them promote into a future position at the completion of two years?
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With that, though, the last section is called Sound Byte Sentence.
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So I will ask you a question and you'll answer in one brief sentence.
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Does that sound good?
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Yeah, that sounds great.
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Mentorship is a vital part of apprenticeships.
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I've had many mentors uh over my career.
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Uh, what's some advice that really changed your mindset that you'd like to pass along?
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I think one of the advice um that one of my mentors has given me recently would be to just constantly keep learning.
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Recently, he's been telling me to upskill and get a certification.
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When I look at back at my time as an apprentice as well, I had a mentor who always encouraged me to be selective but say yes when possible.
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And I've really appreciated that because I entered Zurich through a cybersecurity apprenticeship where I spent my first four years.
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And saying yes to opportunities opened doors for me to work with individuals from other areas of the business, which allowed me to promote into other opportunities at Zurich within my eight years since joining Zurich.
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So uh mentorship was a very important component to being able to navigate the corporate landscape.
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How has your vision of the future shifted because of this apprenticeship?
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I hope to see uh more employers adopting apprenticeship models, college students or people wanting to enter the workforce, they feel that they need either a college degree or experience to get a job, but then they're, you know, they have the college degree but not enough experience, or they have the experience but no college degree.
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And I would encourage them to start thinking about apprenticeships.
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What do you want listeners to walk away with?
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What would you encourage people to do?
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I would want listeners who are maybe on the fence or maybe have some of the worries that I had about apprenticeship, or they see one that they like and they're kind of wondering like, can I balance like work and school?
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Like, will everything work out?
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And I'm like, yes, it does.
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It does work out.
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And I would encourage people to think about apprenticeships as another way to grow their career instead of just doing college or just internships or following the traditional route.
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As an employer, I'd really want people to walk away with an understanding that apprenticeship has actually been around for centuries.
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Uh, Zurich is a European company at our roots.
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We've had apprentices on the books being paid at Zurich since the 1800s.
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So all we really needed to do was take a tried and trued model and bring it over to the US and implement that, which we did 10 years ago.
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And we've been doing this for a decade, and we hope to be doing it for at least a decade more.
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To learn more about apprenticeships, go to apprenticeshipillinois.com.
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Thank you for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to seeing you next time on the apprentice perspective.
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The Apprentice Ambassador Program selects an annual cohort of star current or former apprentices to represent a wide variety of industries throughout Illinois.
00:00:07.679 --> 00:00:16.320
During their year in the cohort, Apprentice Ambassadors serve as guest speakers at business events to showcase the impact apprenticeship has had on them, their families, and their companies.
00:00:16.559 --> 00:00:20.480
The Apprentice Perspective brings their stories to you, our listeners.
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Hello and welcome to today's episode of The Apprentice Perspective.
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My name is David Yeager.
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I am the program and operations lead at Zurich, North America for the Office of Apprenticeship.
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I'll be your host for this episode, and I'm joined by our Apprentice Ambassador, Peter Tobin.
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Hello, my name is Peter, and I am a bachelor's apprentice at Zurich based out of Schomburg, Illinois.
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The Zurich Apprenticeship Program is a two-year program, and you're about halfway through your program, but let's go ahead and start at the beginning.
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Tell us about the journey to taking the leap to starting an apprenticeship program.
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I was studying computer science at Harper College, and I finished my first two years, and then I decided to start looking for internships.
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And then when I was on my internship search, I found a Zurich Apprenticeship Program.
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And then I saw that they, you know, provide on-the-job learning.
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They also offer to pay for your bachelor's degree in information technology while gaining experience on the job.
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For me, that kind of stood out.
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I'm completely jealous that that was not available to available to me when I initially was looking into college options.
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But for me, and Peter, I think I've shared this with you before.
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I also joined Zurich through the apprenticeship program back in 2018.
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Um, so I had that very same and similar experience of going through Harper College, learning about apprenticeship, and growing up in the Chicagoland area, Harper College just had such a tremendous reputation that I knew that going through a program that was partnered between Zurich and Harper College would be a great opportunity.
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But what do you think about the person you are today?
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How much of your growth ties back to that decision?
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I think there was a lot of growth tied back to that decision because when I started school, I was 22.
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I had recently got out of the Marines.
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I was seeing people from my graduating class, they're already starting working, doing all these other things.
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And I feel like I just got started again.
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Now I felt like okay, now I'm starting to accelerate a little bit in my career as well because I can get some experience and finish my studies.
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I was very thankful for that opportunity.
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I also grew as a professional, it's pretty similar to the military in some ways with the corporate structure.
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I remember like the first day I started and I was at my first meeting, and I had no idea what anybody was talking about.
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And then now looking back, it's kind of funny to look back and see how much I've grown from that first day.
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A group intended to uh create community amongst veterans as well as advocates and supporters.
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I got out in December 22, and then I started school like two weeks later.
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And it it was quite the it wasn't as big of a change as I thought.
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And then it was just like, okay, like school is my job.
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So then I just treat it like a job.
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Like, you know, you show up to class, you do the homework, and you study, you get an A.
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That makes a lot of sense.
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Did you ever think while you were in the military that your next career was going to be apprentice?
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Maybe not really, honestly.
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Like at first, I wanted to do policing, but then I decided to do computer science, and then I didn't really know there were like apprenticeships in the field that I wanted to do.
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All the people that I met who worked in tech, they either had a computer science degree or they had a lot of experience to back it up.
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It was like totally new.
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I didn't know anybody who had done an apprenticeship before.
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So, one more military-related question.
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Now, knowing what you know now, would you recommend other veterans or people soon to be coming out of the military to consider apprenticeship as a possible career path?
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Yes, I would definitely recommend doing an apprenticeship because I feel like a lot of veterans might feel the way that I felt where I was like, you know, I'm a little bit behind compared to my peers in their careers.
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I feel like you leave the military with a good, let's say, discipline and in work ethic, you could apply that to the apprenticeship.
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You already have like a good amount of work experience that you could apply, even if it's something completely different, like uh infantry, marine to IT in corporate America.
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Absolutely.
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And as like an employer for the Zurich Apprenticeship Program, one of the uh groups of individuals that we look into hiring, one of our preferred groups are veterans for all those reasons that you just listed.
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And as an employer, we really get to benefit from that discipline, that structure, that foundational experience that you come into Zurich with.
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So when you first started, you know, for some people, it's not just them.
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A lot of people will say, hey, this sounds too good to be true.
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What do you mean you're paying me 40 hours a week, a full-time salary?
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I get full benefits just like any other employee at your company.
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Um, I get a 401k health benefits, all of that.
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What worries did you or any of your family members have in the back of your mind that might have prevented you from wanting to explore apprenticeship as a career option?
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Switching to IT, I was like, I don't really, I don't know a whole lot about IT.
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Like, am I going to be doing networking?
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Like, uh am I gonna be doing help desk stuff, helping people with their computers?
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Like I was concerned about that.
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And another concern that I had would be would all my credits transfer?
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Like, would I have to take remedial classes or anything like that?
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And then most of them, most of them did.
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I had a few classes where I didn't, but Zurich does have Sophia learning, which I used a lot.
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I I caught up pretty quick, and then I'll be graduating at the end of this year.
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Those those first two concerns that you shared were some of the concerns that we had as a company.
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You know, we we we have this talent solution or a need and this idea of a talent solution called apprenticeship that we started back in 2016.
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So we're almost at a decade of apprenticeship, proving that it does um help us to meet our business needs and our business goals.
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And apprenticeship is absolutely a talent solution.
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But we had those concerns saying, hey, when we reach out, you know, which education providers do we want to use for our apprenticeship program?
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And uh, you know, it will probably be difficult to get what we need out of them.
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But what we found was the opposite.
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Like you were saying, you were worried about your credits transferring.
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They really met us where we were at and uh helped to design a program that would fit our needs.
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We didn't have to necessarily fit into their model.
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So that really helped open up apprenticeship to more and more apprentices and individuals who maybe thought, oh, I don't know if I could restart my career or start over somewhere else by offering this flexibility, like you mentioned, taking on more and more credits that you could transfer in.
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It meant that people could kind of join apprenticeship based on where they were currently at.
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You know, looking at the value of apprenticeship to the business, what is one thing you would want a business that is considering an apprenticeship model to know about?
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I would want them to know that it is a scalable model.
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You could have one apprentice or you can have many.
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I think that a lot of people going into apprenticeships are eager to learn, they're eager to work, and I think it's uh it's a nice path into growing as a career.
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And if someone's on the fence about, I would say go and do it.
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I I thought it was a great path for me.
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As an employer for other businesses, uh, I think it's important to know that, like you said, it's scalable, you can start small and it can spread like wildfire across your company.
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How our model works at Zurich is we go out to the business and we say, Hey, what are your talent needs and can apprenticeship be a talent solution for you?
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And some areas of our business say, Hey, we're really interested in this, but I don't think it's going to be a fit for us right now at this time.
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Come back to us next year.
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And we do.
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We come back, we come back to every business unit every year and say, Hey, is this the year you want some apprentices?
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Or did it go well?
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How many do you want next year?
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And that's allowed us to host apprenticeships and business units outside of our initial investment and apprenticeship.
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So we were first just within two business units at Zurich, and now we are in uh 14 different business units or functions, things including claims, IT, cybersecurity, communications, human resources, finance could really be a talent solution to a variety of needs.
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And we believe that every unit at Zurich has work that is apprenticeable.
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And that's not an actual word.
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We made that up, but that's the best way that we like to define it, to go to our businesses and say, hey, there's work that you can do that someone coming in with very little experience will be able to contribute to the company.
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Try to identify that work, and then how can we create a talent map that will help them promote into a future position at the completion of two years?
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With that, though, the last section is called Sound Byte Sentence.
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So I will ask you a question and you'll answer in one brief sentence.
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Does that sound good?
00:09:58.399 --> 00:09:59.679
Yeah, that sounds great.
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Mentorship is a vital part of apprenticeships.
00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:05.279
I've had many mentors uh over my career.
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Uh, what's some advice that really changed your mindset that you'd like to pass along?
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I think one of the advice um that one of my mentors has given me recently would be to just constantly keep learning.
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Recently, he's been telling me to upskill and get a certification.
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When I look at back at my time as an apprentice as well, I had a mentor who always encouraged me to be selective but say yes when possible.
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And I've really appreciated that because I entered Zurich through a cybersecurity apprenticeship where I spent my first four years.
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And saying yes to opportunities opened doors for me to work with individuals from other areas of the business, which allowed me to promote into other opportunities at Zurich within my eight years since joining Zurich.
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So uh mentorship was a very important component to being able to navigate the corporate landscape.
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How has your vision of the future shifted because of this apprenticeship?
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I hope to see uh more employers adopting apprenticeship models, college students or people wanting to enter the workforce, they feel that they need either a college degree or experience to get a job, but then they're, you know, they have the college degree but not enough experience, or they have the experience but no college degree.
00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:33.519
And I would encourage them to start thinking about apprenticeships.
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What do you want listeners to walk away with?
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What would you encourage people to do?
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I would want listeners who are maybe on the fence or maybe have some of the worries that I had about apprenticeship, or they see one that they like and they're kind of wondering like, can I balance like work and school?
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Like, will everything work out?
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And I'm like, yes, it does.
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It does work out.
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And I would encourage people to think about apprenticeships as another way to grow their career instead of just doing college or just internships or following the traditional route.
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As an employer, I'd really want people to walk away with an understanding that apprenticeship has actually been around for centuries.
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Uh, Zurich is a European company at our roots.
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We've had apprentices on the books being paid at Zurich since the 1800s.
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So all we really needed to do was take a tried and trued model and bring it over to the US and implement that, which we did 10 years ago.
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And we've been doing this for a decade, and we hope to be doing it for at least a decade more.
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To learn more about apprenticeships, go to apprenticeshipillinois.com.
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Thank you for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to seeing you next time on the apprentice perspective.
