Introduction
Wake up world. It’s time for the William Malcolm Morning Show, where we encourage you to pursue your dreams and live a life filled with passion and purpose. So, turn up your volume and prepare to be inspired. Now, here’s your host, William Malcolm.
William Malcolm
Good Morning America, Detroit city. It is a fine sunny day in the neighborhood. And like the intro said, we encourage you to live a life filled with passion, purpose and power. And you know, I have a guest, I’m going to tee him up family. So, I’ve been working in schools with my mentor program in various forms for the last decade. And with that, you know, oftentimes when you work with young people, it happens to come up, what are they going to do when they grow up, okay. And a lot of times, I’ve seen young people who have some skills and talents, and they may not necessarily want to go to college, but right now, it’s a lot of stigma if you don’t attend college. I’ve seen some young people go off, go to college and what I like to call a grand opening, grand closing, they’ll go off the first year and then they’ll sometimes be back that semester or the next year because they really didn’t want to go in the first place. They have talents and gifts and skills that they that doesn’t that may not require a college degree. And but a lot of times they don’t even know how to take Okay, I’m a I like to draw or I’m good at my hands or I like to build things. I’m a welder. I’m like, you know, so I have I’m going to let him introduce himself. And we’re going to kind of peel back the layers and go through some of the things that he’s doing, and how he can help these young people and employers. So, introduce yourself to our listeners.
Joe Bamberger
Thank you. My name is Joe Bamberger. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. I’m the Managing Partner of Emerge Consulting. We are a management consulting firm dedicated to helping employers build pipelines of entry level talent.
William Malcolm
Now Joe has never been on a radio before, but he did a great job. He has a good radio voice doesn’t he Brian. Brian’s giving me a thumbs up, man, so you’re ready to go, you’re ready to go. Okay. That was smooth, man. So, listen, let’s just kind of talk about so you heard me, you know, just kind of tee you up a little bit. And I’m going to put myself out their family, I, when I went to college, it was, you know, in my household, you’re going to college. That’s just how it was. And I’m having thankful for my parents, if they’re listening. I don’t want to get a punishment when I leave the show. But I’m happy I went, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And actually, what I’m doing now, I’m not going to say to my college degree did not provide me access, but I’m not doing what my college degree is in, and I think a lot of people can attest to that. So, what about yourself?
Joe Bamberger
Same thing. Yeah, I have a degree in geology,
William Malcolm
I told him, I said, I’ve never met a geologist before. And what did you tell me?
Joe Bamberger
I said, you still haven’t. And so, I had internships. Throughout the summers, I spent a summer living in North Dakota realized that being a professional geologist, at least in the oil and gas industry is living in the middle of nowhere, looking at sand all day. Being a people person just didn’t fit well with my personality.
William Malcolm
Gotcha. Gotcha. So, when you first went to college, did you know that you wanted to be a geologist? Or did you kind of get there and kind of feel around and get a degree? You know, how did that work out for you?
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, I mean, like anyone else, you take a bunch of classes upfront, and you find ones that you like, and you take more of the same. I have an interest in science. My dad’s the same as me. We both have useless science degrees, that we both don’t use. He was a forestry major and now is in IT. I’m a geology major, and now is in workforce development. I have an interest in science and I’m very useful on a hike if we were to go on a hike and I could tell you all about the rocks, but beyond that, it’s a degree that I don’t use, but just had an interest in while I was in college.
William Malcolm
You know, now I know when I’m out in the summer doing my runs, I’m just going to take a picture of a rock and I’ll text it to you.
Joe Bamberger
Perfect.
William Malcolm
Put that degree to use. Okay, but all jokes aside, you mentioned that you didn’t want to do that, so walk us through your experience after deciding you didn’t want to be a geologist.
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, it’s the same thing that I would tell kids, right? You’re finding out where your career path is going to take, don’t decide upfront, this is what I want to do. Find things you don’t want to do. Take jobs, take opportunities, take experiences, and try to replicate the things you like and remove things you don’t. I started off working with Major League Baseball, helping them with their Alumni Associations of former major league players, transition that sales experience into a sales position in Colorado, representing a sporting goods manufacturer, realized that while Colorado was great, I miss being home close to family.
William Malcolm
The Motown was calling you.
Joe Bamberger
Yes, it was. I came home and stumbled into the staffing industry.
William Malcolm
Okay.
Joe Bamberger
And you know, for those that might not be aware of how staffing operates…
William Malcolm
Yes, break that down because you were kind of telling me about it. And I remember in college, and I got connected, and I went to a staffing agency. Just kind of explain to us how it works.
Joe Bamberger
Most people get jobs based on who they know. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and not everyone is blessed with having large networks and tons of resources to help them get jobs. I think, as a positive for the staffing industry, they are the person that can help you get into companies you’re interested in getting into.
William Malcolm
That would be called the plug.
Joe Bamberger
Yes. But with every with every positive comes negatives. Where I think staffing, fails is it’s looking to pull individuals out of experiences they might be happy in or might not be for maybe a few $1,000 a year more. But in reality, they’re not evaluating your personality, if you’re going to actually be a culture fit or not. They’re doing whatever they can to keep you billing as long as possible, or into the job that pays the most, because that’s how they run their living.
William Malcolm
Absolutely.
Joe Bamberger
It’s a benefit both ways in a lot of cases. But in some cases, it’s not, and it didn’t sit well with me. So, in 2017, I left to start my own company that is really focused on what we call building teams the right way, from the bottom up. So, it having companies create relationships with schools, whether that’s a high school or colleges, university, anywhere in between, to build those pipelines of entry level talent, and build teams from that entry level position and then develop and promote from within.
William Malcolm
And I liked what you said, I was testing Joe, he didn’t know it, but one of the things he said offline before we got on air, he said relationships. And you mentioned that again. I think that is so important you build the relationship because you’re going to make sure that the employer is happy as well as that person going for this entry level opportunity. So that company is called, I want to make sure, because we have something that just launched hot, hot off the presses that we’re going to talk about, but what’s the name of that company called?
Joe Bamberger
Emerge Consulting
William Malcolm
Emerge Consulting. So, with that, pretty much what you stated, you work with companies and you do career fairs, college and things like that.
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, we represent them out on college campuses, high school campuses, trade school campuses and wherever their demographic of talent needs to come from. And it’s a combination of career fairs, relationships with faculty or career services, classroom presentations, student clubs, and organization presentations, very boots on the ground.
William Malcolm
So, how’s that working because I just had the impression you just got up one day and said, I’m going to start something that’s relationship based, and we’re going to do it. And so, how’s it going for you right now? How’s it how’s it been received?
Joe Bamberger
Overall, it’s actually hard to explain because everyone thinks when I describe what we do that we’re a staffing company that we’re charging a percentage of first year salary or doing temp to hire contractors, and that’s very much not what we do. So, it takes some time to explain that it’s more of a relationship based, outsourcing of campus engagement, campus recruiting. And so, in a non-COVID year, it works really well because we’re boots on the ground on campuses. Obviously right now with campuses shut off and down, it provides challenges that want us to engage more in technology to connect with students, which was kind of the necessity that brought up the platform that we’re going to talk about here today.
William Malcolm
Okay, yep. And so, you know what, we’re going to do a cliffhanger. We’re going to take a quick commercial break, we come back, we’re going to talk about what Joe just launched in November, stay tuned.
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William Malcolm
Good Morning America, we are back I am sitting with Joe and before we went to break, we were just talking about how a lot of times kids go off to college to get a college degree, and there are a lot of career fairs with recruiters, they’re passing out the free pins and the frisbees and, the little phone things you put on your drink. So, you can know the companies. But there really isn’t anything that’s going after that young person in high school who may not want to go to college. And before we were talking about the stigma related to a young person who made this career path but may not lead them to college.
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, it’s unfortunate, right? And especially when you’re hearing the statistics out there about how much student loan debt there is, and the number of people that start college that end up falling off after that freshman year.
William Malcolm
And they still have student loan debt.
Joe Bamberger
They still leave with that debt and in a lot of cases, they’re getting entry level positions that pay the same as an entry level position if you were to come out of high school.
William Malcolm
Yes. Right.
Joe Bamberger
So, you’re making the same, starting four years later with the burden of debt. And college, or at least a four-year college isn’t for everyone. It’s a necessity for some careers, but it’s not a necessity for everyone.
William Malcolm
Now get this statistic. You said a statistic before we came on about the number of jobs that could you talk about that?
Joe Bamberger
Yeah. So, the state of Michigan estimates between now and 2028 new entry level positions that will become available, only 19% of those will require a bachelor’s degree.
William Malcolm
Can you say that one more time for the people that just dropped their coffee?
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, so 81% of new jobs that are going to be out there will not require a bachelor’s degree. Now that’s not to say it’s just all GED. Post-secondary education, trade schools, your community college or something like that. But when you think about all the technologies that are out there, they are designed to connect you with college students, or all the career counselors or guidance counselors in high schools that are pushing into college, but it’s really the only fill 90% of the jobs.
William Malcolm
Wow. So now, drumroll, please. Let’s talk about what you just launched. That’s filling this gap in November. What is that?
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, so in November, EmergeSkilled, went live. It’s a platform that’s designed to connect students on a non-traditional educational path. So those are students that attend CTE, Career and Technical Education, high schools, trade schools, specialty schools, tech boot camps, and community colleges, with career opportunities. The way the platform operates is it’s kind of like a dating app where students fill out a profile of their skills, experiences and their wants. If anyone has tried to hire this demographic of student before, they know they’re not very proactive in their job search.
William Malcolm
Now, why do you think that is?
Joe Bamberger
It could be generational; it could be confidence.
William Malcolm
You know what, I asked you the question, but I’m going to fill it in a little bit, because I’ve worked with my mentor program, I worked with some of these students, a lot of times it’s because they’re not being sought after. They’re not being recruited. In their mind, they may know, okay, some may declare, the brave ones will declare, I don’t want to go to college, and then they’re getting scorned, and the counselors are trying to twist your arm sometimes to go. So sometimes they’ll just go ahead and go, but the ones that are brave enough to say they don’t want to go, no one has created something for them to have. I don’t know that this is the best word, but it’s only one I think about is pride in their decision. With that, a lot of times that stigma starts to come in, that we were talking about, and there has not been a platform where they’re being recruited. I mean, let’s just be honest. When you’re being recruited, you feel someone thinks you’re special.
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely.
William Malcolm
A lot of times it comes with, they don’t even know the opportunity. So, if someone and that’s why I kind of liked when you said you parallel to dating app. Family listen, we know he’s in education, but when he said that analogy, I got it. I don’t know if that’s the best way we can go into schools, but I got it. Yeah. Because you’re going there, and you say what your interests are. So, if my interests are, I like to weld, I’d like to build things. I’m assuming you could go on that app and get the website out again.
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, it’s www.emergeskilled.com
William Malcolm
And so, they would just go in and plug their things in, and then…
Joe Bamberger
You build a profile, similar to the way a professional might build a LinkedIn profile. Then an employer on the other side says, alright, I’m looking for students that live in this area that are studying welding, that answer this way to certain personality questions, and it creates a match.
William Malcolm
Wow. Okay. Okay. And so, this just launched just launched. Fresh.
Joe Bamberger
Brand new.
William Malcolm
Okay, so we got to get people signed up for this.
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, absolutely. And so, the way that we love to roll out into the community is by partnering to talk about it.
William Malcolm
See, this is what I love family. This is why I knew Joe was the real deal. Because when he said the roll out with this, the roll out with this program is no different than a roll out with his program that may be working with the four-year institution, people is all about relationships. So, talk about that a little bit.
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely. So, as I mentioned, these students tend not to be very proactive in their job search, so having them go through the steps on their own to create a profile, say what they’re looking for is just as intimidating, and so when we partner with schools, specifically, we start with career and technical education programs, because those are students that have already identified that, hey, maybe college isn’t the right path.
William Malcolm
They were actually the brave ones.
Joe Bamberger
the bigger problem is, there’s not enough kids going into that, which this doesn’t really address but, we focus on those students that are making that choice, we’re providing them connections to opportunity. When we partner with a school, which is completely free for students in schools to implement.
William Malcolm
Say that one more time.
Joe Bamberger
Completely free.
William Malcolm
There you go Joe! Completely free, free 99. Okay, go ahead.
Joe Bamberger
So, this student gets assigned a homework assignment to build out a profile. So, the schools encourage their students to go on it. There’s a ton of resources out there, in addition to connecting with employers. They can understand their career pathway, view job titles, and job descriptions, watch a little video on where their path might be taking them to see if it’s a good fit. We’re building out a financial literacy piece that’ll be hosted on it.
William Malcolm
Very, very good. That is very important.
Joe Bamberger
A career readiness piece to help them create a resume, prepare for an interview, all these things that everyone needs to know how to do, but for whatever reason, a lot of times aren’t taught. From there they can choose to be as proactive as they want. They can research companies, they can apply directly to positions but on the other hand, if they are intimidated, or don’t have the confidence to do so, employers can reach out to them. If they match with a company, they’ll get a text message and an email saying hey, you’ve matched with ABC Company, are you interested in having a conversation? That just builds confidence in a student you know, as you mentioned, that hey, companies are going after me because my skills.
William Malcolm
Right and they can do it all, and this is what I love about it, like you said, Joe mentioned you can go to emergeskilled.com that is E-M-E-R-G-E-S skilled.com. They can go in and build their plan, they can do everything from their phone.
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely.
William Malcolm
That’s what they’re going to be on anyway.
Joe Bamberger
It’s mobile friendly. And you can use it from a phone, tablet, PC, whatever you have access to.
William Malcolm
Gotcha. And so, for anyone out there who may be listening in this in the metro area, they can go on individually, but like Joe mentioned, they’re partnering with schools, and this whole relationship piece. I really like what you’re doing. Important. If we have any school systems out here, come on, Joe, we got to sell it, man.
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely.
William Malcolm
How can they reach you?
Joe Bamberger
If there’s any schools that are interested in participating, there’s a link on the on the website to schedule a demo. Odds are we probably reached out to your CTE director or guidance counselor’s already, so feel free to reply to those emails that we sent out. But we would love to partner with your schools or partner with your youth organizations to help connect to your students with career opportunities.
William Malcolm
And I know speaking for myself, I have a program that works with dream kings, and we work with Detroit area, young men. How could I encourage my young people to go on and do that as well? How would they?
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely, yes.
William Malcolm
All the nonprofits out there, we need you too. If there’s a nonprofit out there, can they do the same thing, schedule a demo to have you come in?
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely. We’d love to work with nonprofits. Obviously, they have a special interest in helping these students.
William Malcolm I remember I was on Facebook a couple weeks ago and a gentleman that does what I do, I’m not going to say his program because I don’t want to put out there, but he said counselors, he said, stop telling young people they can’t go to college. So, then a person, a skilled gentleman I know, he goes and says, well, it’s not the fact we should stop telling them they can’t go, we should offer other opportunities. He said, I make $140,000 a year, I think he’s in welding, and so you can go into this skilled program, and my company, we can’t find anybody, we can’t find these young people. There’s no college debt when they come out. And so that made me think that’s exactly what you’re doing.
Joe Bamberger
Absolutely. And, you know, there’s colleges, right, for some defense in a lot of cases, some of the students that we might be working with might end up going to college, it might not just be right after they graduate high school, right? Get some experience, found out what you want to study what you want to do, instead of going in as an 18-year-old, without a clue. Yeah,
William Malcolm
Family don’t beat me up too much. I have a college degree, and my oldest daughter graduated from engineering, my youngest daughters in her first year. But I often have this thought about it, the whole thing of telling an 18-year-old person, you have to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life. You’re investing you’re taking this debt and you’re 17-18 years old? Yep. In any other scenario, that wouldn’t make sense.
Joe Bamberger
No, no, and the price is going up and up.
William Malcolm
Right. That’s why you have somebody that’s a geologist but is not practicing, and you have someone that was going into prelaw, that’s not a lawyer, because we didn’t know.
Joe Bamberger
You don’t know. You know what you’ve been exposed to growing up. You know, what, you know, your world hasn’t been exposed beyond that.
William Malcolm
That’s what I like about EmergeSkilled because a young person can go on here, and they can type in what they like to do, and then they’re going to see these videos, they’re going to see scenarios of what they may not have been exposed to, and they can say, Wow, there are there are opportunities for me. So, what’s the success story? I know, you just launched but what’s the success story for you for a student, starting and going on the platform?
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, so in a perfect world, the students join the platform, their junior year of high school. So that’s when they are connecting and making the decision to pursue career and technical education in high school. Then during their senior year, maybe they’re taking a couple of jobs shadows, which is as an employer, you can post a job shadow in the platform. So, it could be a one day unpaid, job shadow through your organization. It could be one hour visit to a manufacturing floor, just to give kids exposure to the different career paths and the different environments that are out there. Then maybe during their senior year, they do a work-based learning opportunity. So maybe there, you know, three o’clock every day they go and work two hours, at your place of business to get experience and see, this is something that I want to pursue after graduation. Then after graduation, they’re lining up that full time position with maybe some part time positions in the summers between those grades. There’s a lot of opportunities for them to connect and explore different career paths in the skills that they’re learning.
William Malcolm
Well, listen, Joe, you got it, you have a fan in me. I’m going to definitely push this and connect some of my connections, give your information out. We’re just under a minute. I want to make sure that if schools or organization have heard you as well as employees get that information on how they how they can reach you.
Joe Bamberger
Yeah, so the easiest way to get in touch with us is a emergeskilled.com Whether you’re an employer or a school, or a nonprofit that wants to partner with us on a platform like this, please schedule a demo at the website and we’d love to hear about your business hear about your students hear about your needs.
William Malcolm
Alright, I’m going to say it again it is emergeskilled.com And I love on here it says connect your students to career learning opportunities, increase student visibility to employers and want to connect, boost student interaction feels, and this is the word we’re going to end on which is what Joe is about, build relationships with new companies. This is Malcolm. God bless.
