Key Highlights
Challenges
With the advent of AI, entry-level job seekers without work experience face new barriers to obtaining — and holding — jobs with a living wage and a clear path for economic advancement. These career pathways are increasingly out of reach for workers without college degrees and sometimes even those with a degree.
Apprenticeships meaningfully raise candidates’ earning potential and save the government money, with one study finding that every $1 invested in apprenticeships saves taxpayers $7.80 over 10 years. Yet compared with many other industrialized nations, the American labor market has markedly fewer apprenticeship-style opportunities for early-career workers to earn while they learn.
Opportunities
Traditionally, few industries have established registered apprenticeship programs at scale, beyond their traditional domain in the building and construction trades. Many employers are now turning to a different earn-and-learn model led by organizations that implement a new, high-intervention model called Hire-Train-Deploy (HTD).
HTD programs resemble apprenticeships, as they offer entry-level jobs with on-the-job skill development, along with providing good wages and a promising career path. But unlike registered apprenticeships, HTD trainees are initially employed by a third-party intermediary organization that serves as their employer of record. Because the HTD intermediaries employ the workers, they are incentivized to offer additional training to teach skills that are not easily replaceable by AI.
In the HTD model, intermediaries recruit and hire inexperienced workers, train them in technical and professional skills while paying them wages, and deploy them to client projects to allow companies to “try before they buy” — so client companies can see the work of potential employees before committing to a permanent placement. Fees from clients cover both the intermediary’s services and the costs of compensating the participants. Unlike a traditional temporary staffing agency, the HTD intermediary plans for its clients to routinely hire the staff that the intermediary deploys to their worksites.
Key Takeaways
- Hire-Train-Deploy intermediaries have created a new form of apprenticeship, appealing to American companies that view formal registered apprenticeships as outside their core business. It makes good business sense for companies to partner with HTD intermediaries who are willing to do the heavy lifting until apprentices prove their ability to do the job.
- Participants in HTD programs earn higher than average salaries and gain opportunities for career advancement.
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About the Authors
Ryan Craig
Ryan Craig is a Managing Director at Achieve Partners and was formerly an MD at University Ventures. Ryan’s commentary on where the puck is going in education and workforce regularly appears in the biweekly Gap Letter, Forbes, and Inside Higher Education. He is the author of the book Apprentice Nation: How the “Earn and Learn” Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America (2023). He is also author of A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College (2018), which describes the critical importance of last-mile training and the emergence of bootcamps, income share programs, staffing and apprenticeship models as preferred pathways to good first digital jobs and was named in the Wall Street Journal as one the Books of the Year for 2018. Ryan’s first book was College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education (2015), which profiles the coming shift toward competency-based education and hiring. Ryan is a co-founder of Apprenticeships for America, a national nonprofit dedicated to scaling apprenticeships across the U.S. economy and is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. Previously, Ryan led the Education & Training sector at Warburg Pincus. His prior experience in higher education was at Columbia University. Ryan also founded and built Wellspring, a national network of boarding schools and summer camps for overweight and obese children, adolescents, and young adults. He began his career at McKinsey & Co. Ryan received his BA summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University, and his law degree from the Yale Law School.
Jeremy Bernard-Sasges
Jeremy Bernard-Sasges is an Analyst at Achieve Partners where he invests in and supports portfolio company strategy across specialized services and education technology verticals. Prior to joining Achieve, Bernard-Sasges worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in their digital practice. His work spanned technology modernization, digital growth strategies, and risk management across consumer/retail, business services, real estate, and banking clients. He graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and cum laude from Georgetown University with a BSBA in Finance.