By Courtney Brockman

As skilled workers are increasingly needed for the Montana workforce, business and educational leaders from around the state are helping train the next generation of employees. Five leaders spoke at the Montana High Tech Business Alliance executive roundtable in Bozeman Nov. 9, 2021 on how they are preparing and engaging young Montanans for the workforce. Here are five key takeaways from the discussion.

1. Incorporate interns into the workplace

Jacob Sharp, senior manager of support delivery for Foundant Technologies in Bozeman, said hiring interns has become an essential part of the company’s infrastructure and a great way for college students to get their foot into the door of the workforce.

Foundant first hired interns during its large software changes a few years ago as an experiment in teaching them the new system and how to provide client phone support.

“It was wildly successful,” Sharp said. “Our clients loved talking to these students. They were at a good level of tech savviness and understanding. We just kept seeing what they can do to launch new products, and we continued to grow. We realized that we could basically marry an internship program to a very critical part of our business in support.”

Foundant’s internship program has grown to a team of more than 40 interns in IT support and other departments. Typical interns are hired as college sophomores and stay with Foundant until they graduate, which allows the company to scale while students gain professional skills and experience before entering the workforce.

Sharp, who went through Foundant’s internship program himself, said ensuring interns feel connected to the company is key to the program’s success. Weekly presentations helped bring Sharp and his peers up to speed.

“I learned so much just in my six months of internship,” Sharp said. “And I think that really connected me to say, ‘Okay, this is a very transparent organization. I know what's going on, I feel ownership of that.’”

Offering flexibility in scheduling and autonomy is also important for developing an internship program, Sharp said.

“I found that if you give them the space to make mistakes and fail and then be there to help them out and guide them, that’s been really successful,” Sharp said. “You can drive some surprise performance out of younger people. They end up kind of rising to the occasion.”

More than 100 interns have now gone through Foundant’s program.

2. Create mutually beneficial, project-based work opportunities

Interns are also crucial employees for Zoot Enterprises in Bozeman and Billings. Zoot has built a project-based program to hire interns based on needed deliverables, such as a redesigned website.

“We actually carve out five different projects or a couple of different projects,” said Jordan Komoto, Zoot vice president of human resources.  “And then we can actually go and recruit specific skill sets for those internship opportunities and actually market that to a student who's interviewing saying, ‘Hey, you're gonna come in and do this.’”

Komoto said students typically are hired from Montana State University (MSU) and Montana Tech, and although most internships are eight to 12 weeks, they can extend throughout the year as well.

Komoto estimates that some of Zoot’s project-based internships have saved the company significant amounts of dollars through contract analysis of major services, such as telecom and data providers. The internships may also help retain young workers by showing them job opportunities in Montana.  

“We’re making sure they know there are opportunities here in the state to have a very productive career, particularly in high-tech, where you don’t have to go to the coast or Boston or places like that,” Komoto said.

3. Offer structured coursework for building work skills

Aside from internships with some of the state’s large employers, Montana college students also can build career skills with degree programs such as the new Master of Science in Innovation and Management offered by the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship at MSU in Bozeman.

Open to all degree backgrounds and especially focused on recent graduates of STEM fields such as Engineering, the 30-credit program can be completed in one year and is intended to build leaders in the workforce. Students in the program learn marketing, business law, data science, product innovation and more.

The first class of 26 students enrolled in Fall 2021l and has been able to attend classes in person – an option that has been helpful in learning the material, said Brett Gunnink, dean of MSU’s Norm Asbjomson College of Engineering.

“They want flexibility, but they need some nice structure,” Gunnink said. “And so many students in fact, are really glad to get back.”

4. Bring awareness of work opportunities into schools across the state

Billings-based construction technology dealer RDO Equipment Co. has recently expanded outreach on career opportunities in its industry across the state.

RDO Vice President Adam Gilbertson said schools are great at marketing two and four-year degree programs, but other paths for students who don’t choose a degree track have a more challenging route. 

“We've got to figure out a better way to connect them,” Gilbertson said. “The dollars are there. The industries have really good careers, but generally the population thinks that’s plan B or not a ‘successful’ career path. It’s important for Montana’s long-term growth that our education system and industry do show our young people the great careers that can keep them right here at home.” 

RDO sponsors youth in the diesel mechanic program at MSU-Northern in Havre, one of the strongest programs of its type in the country, and offers a $16,000 tuition reimbursement program that can be paid back over three years. In 2021, the company was also a founding member of the Build Montana pilot program, a collaboration between the Montana Contractors Association and Montana Equipment Dealers Association for young people in the construction industry.

In the program, six young people, including a number of Native American students, joined in January to use John Deer university curriculum for classroom instruction and hands-on learning on equipment and construction projects around Billings. The first cohort graduated in May, and the next class will begin in February 2022. 

“They learned engines, power trains, undercarriage electronics, segments on machine control and guidance technology for equipment,” Gilbertson said. “And then a week with drone technology. Two graduated to offers and jobs and spent the summer running 40-ton haul trucks at 18 years old. It's pretty impressive.”

Last spring, the Montana Chamber of Commerce and RDO sponsored a business pitch competition through the Youth Entrepreneurs (YE) program where kids from around the state created ideas for using drones in agriculture. Three students from Rapelje, a small unincorporated community with 68 kids, won the drone category, and RDO brought a drone flight and data analysis exhibition to the area. 

“The exhibition was supposed to just be for the three kids and promptly became the entire town,” Gilbertson said. “We ended up with about 300 people in the auditorium and had the opportunity to talk about how this technology is used in business, where it's going, what those jobs might look like in the future.”

The Montana Chamber has expanded its YE program to incorporate K-12 schools from around the state, picking up more than 67 schools. 

“It’s a great example of the waves that Montana's tech industry is reaching all across the state, not just in urban centers,” Gilbertson said. “We may be in Bozeman today, but on other days, we're in towns like Rapelje. Every student has an opportunity to have a great career in Montana, even living in remote corners of the state. As we've seen remote work expand and grow throughout the last couple of years, we have a vision for that being even more possible for what we can do to reach everywhere.”

5. Train mentors and good leaders in the workplace

Kelly Creswell, executive director of the nonprofit Reach Higher Montana and Montana Youth Apprenticeship Partnership, helps offer apprenticeship opportunities to Montana youth ages 16 to 19 – from nursing to HVAC to early childhood education. The nonprofit checks in with students to ensure they have the skills to be successful with their employer.

Creswell said it is important to balance what students earn and what the business invests in apprenticeship programs and also to help apprentices realize value in their work.

“Part of their education is being paid for by the employer who helps them so they're able to learn on the job,” Creswell said. “They have mentors on their job for showing them that this is a career and there is a future here. And I think that just helps reinforce for them that they're doing work that matters.”

To help new mentors feel supported, Reach Higher Montana provides mentorship training.  

“How do you be a mentor?” Creswell said. “How do you engage with this young person that you maybe don't know that sometimes seems quiet? How can you get them to open up and ask you questions? How do you build trust? So that's been really helpful.”

Creswell said having mentors actually applying their training in the workplace is usually a win-win situation for both the leader and the learner.  

“It’s been a great experience. I’ve been really surprised by the level of maturity, by the commitment to purpose we see from students,” Creswell said. “They’re incredibly capable.”  

About the Publisher: Launched in 2014, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance is an nonpartisan nonprofit association of highly-engaged high tech and manufacturing companies and affiliates creating high-paying jobs in Montana. For more information, visit MTHighTech.org or subscribe to our biweekly newsletter.

About the Author: Courtney Brockman is the Communications Director for the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. She graduated from the University of Montana in 2017 with a degree in journalism.