“Dow’s apprenticeship program provides a pathway to both a debt-free associate’s degree and a nationally recognized apprenticeship certification.
Let’s say you’re taking 12 credits at Delta College—you’ll get paid 12 hours for that. You’ll also be paid one hour of study time per credit hour, so you’ll receive another 12 hours of pay. That’s a total of 24 hours right off the bat. For the other 16 hours, you’ll work at the plant and can spread that out to four hours each day or eight-hour days on the weekend—whichever works for your study and school schedule—then you’re paid a 40-hour-workweek check. After that, it’s a three-year program. You have a full-time job with us while working on those 4,100 hours to finish out the apprenticeship. At the end, along with your associate’s degree, you’ll receive a nationally accredited department of labor certificate with your name on it, acknowledging your apprenticeship completion.
For some, that certification speaks volumes beyond any degree you can put in front of them. For others, that associate’s degree is huge, especially if they don’t have family members who went to college.
But through Dow’s apprenticeship program, they get both. The postings for Dow apprenticeships go up between January and March. If you see us at any hiring event, we’ll have a QR code. You can scan the QR code and put in your information so when I go to post that job in January through March, I can use your contact information to say, ‘Hey, remember we met back in September? We’re posting roles for millwrights’ or whatever the roles might be.
Then March through May, we screen resumes and identify who we’re going to bring in for the interview process. The goal is to start the new group of apprentices in July, so they’re in the plant for a month and a half to get familiar with the environment before they head off to school in the fall.
What should you do if you go through this phase and didn’t get an interview, but still want to be a part of Dow’s apprenticeship programs? If you go into the skilled trades department at Delta College, they have our curriculum and all our programs right there. You can see what classes are part of the apprenticeship program and proactively take them so when you apply again, you’ve got a head start. Now you’re not in school for three years—you might only be in school for a year and then you’re off full-time to your apprenticeship learning.
By the time you get in front of me for the interview, you’re already a step ahead. I had a candidate follow me to two different career events. He introduced himself and said, ‘I’m taking the classes.’ The posting was down before he could apply, but he went into Delta, got enrolled, and started taking the classes he needed.
That’s that persistence it takes sometimes to stay in front of employers. If you really want it and show that desire, it’s a win-win for both of us.”
Robert Guerra, Early Career Site Development Leader, Dow
