Angel Gavidia worked as a construction worker, an auto detailer and a taxi dispatcher before he found his calling as a computer-networking engineer, a high-paying job for which employers are desperately short of workers even at a time of stubborn unemployment.
He found his way in spite of community-college advisors who at first steered him into other fields of so little interest to him that he quit school. Then Gavidia was accepted to a program in which an IT-services company called Atrion collaborates with the Community College of Rhode Island to help students get both a classroom education and on-the-job training.
The model, under which Gavidia worked as an apprentice at the company while taking on-campus courses, gave him a huge head start to a job by teaching him the real-world skills employers want but say they often can’t find in college graduates.
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Reprinted with permission from The Hechinger Report.
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