How Small Businesses Hire Job-Ready Trade Talent

Engaging vocational school students is an effective way for small businesses to recruit skilled trade talent. They offer the benefit of hands-on experience, enthusiasm, and low hiring risk. There are steps you can take to develop a reliable talent pipeline with trade schools, and validate their competencies before hiring full-time.

1. Assess your Needs

First, be clear about which trades you need to fill — HVAC, electrical, CDL drivers, IT support, or medical assistants. Then, look into local vocational schools for programs in their area. For example, at Berks Technical Institute, Allentown campus, they have programs in HVAC & Basic Refrigeration, Electrical, CDL Class A, IT Support Specialist, Medical Clinical Assistant, and Medical Billing & Coding. Aligning your hiring needs to the school’s program mix will help you identify the right pipeline.

2. Contact and Develop a Partnership

Connect with the school’s career services department or program leads, and start developing a relationship. Treat it like a partnership, where you can provide business-related opportunities in exchange for access to their best students.

According to recruiting recommendations for vocational schools, creating intentional direct partnerships is among the top ways to access a talented pipeline of job eligible talent. Point out that you’re interested in a long-term talent relationship, not a one-off hire.

3. Develop an Externship or Internship Program

Collaborate with faculty and career services to create a structured externship or internship program. For example, you may do a sample HVAC externship where students engage with you for multiple weeks, learning alongside your technicians while being supervised. The students will receive valuable exposure to what the job actually looks like in practice, and it’s a chance for you to evaluate their work ethic, technical skills, and fit. Be clear about the learning objectives and how they are connected to what they learned in school.

4. Establish skills- Rubrics

Rubrics developed for evaluating students in experiential learning  should  align with both the school curriculum and your business needs. Here are some examples:

•   For electrical jobs-Do they safely wire and connect circuits, identify and diagnose faults, and read schematics?
•  For IT-support- Can they troubleshoot a network outage, replace hardware, and help with users who have software issues?
•    For medical assistants- Clinic professionalism, basic phlebotomy, patient communication, and documentation.

The rubrics create structure for your evaluations. You can partner with the instructors to design the rubric to closely reflect what your instructors are using in their classes.

 Work with Instructors and Program Directors

Establish regular meetings with faculty and program directors to ensure you are aligned on your specific needs, ask about student performance, and make related adjustments as appropriate.

These instructors know their students’ capabilities and will even identify students of particular interest. Their input may influence your decision with regard to which students are invited for trial work or externship placements.

1. Conduct Trial Shifts Prior to Full Offers

If you can, invite your strongest students in for a trial shift (paid or unpaid depending on your local labor laws) after an externship or internship. For example, you could host a weekend or evening ‘shadow day’ where the students would complete any appropriate skills in an authentic work environment.

This process allows you to see their practical tasks, attendance, and problem-solving skills first-hand. You can examine their attitudes and determine if they fit your work culture.

2. Use Extern Feedback Mechanisms

After externships, debrief with both the student and their instructor. Ask for feedback based on your rubric. Find out what they think was missing, areas where the training was not aligned, or what tasks they felt unprepared to complete.  This feedback loop will support the school to improve their program, while also enhancing your credibility as a partner in student development.

3. Provide Hiring Pathways / Conditional Job Offer

Based on your observations during the externship or trial shift, consider making conditional offers or express your interest early. A powerful incentive would be a letter of intent or a written commitment once they graduate, on condition that they meet performance benchmarks.  

The student will not only feel they potentially have a job once they graduate, but you also enhance retention by locking in eager trained talent.

4. Offer Mentorship & Onboarding Guidance

When students move into regular jobs, they shouldn’t just be let loose. Instead, assign them a mentor, preferably someone from your existing staff who has gone through a trade program.

 They should be provided a solid onboarding where they revisit their skills from school. This helps bridge the remaining gap between training and workplace requirements.

5. Assess and Scale the Program Over Time

Once you’ve run a few externship-trial-hire cycles, you can review your outcomes: retention rates, performance measures, mentor and student feedback, and improve your hiring rubric. You can adjust the departments or functions you place the students based on this data, and improve the partnership. You may even grow this partnership out to other trade schools or campuses once you’ve built a steady model.

Why This Works

•  Reduced risk- the extern can trial shift with you and you really haven’t hired them ‘blind’ at that point
•    Alignment-The evaluation you do for your business needs is aligned, and you also shape the training
•   Retention-You have somebody already trained who is likely to stay, and knows your processes, culture, and expectations
•  Employer branding- You will be known as a business that cares about developing local talent, and this will support motivated trainees to come your way.

Starting Point: A Natural Place to Start: Local Campus Review

To kick it off, start with an awareness of local vocational campuses and what they offer. You can consider the following when exploring your options:

• Hands-on learning labs in the campus
•   The experience of the instructor
•  Their program tracks
•    The approach they have with career services.

This information will guide your decisions regarding how best to structure externships, trial shifts, and recruitment partnerships with your program, so they coordinate both with your business and with the students’ learning and curriculum.

Endnote

If you follow these approaches, your small business can systematically develop a pipeline of trade-trained motivated talent and contribute to the development of the next generation of skilled workers. Partnership with local vocational schools can be mutually beneficial if done right.