Page 322 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
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  (L-R) ThinkBIG grads Mike Harreld & Brad Giordanella receive their certificates, officially making them journeymen Cat techs, in 2006
While white collar jobs may have paid better in the past, that’s not necessarily true anymore. “Some of these trade jobs pay a lot more than the jobs they went into debt for at a university,” says Duane Sr. Today, there is an entire unemployed—or under- employed—sector of twenty- and thirty-some- things who spent thousands and thousands of dol- lars to get a college degree but don’t have a job to pay off those loans. And they’re not qualified to do blue-collar work either because they don’t have those skills.
Opportunity still exists at the junior college level and at trade schools like UTI and WyoTech. But those are a much longer route to the proficiencies Peterson and its customers expect, according to Peterson Tractor’s GM, John Wells. “It takes a lot longer to become proficient today than it did back in the late 1970s when I was just getting started. Back then, Caterpillar had about thirty different models. And a lot of the repair processes were similar from model to model. Today, Cat has over three hundred models. And, where it used to take four years to gain competence, now it’s double that, at least, because of the complexity and the sheer number of models.” Even so, trade schools are still a good path forward. In more recent years, they have expanded their programs beyond auto- motive to include welding, fabrication, and select diesel manufacturer-specific training. Just not Cat. That’s where ThinkBIG comes in.
As a recruiter for Peterson (2013-2018),Ted Flem- ing spent a lot of time talking with high school stu- dents and their parents while they were still in the decision-making process. “My biggest challenge is trying to convince parents that their son or daugh- ter can have a very satisfying and lucrative career as a technician with us. I have to overcome the stigma that blue-collar jobs are hard, dirty work that pay way less than the white-collar world. I’ve had par- ents say how great our program sounds, with all its benefits and potential, but still want their child to get a four-year bachelor’s degree.”
 Randy Shelton recruiting students from Nestucca High School for ThinkBIG in 2019
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