- [Narrator] Funding for "Careers That Work" is provided by the Degenstein Foundation.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] From Sun Area Technical Institute in New Berlin, Pennsylvania, WVIA and the 1994 Charles B. Degenstein Foundation present Careers that Work, a WVIA Community conversation.

- Thank you so much for joining us for Careers That Work.

This is a very important conversation we're about to have here and WVIA is proud to be at the forefront of bringing this conversation to the public in beautiful central Pennsylvania this evening.

I'm Julie Sidoni, I am the News Director at WVIA and I will be moderating the panel tonight.

We're so thrilled you could be here, and I don't wanna waste any time.

I would love to introduce the panelists that we've selected to have this important conversation.

Here's the thing though, I never like just reading people's biographies and telling you who they are, I think that's a little boring.

I would rather have them introduce themselves.

So to no further ado, we're going to start our Careers That Work panel discussion with these three people who have given so much of their time and their energy and their effort.

We've had a lot of conversations about this, and we can't wait to share the information with you.

I'm joined by Erica Mulberger, Nicholas Gilson and Jennifer Hain.

And I would like each of them now to tell us a little bit about who they are and why they thought being on this panel was such an important thing to do.

So Erica, thank you so much for being here.

Go ahead and tell everybody who you are and what you do.

So I'm Erica Mulberger, Executive Director of Advanced Central PA. We are the local workforce development board for nine counties in Central Pennsylvania.

And what that means is that we're helping individuals identify what careers they wanna move into, or if they're changing careers, help them through training, identify what they need, and get them back into the workforce.

So we work with anybody from 14 year olds till they're gray.

So that's really our goal is to help students, help adults get into the workforce, and stay in the workforce, and to help businesses find a talent.

- We'll talk a little bit about the details of what you mean there, and I can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Nicholas Gilson joins us.

Thank you so much for being here.

Nick, tell us a little bit about yourself.

- Yeah, so my name is Nick, and I'm the CEO in one of the co-founders of Gilson Snow.

We're a premium manufacturer of snowboards and skis based right here in the Suco Hana River Valley.

We go from locally growing trees to ongoing community relationships globally from one roof here, on a farm here in rural PA. And so we certainly feel very grateful to be able to do the work that we do, and get to build for the people that we get to build for.

And so thank you for having me on the show, excited to talk about Careers That Work.

Do you prefer Jennifer?

- Jen's fine.

- Jen is fine.

- Thank you.

- Oh, tell us a little bit about yourself, Jen.

- So I'll start with, I did have to ask Nick to buy some on skis here while we're here, so if no one else has a question, feel free to.

- You're talking to him about seeing about 15 minutes now-- (all laughing) - To chime in.

But my name's Jennifer Hain.

I've served as the Director here at Suntech for the last eight years.

I have since moved into retirement but have been involved in career and technical education for the past 31 years as a teacher and then into administration.

My passion's really been, in 2017 we started looking for a careers pathways for students and families and bring that awareness to the community, working closely with local business and Erica.

So in my retirement I still hope to continue that path.

- Oh, welcome.

We're so glad to have you.

I'd like to start somewhat chronologically, and frankly a little selfishly considering that I have an almost 14 year old myself, and these are all the same conversations we are having at home.

When is the time to start thinking about a career or planning a career?

And I'll ask this to any one of you.

Is there a time that's too early?

Is there a time that's too late?

What do you tell people when it comes to when you start thinking about this?

- I think it's a journey as an educator.

Parents need to think early and not think my child has a whole, until they're 18, to figure out that career, but start that exposure earlier through camps, maybe clubs that they may participate in, sports.

But start that exposure early and start to learn so that the child can learn what their preferences are, what they like, help determine as they get older, what's a hobby versus what really is a career.

- Can a hobby turn into a career?

- Most definitely.

I started out as a hair stylist, and really loved educating people, the clients in my chair and making them feel better about themselves, and it has become my career over the years, so most definitely.

- You were gonna say something as well, Erica there, when we're talking about hobby versus career?

- Yeah, well I was gonna say, look at Nick.

(all laughing) - I was gonna get to him next year.

(all laughing) - Yeah, so snowboarding into a snowboarding company.

So it probably started as a hobby and now it's your business.

- Yeah, when I built the first prototype I was in eighth grade and 14 years old.

So here we are.

- But let's tell everyone that you started out as a teacher, correct?

You were a middle school teacher.

- Yeah, so when I, so then after I graduated from college, I moved down to Nashville, Tennessee to teach middle school science.

And when we were about three quarters of the way through the first school year, I brought in that prototype that I had built when I was my students' age and said, look like this is what I was working on when I was your age.

This is what I was waking up before school to, glue another panels, and getting back from, after school and sports to be able to work on this project, 'cause I was just so passionate about it.

And you know, so in an act of solidarity is you work on your curiosity projects, I'm gonna return to mine from when I was your age.

And then we more or less launched the company out of the classroom together by accident.

- Curiosity projects.

- [Nicolas] Yeah (laughs).

- I kind of like how you put that.

Is there something that parents can do to help their own children come up with curiosity projects, I mean, you were talking about something in school, but is there something parents can do to help bring that out at home?

- Yeah, I think, if you see your kid wants to help in the garage, maybe they're interested as you're, changing your oil or something like that.

Or they're asking a lot of questions about an activity, whether it's baking, or something in the kitchen.

Just like foster their curiosity and help ask them to come in and help and see what their interests are at any age.

So you're going back to your question about at what age can you start thinking about your careers?

I think it's about as early as possible, thinking about what do you like, what interests you, and see how that can transition into a career.

I don't know, there's a set age, but I also think too is what you decide to do first.

Your first interest doesn't have to be what you do for the rest of your life.

So don't feel like, oh, I'm down this path, I can never pivot.

You can always pivot to something else.

- Could not agree with that more.

Yeah, and I think that we're seeing the landscape change of our time here, right?

Like our grandparents, our great, great grandparents oftentimes would have one job, and they wouldn't talk about whether or not they liked it, or you know, they just go put one foot in front of the other and get it done until they got to retire.

And that's how they thought about work, and it was called work and a job, not because it was supposed to be fund and fulfilling, but because it paid the bills and was financially necessary.

And you know, I think what we're seeing now, especially younger generations' demand is fulfillment from work, and working on things that you really care about.

And I think that we're also seeing young professionals be not just open to, but interested in having multiple careers throughout their life, and being able to say, look, for the next five to 10 years, I'm gonna go deep, do a deep dive here, and then perhaps I'm gonna find something in this work that takes me over here.

And you know, I think that some of the biggest innovations that we've been able to drive as a species have come from interdisciplinary sort of cross-professional understanding.

So I think that it's actually a really healthy move, and the idea of saying, look, I'm gonna try this, I'm going to dive in, I'm gonna become a subject matter expert, but I understand that my path is meandering and that may take me to other places that look really different.

And we've already heard an example of this already.

- Let's stick with you for a second because I want to, something that I had heard you say in the past was that you kind of flew by the seat of your pants, that business school is wonderful, people wanna go to business school, that's a great path to follow, but you have a business and did not go to business school, correct?

- Right, right.

- So what could you tell people for keeping an open mind, or if they're maybe interested in business but aren't quite sure which business they wanna go into yet?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

And you know, I think this comes back to curiosity projects, right, and this idea that, look, just having an open mind and being curious and exploring things and being kinetic is an incredibly valuable sort of mindset and reference frame in that sort of seeking position, right?

When you're looking for something that's really going to get you excited and passionate.

And I think that, like starting a business is, there's just, there's no if ands or buts about it.

Whether you've been to business school or not, it's grueling, it can be really hard.

And we talk about how it sort of stretches out the amplitude where the highs are really high, and they are, right, and that the lows are also really low.

So it's this, roller coaster, right?

And what that means is that I think one of the most important determining factors of success, especially long term success, really boils down to nothing more than perseverance.

And so being able to stick to it and see something through, to jump off a cliff and try and build a plane on the way down, right, and not give up halfway through, and that's not my quote, but it's one that I love, I think is hugely important.

So, I think about this oftentimes as like, this is the science nerd in me coming out, but like molecules in a solution, right?

And we know that that molecules that are heated up, they have more kinetic energy, and they bump into more things.

And so more chemical reactions are capable of happening, more interactions are happening.

So even if you don't know where you're headed, if you have things that you care about and believe in, being willing to share those ideas, articulate them in a passionate way, be kinetic to bump into more people and more opportunities, you are simply going to find paths that weren't there before.

And so I think that that high level of energy and sort of outwardness, not, it's not about being extroverted, because there are plenty of introverts who are very good at this too.

It's about being out there and driving your thinking and sharing ideas forward.

- Now we're sitting here at Sun Area Technical Institute, in beautiful Central Pennsylvania.

I just love the drive here.

But for people who aren't really sure what a technical institute does, versus a traditional school, I would love for you to explain a little bit about what people can find at a technical institute that perhaps they might not find at a traditional school.

- I think in time it has changed what's career and technical education has become.

So it's not just for those that are good with their hands, it's our technology has changed so fast for students that have strong academics is important, so I do wanna mention that as well.

But it is the skilled trades, and it covers a whole host of gamuts.

Each of the CTCs across the state vary in the course offerings.

Here at Sun Tech, they offer 19 various programs from construction, to manufacturing, to healthcare, dentist hygiene, part as well as computer technology and services as such.

So, but each of the schools vary in our region, but it's, we need to approach it with a mindset that it's technical skills for all in this day and age at this point in time.

- Why do you think, we spoke earlier before we met as a panel about the stigma sometimes that's attached to technical institutes.

I wonder where that came from, and how we can kind of break through that once and for all.

- If you study the history of career and technology, it was used for prisoners many years ago.

So that's kind of started, I would say that stigma back in those early years, and that it was for students that maybe weren't able to achieve then as it progressed.

So it's definitely changed.

So I think about the electric cars that we have nowadays, and those that can drive itself.

You definitely need a student that knows what they're doing to work on them as we don't want it to cause injury to those around us, but it takes a lot of technology and academic background as well.

So stressing that to students overall that school's not a place to go and slack off, that it's an important and it's journey.

It's about building stackable experiences and credentials to take on to the next level, because you're right, they're not going to be staying like me for 30 years in the same career, at the same place.

- Yeah.

- So they need to have those experiences that can be transferable, but also meet the needs of all those jobs that even haven't been identified yet.

- Yeah, I'd love to build on this, if I can jump in here.

You know, I think one of the things that we're seeing too, as the pace of change continues to accelerate is that the workforce that we're going to need in the future is really different than the workforce that we've needed in the past, especially for, how we make things and how we bring things to life.

And so, I think that the schools like Sun Tech and other technical schools like this are so good at driving the human computer interaction piece of this, right?

Because robots aren't building themselves, right?

They're really smart people who are working on this stuff and figuring it out, or like electronic and self-driving cars, electric cars.

And so, I think that one of the really interesting things that's sort of a part of the stigma that's just a moot point now is this idea that, you're learning a skill that's, gonna send you into a factory to pop the head on a doll 10,000 times before lunch.

And that's just not what this looks like anymore.

Not in our facility, not really in any facility.

We need really, really smart people, we've got a robot that can pop that doll head on now, right?

So we need really smart people who are figuring out better, more efficient, more intelligent ways to interact with advanced computing and automation as well.

So, I think that we're starting to lose the stigma around technical schools, but really, I mean the folks coming out of these institutions are driving the world that we're looking at around us.

- [Julie] It's true, it's true.

- Yeah, and I'll just add to that, if we talk to our local businesses in Central Pennsylvania, they're saying they're gonna hire every student coming out of Sun Tech because they have the skills that they need by the time they graduate.

It didn't cost them any extra, they didn't have to go to, continuing education.

But if they do, the employers will pay for them to go get whatever additional training they need.

So that's something that's really interesting, and I think helps with the stigma is like, our companies are hiring students right out of graduation, right out of our career and tech centers.

- They can get some continuing education through apprenticeships and other types of on the job training, is that what you mean?

- Yes.

Yep, or even if they have to go back to college, if they want to get a degree, an associate's degree or some sort of certification, a lot of the companies will pay for that.

So instead of going right to college, right out of, high school, companies will help pay for that.

- A part of this Careers That Work Workforce Development initiative is a series of videos that were done at WVIA.

We have them at our website at wvia.org.

And we would also like to share them with you tonight.

We're gonna share two of those videos tonight so that you can see a little bit of what we're trying to get out there into the community about the various jobs that exist.

And the first one we're going to see is a drafter from Williamsport named Haley Kalvin Gold.

Let's take a look.

(upbeat music) - Hi, my name is Haley.

I am an architectural technician, and I'm based out of Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

We do a range of things, from project visits and field measuring, to drafting, modeling in 3D, in 2D, creating hand sketches.

Drafting is dimensioning plans, it's drawing plans in 2D.

We do building elevations, so seeing the whole building flat from the front.

We do floor plans, we also draw in like door schedules, where the doors go, what the sizes are.

AutoCAD is, well, it is now a 2D and 3D software because you can use AutoCAD in 3D.

But basically you can draw plans with different line types, different line weights.

We do dashed lines, solid lines, and in different colors so that when they print out in black and white, the lines look different and make more sense to a contractor for what they need to do.

(upbeat music) - My name is Tony Visco.

I'm an architect that's a based in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

An architect is a creator.

We take the client's ideas and put into real buildings, real structures.

And we wanna make those buildings comfortable, exciting, creative if possible.

And that's really the fun part of the architecture element.

The initial client contact is someone who calls me and may be a little confused or not sure what to ask.

So we try to get a program of what needs to be designed in and outside the building.

And as we develop the design, we're looking for an approval from the owner, and once he approves that, then we begin to do the actual contract documents or the working drawings, the drawings that the contractor is gonna be able to build the building from.

The general contractor then will take those drawings to be able to build the project.

So throughout the entire process, there's a relationship of the contractor, the owner, and the architect.

And the goal is to have this project complete, successful.

Everybody is happy and everybody walks away and the owner moves into their new space and hopefully everything works without a hitch.

(upbeat music) - Well, architecture is very important.

Humans spend 87% of their lives in buildings.

So as an architect, we wanna make these buildings enjoyable for other people and ourselves, and just make the world a happier, brighter, more beautiful place.

- This career in architecture is something that I always wanted to do as a young boy.

So really my dreams were fulfilled.

And for the most part, it's very enjoyable and very satisfying knowing what we're creating.

We are creating structures that may stand the test of time for years long after I have departed this earth.

(upbeat music) - And Haley is here.

Thank you so much for being with us.

First of all, what got you into that field?

- So I was really inspired by my grandfather, who is a former draftsman.

He designed and built his own house, which remains one of my favorite buildings ever.

And I just, I love entering a space and just being able to appreciate the environment that I'm in.

Like I said, we spend 87% of our time in buildings, so architecture has given me the opportunity to create that space for others.

- What kind of schooling or steps did you take to get to where you are?

- Yeah, so I'm actually still a student.

I'll be graduating in May, but I go to school at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in their architecture program.

- What advice would you give to the students and the parents and the people behind you who really aren't sure what to do or where to go?

Or maybe they have an idea, but they're not sure where to get started?

- Yeah, so if you already sort of have an idea of the career path you'd like to pursue, definitely do your research, find out what certifications you need, what kind of degrees are required.

And if you're not really sure, then try out as many things as you possibly can.

I personally went through five different majors before I circled back to architecture.

So I was discouraged about that for a while until I realized I'm doing what I love, and that's all that matters.

- Not everybody knows right off the bat.

- [Haley] Right.

- I would imagine most people don't know right off the bat.

Well, anything else that you would like to add here, Haley, thank you so much.

We really appreciate your time.

So Haley touched on a couple things that I wanted to circle back to.

The first one was, Nick, I believe you had said something about being willing to fail over and over, and do it enthusiastically.

Can you speak a little bit, and I'm not saying that Haley in any way failed, but thought that perhaps, oh, I don't know, should I do this?

Am I going on the wrong path here?

Speak to that mindset a little bit.

- Yeah, so my experience, and I think this is probably true for most people, is that your success can come from really only one of two places.

And it's either a total accident, right, one and done, which is rare, but we have had a few of those, or it's a response to a long, and a very long list of failures.

And that is the only way that I've found to consistently put lightning in a bottle is to be willing to fail quickly, ideally fail cheaply, and ideally fail at things other than cash flow, right?

(all laughing) You wanna be able to make payroll.

But so, in Haley talking about her experience here, right, she said she was not saying, look, I'm steadfast and I'm doing this, I'm committed to it, Right?

She's willing to go out there, try a bunch of different things.

Not necessarily fail at them, and the way that we've assigned meaning to the word "fail" or "failure", right?

But I really what I mean by this is experiment and do it quickly.

And you know, I think that as little kids in society and in school, we are so regularly taught to attempt to be perfect, right?

The best score is 100%, right?

And if you're off from that, you need to work up to that.

And if you're far from it, you're getting an F because you're a failure.

But in reality, every part of the iterative process is quickly cycling through failure to get to an answer that works.

And you know, when something just clicks and it works, all you can say is don't touch that dial, right?

And that's a very natural response, right?

And, but you don't know why it's working.

When something goes wrong, and it goes wrong multiple times in multiple different ways, you can start to triangulate an understanding about a new concept, which will ultimately lead you to innovation.

So, I think that that our educational system and sort of the way that we're built as a society has taught us to regularly avoid failure, to fear it, to tremble, right, to be scared.

Whereas in reality, the folks that can charge fastest forward are the ones who are willing to not try and avoid failure, but to use it.

- You've probably failed many times and you just never heard about.

- Me?

Oh no, yeah, we've failed multiple times today.

It's part of our business, and part of our culture, right?

And so we're testing out a new process right now, a quick example of it, and instead of saying, look, this is the best way forward, we're gonna do it this way.

Austin pulled apart a toaster oven from his house to grab the heating elements to put it into a system that he knew was going to fail, right?

He knew that we weren't gonna be able to build this new machine with a toaster oven, but he wanted to fail cheaply, and he wanted to fail quickly.

And the toaster was right there and didn't cost a lot, right?

And he got to learn, and he never thought that he'd get a successful result from this, but he absolutely did learn the parameters and the constraints of the new machine he's trying to design so that when he gets the right parts in, he'll be ready to go.

- The other thing I heard Haley say was that she did a lot of research and looking into things, and someone had said, and possibly it was you, Erica, I'm not sure, that you think in some instances, students go the wrong way, they choose the college, they choose the university.

They think that I know where I want to go, and then I'm gonna figure out where to go from there, but it should be the opposite, right?

Is that you?

- Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of people might say, we're in Central PA, they're gonna say, I wanna go to Penn State, like that's my place.

And it's like, well, does Penn State even offer your degree, or are you gonna go to Penn State and then figure out what your degree is?

So it's kind of backwards or, my friends are going to this school, that school, whatever it is.

And it's like, no, don't follow them, follow where your passion is, follow where your interests are.

Pick your degree if you can, or go in as a general major, general ed major, that's fine.

But think about like, who's gonna serve you and your career the best.

And one way that we support doing that is through the job shadows.

Like we recommend doing as many job shadows as possible before you graduate high school so that you can go into businesses, see what they really do, and ask all the questions you wanna ask.

Like, what is life like?

Do you sit at an office all day?

Are you out and about in the community?

Do you have to talk to a lot of people?

I'm an introvert, I don't like to talk to people.

You know, so ask those questions about like what you would wanna do for the rest of your life, and what is your lifestyle too when you're going out to visit companies?

So if it's a company, talking about switching majors, I was wanted to be a physical therapist, but I went to school for that, I went for athletic training first to go be physical therapist.

And then they told me I needed to work evenings, and like as an athletic trainer with the school system, and I was like, I don't wanna go to sporting events every night.

Like that's not what I wanna do.

I had never asked the question.

So then I switched to accounting, again, not asking the question, and there's tax season where you're working 70 hours a week.

(laughs) So it's like, I never asked for an accountant, What is your life like?

So thankfully my mom wouldn't let me then switch to interior design, which was gonna be my third choice.

And she's like, no, you can get a job with an accounting degree.

So I stuck with it, it's worked out well for me, but I never took the time to do my research before going to college.

I just picked a salary I wanted, and said that career can make me that salary, that's why I'm going for it.

- So can your organization help students and their families right now who may want to test the waters a little bit?

- Yes, so we actually, a few years ago developed a website called pathtocareers.org where we have our local businesses are registering, putting information about themselves on the website, students, even the general population, the general community can go on and research.

Like these are companies in our area, this is what they do.

They can sign up to do job shadowing, internships.

If school districts wanna have them come in and do a guest speaking event, they can come in and do that.

It's all free.

So all of our local school districts within our nine counties I think are currently registered.

And our businesses, we're adding more businesses to the website every week, so.

- It's probably worth it to explain why it's free.

This is a benefit that's there for everybody right off the bat.

You don't even have to think about it.

Who's funding that?

- So we received funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry to start it, and the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, which is a federal funded program.

And we just really saw the value in it, working with Jen's team and the Central PA career pathways.

It was like just one of those things of, the other reason we started it is businesses sometimes get a lot of cold calls of, can my son or daughter come here on this day?

And they were just getting inundated and they couldn't keep it up, so this is kind of a one stop shop to help the businesses and the school districts make those matches.

- And what is that called one more time?

- Pathtocareers.org.

- Pathtocareers.org, something to check out, all right.

I wanna talk about the so-called the hot careers, the big careers.

And who knows what that definition really is, but is part of what you do tracking the careers that are big right now?

Are you able to say what's big now?

What's gonna be big in five years or 10 years?

How does that process work?

- So for us as a workforce board, we have what's called a high priority occupations list that to get on that list, there has to be an projected annual openings of at least 35 within our region annually, and then be making over $35,000 per year right now to get on that list.

So I will say not everything makes the list that are high priority.

So for instance, I'm gonna throw it out there, it's big topic is childcare.

So we know we need more childcare workers, but it's not a high paying position right now.

So we're trying to work to like increase that salary, and the wages for those workers because we know there's the demand for them.

But the hot topic occupations that comes from a lot of labor statistics at the federal level that come down.

And then there's many jobs that we don't know what they are right now.

As Nick mentioned, like things are changing constantly.

- Rapidly - Yes.

So we update that list annually, but we know there's stuff that's on there that we can't even identify it.

- What have you seen, Jen, when it comes to hot careers around here?

- We look at the data that Erica's talking about, as well as those in demand jobs.

As we look at programming every year in our tech schools, obviously you can't change equipment that fast, but it's also an opportunity to look for how is it evolving within that.

So advisory boards come in from business and industry every year to meet with the instructors, and that's all career and tech centers across the state.

So they are an important piece.

We have been working on pre-apprentice and apprenticeship partnerships so that we can help that transition, as well as the educational piece.

So that's why I say it really becomes a journey.

And as Erica had mentioned earlier, we have employment for a lot of the graduates coming out of the programs already.

We can't feed the need right now for what business and industry needs.

They're just not enough.

- I want you to say that again.

Business and industry has more openings, more need than there are people to fill them.

- Exactly.

So we need to help students understand what these careers involve.

Or one of our employers in machining work, they talk about all their slushie machines and all the sheets, the ice cream stores, and right on down to the contracts, government contracts for their aircraft.

So a lot of it with our organizations is to help the community understand the type of product that we produce here, and the services that we provide in Pennsylvania, Central Pennsylvania.

As I've led off on this journey, amazed at some of the customized pieces that we have here in our valley that are hidden behind the walls, or even at Gilson across the creek here, to know what's in that little shed of his, and just that amazing work that's going on.

So I don't know, gives me chills.

It makes me proud of the people that live in this valley and the talent that we have here.

- Well as you guys were talking, I was just gonna say, I want you to finish your thought here, but I was thinking, does it even matter if it's a hot career?

Would someone had said, "Hey, you're never gonna make it making snowboards."

- I heard that many times.

Yeah, we still might not, I mean, jury's still out.

(all laughing) You know, I think that money is like oxygen, and we don't think about it like that.

And I say that because if you don't get oxygen to the right organs in your body at exactly the right time, they quite literally atrophy, and then you die.

If you don't get cash or money to the right places at the right time, whether it's in a business or in a family, that department starts to atrophy, right?

It starts to not get the lifeblood that it literally needs to continue to exist.

But we're not sitting here with our lives saying, how do we take as many breaths as possible?

Right, that's not our goal, right?

We each have our own individual motivations, and drivers, and dreams, and goals, and hopes, and aspirations that are so much more interesting than just taking as many breaths of oxygen.

And I think that we sometimes as a species and as individuals get confused and think that we're here to just try and make as much money as possible, or to try and, fill up the bank account or the piggy bank or whatever it is.

But at the end of the day, money is something that we literally just made up.

We made it up.

It used to be seashells, used to buy a house with a bag of seashells, now we have Bitcoin, right?

Like it is literally made up.

The US dollar is made up by the species.

And so to say, what am I going to do with my life, backwards planning, right, from the death bed when you're looking back and saying hopefully, I really invested in the right things, I really spent my time on this earth in the right places.

Very rarely in someone in that position will they be thinking about, the money that they made, or how they did it, or how much it was, or how much they made this year versus that year.

And so I think that that type of zooming out perspective can be really helpful even early on in a career search to say, hey look, let's decouple this first from this idea of, okay, yes there needs to be a threshold.

We need to be over a certain line in the bank account so that we're not stressed, and losing sleep, and can afford food and safety, and shelter, et cetera.

But that's not where we start.

And I think that especially as a middle schooler looking out at the world saying like, what do I want my impact to be?

Where do I want to make a difference?

Who is important to me?

What is important to me?

Where can I be both financially successful, but more importantly, do something that I'm really good at, and or can become really good at, and something that I genuinely enjoy and feel like I'm really contributing?

Because money is not a sense of purpose, Money is not a sense of purpose.

A job, or a career, or a line of work absolutely can be.

- That's a very important point, and I'm glad you made it.

- So I wanna jump in and say too, because that failure piece comes into play, and not being afraid of failure.

So there is almost no sense of failure at all in that.

And I think we can't stress that enough.

- For all we know, you only live once.

- For all we know.

Who knows?

(all laughing) I'd love to show one more example of a video that we have put together for the Careers That Work.

This is a mason from Montoursville named Matthew Clark.

(upbeat music) - My name is Matthew Clark.

I am a foreman slash business owner of a masonry company called Clark Andry.

And we are based out of Montoursville, Pennsylvania.

(drill grumbling) A typical day on the job would consist of, it depends on what part of the job you're doing.

The first part of the job is obviously bidding the work, going to the person's house, and assessing how much damage there is.

If you're doing something like what I'm doing here today, it's grinding old joints out, and replacing them with new mortar, which is called pointing.

In mortar, you have what's called an aggregate, and you mix it with your binding agent.

So there's the binding agent and the aggregate.

And what's happening in this foundation is that the glue that holds the stones together has all but washed away, and all that's left is the aggregate, which in this case, 'cause it's mortar, is sand.

So we're removing the sand, and then we're going to put new mortar in.

Now these tools are actually almost 100 years old, and you can see the difference.

These are from my great, great grandfather and great grandfather, Danford not and Leo, passed down through them to Tom Clark, which is my grandfather, and he gave them directly to me.

This is what's known as an edger, and this is cast iron.

So you can see the difference in this and what they sell today in the stores.

This is a lot thinner and more cheaply made, and this is obviously more expensive.

My great, great grandfather Danford Clark and his son, which is my great grandfather, Elton Leo, they started actually building foundations like this.

It actually wouldn't surprise me, like if they had had their hands on like a foundation somewhere around here.

They eventually started building stone bridges for the state of Pennsylvania, starting that'd be Bedford County.

My grandfather, he taught me masonry when I was about like 15 or 16.

I went to school.

I had went to college 'cause I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I had no clue what trajectory my life was gonna take.

I was kind of a lost 'cause for a little bit 'cause it's hard to tell what you want to do.

It's a big question.

Like everybody wants to know what they're gonna do for the rest of their life.

After college, I job hopped.

It's tough because you wanna make good money and you don't know like where you want, what you wanna do.

So I was in the city, I was in Williamsport, and I saw a crew of guys working on a block wall.

And one of the people approached me about working for him and I actually told that I had some history in masonry.

So I ended up doing some apprentice work for that person after they took me under their wing with the skillsets that I already had.

And with their knowledge combined, I thought to myself, 'cause I was working for this person, and I was like watching them get rich, watching them make lots and lots of money.

And I thought to myself like, well, how, really, how hard is it to start your own business?

You know, I have the degree.

Like I felt like I knew enough about it.

That's what I did.

I started a business under my family's name, and then a partnership with a person that I know that's I trusted.

So yeah, that's how I landed.

The money that I make from masonry has allowed me to do a lot of different things that I've always wanted to do.

The first thing that it allows me to do is I bought a, it's called a Ableton Push Two and software, and then the computer to put the software on and to make the music on.

Together, those things were like, I think 2300 or $2,400.

I would've never had $2,400 before I started masonry.

So, I got into that, and 'cause I've always wanted to make music.

I was able to find a jujitsu coach 'cause I've always wanted to do that too.

I'm actually working on a book series.

The big thing, like I can provide for my family.

I wouldn't have had a house right now unless I had started my masonry business.

(calming music) At the end of the day, you could be covered from head to toe in dust sometimes.

You could be drenched in sweat, but at the end of the day, when you're done with your project, and you've like literally brought history back to life, like that house gets to keep its character.

There's a huge sense of accomplishment when you feel, when you finish the job.

(upbeat music) - So that's the second example we've seen now of someone who maybe had in their family, an interest and maybe heard, talked about growing up, but you didn't consider it seriously.

- My grandfather had told me about it when I was like young and he had showed, like I was rooting around in their garage, being a kid.

And he showed me the tools that were there.

And I asked him what they were, and then he took me outside and he showed me what the foundation of his house and how it was built and stuff.

He showed me like how to do masonry and stuff, but I wasn't interested in it at the time.

And I knew every normal kid is supposed to go to college and stuff.

So I went to college.

I graduated from Penn College with a business degree, a four year business degree.

I get out of college, and I have absolutely, no idea what I want to do.

But I got to a point where I just wanted to like focus on something, and actually build a career instead of like, bouncing around.

I can't tell you how many things that I've done.

I was a stage hand at community arts center down there.

Like I've drove forklift, I was, I've worked in a cubicle for a printing company, and like, just none of it resonated.

And then finally, like I had said in that video, I saw a crew of guys working, and he approached me and stuff.

So I actually buckled down, and fortunately my grandfather was still alive, and you know, put the time into actually learning the trade, and then ended up starting my own business.

- Thank you so much for your participation, both in the videos and here tonight.

And his story touches on something, the one thing, the one point I wanna make which is that he was able to start a business right here in Central Pennsylvania.

And I know that all of you, we talked earlier made that same comment in various ways, that there are great jobs available right here.

That was one of the things that you really wanted to get out here, Erica, wasn't it?

- Yeah, I think a lot of kids, and I did it myself as I was like, there's not much going on here, I wanna live in a big city.

So when I first graduated from college, I moved to Baltimore and lived in the city, and then I realized how much I hate traffic, (laughs) and you were stuck in it on 495 going around Baltimore.

And then I, some personal things happened, and with my family that I came back two years later.

And I was making less money at home, but my quality of life like quadrupled, like I was just happier, I had more time to do the things I wanted to do.

And then when I got here though, and I was making less money, I realized the cost of living is so much less here than some of those big cities.

And you get to make some really cool stuff, or do really cool things here in Central Pennsylvania.

And Jen kind of alluded to this, like, I mean, we have manufacturers doing things that are going on spaceships, so that the, what is it, SpaceX, Elon Musk, there's a company in central Pennsylvania that is making parts that went on that first ship, that first shuttle.

So it's just really cool to know that, but it's like these secrets that nobody knows about that are being manufactured or you know, the technology even in healthcare that's happening locally.

Like it just, we don't share it enough.

- Yeah.

You know, one thing I also say, just as someone who's truly starkly terrified of Haley's stat that we spend 87% of our lives indoors, (talking over each other) I mean on believable.

I know, but the, I think so much of a quality of life, at least for me, and I know a lot of people on our team, but certainly a lot of people out there, just outdoor recreation is really important and Pennsylvania is doubling down on this from a state level, which I think is fantastic to see from a funding source and community support standpoint.

But I think, just even the natural resources here are amazing, right?

If you like to mountain bike, there's really within a, we're in central Pennsylvania and you can go mountain biking, canoeing, kayaking on rivers.

There's an unbelievable trail system, unbelievable rail trail system.

And then there's over 20 ski and snowboard mountains in Pennsylvania, believe it or not.

So yeah, I think being here in the Susquehanna River Valley, there is such a healthy work life balance between having really interesting intellectually stimulating opportunities in a career and then, or in multiple careers and then also being able to get outside in the evenings and on the weekends to for some outdoor recreation.

So, I think our number one export by value in this state is probably high school and college graduates.

And so, (chuckles) we do well to keep a few of these brilliant students.

- Yeah, certainly.

And I'll let you comment on that as well, Jen.

- I think that's something for parents to think about 'cause we often overlook at is to look at the child as a whole where they, their likes, their dislikes needs to be around family or preferences.

And in the end, money doesn't matter if you're not happy.

So I think it's finding that passion and letting that drive drive the force forward.

- Well, I have about four more hours worth of questions that I'm not going to keep you, I promise, because I think the whole point is to get information into the hands with the people who really need it.

But I would love to get into the quote that you, I heard you say once, Jen, maybe it is appropriate here, that you, in your opinion, we spend a lot more time figuring out what cars we're gonna drive and what houses we're gonna buy rather than our careers or our jobs or putting any sort of research toward future paths.

Do you wanna touch on that a little?

- And part of that comment was about that college isn't the job, it's really, we need to have that reverse design look at ourselves as a whole and what our strengths are and play on those strengths and begin to take a look at where that path might lead and understand we might think of or not think of all the art that's out there.

I may be an art interested students, but Hailey talked about that in architecture.

We have art in forms of art and welding in construction in the masonry that we heard about.

So begin to take a deeper look, not just at where we're going education wise, but what we really want to do and think about how much time we really put into it versus looking for a car, the house, the college, and where I move next, but really spend on what do I wanna do to have a happy life and that's work life balanced.

- What do you think Covid did for...

I don't wanna say job searching since we're talking about students in particular, but what did, what did Covid do for the better or worse for young people who are trying to figure out their career paths?

- I'll say that I think students are even more afraid of failure.

That there needs to be a wants and I need to have all the answers.

They, it was hard for them to understand the unknown and how things could quickly disappear and be turned upside down.

So I think, taking that new lens of failure and how do I respond to those emotions that come from the unknown?

So I think it was very hard for them to take that stance and how do we work them through that as a.

- I'd like you each to take a shot at that one.

- Do you wanna go ahead, you want me to jump in?

- Yeah, well I was just gonna say, I think from, in one sense it almost opened up more opportunities from them because businesses had to adapt faster to what the workforce is looking for.

So this whole paradigm shift of like we went before to businesses dictated salaries, businesses dictated whether you got to work from home or had to be in the office.

And now, students and everybody coming out and the workforce is saying, Well, we've proven that we can work from home, or we've proven that we can work off hours and still get the job done.

So in one sense it's given them a little bit more ownership and flexibility once they get out there.

I'm not saying you're gonna have it on day one, you still have to prove yourself.

You still have to still prove that you've got the grit and the perseverance to do the job.

But as you know, as your career progresses, it gives you more opportunities.

- What do you think it did, Nick?

- I totally agree with both of these perspectives.

You know, I think there's probably 50 million variables at play here or more.

And so you've got a lot of sort of force vectors pointing at each other and away from each other and so that, there's a zillion different ways that you could analyze this environment and answer this question.

So I'll just zoom into one in particular, which again is leaning into the nerdier side of things.

But what it did first is that it totally eradicated people's ability to spend money on entertainment and services out of the house.

So what that did, right?

You couldn't go out to dinner with your spouse anymore, or your partner or your friend.

You couldn't go to the movies, you couldn't go see a play, you couldn't go on vacation, you couldn't do really anything except sit at home.

So, then what happened in reaction to this is that for the people that still had disposable income and disposable money, which a lot of people didn't, but for those that did, they still had money burning a hole in their pocket.

They still wanted to spend, but now you had to spend on things that you could get delivered to your doorstep.

So that sent a huge uptick in e-commerce in particular, a downfall in in person retail and a massive consumption, a shift from spending on services like restaurants and movie theaters to spending on like goods and services, right?

And we were looking around and be like, why does someone need a new transformer pair of skis on, July 10th, right?

And it's like, well, because they want to (all laughing) and it's bringing them some joy (all laughing) and yeah, exactly.

And they've got something to look forward to.

So we saw this huge uptick in demand for goods, which is then later, right?

Led to massive supply chain disruptions from both increased demand and increased challenges in the shipping and supply chain network, which had the combined of effect of driving a huge buzzword right?

Now that's a dirty word, inflation, right?

And so inflation's gone up and in an effort to cool this off the fed's raising interest rates, et cetera.

But what all of this means from 50,000 feet for someone looking at a potential future career about the macroeconomic landscape right now is that people want a whole lot of stuff that they can't really get.

The labor market's incredibly tight and everybody needs people, people, people.

We just, people, business owners, employers, every, they just cannot find people to do the work that now needs to be done.

And there's gonna be a very long tale for this.

So I bet the effect for someone who's in middle school right now, I bet the effects of the these very atypical, this very atypical phenomenon, that tale (chuckles) is going to exist into the early stages of their post high school or post-college career.

So you know what, it's never been a better time to go find what you're passionate about co you can add value because there is somebody out there, probably a lot of people out there who are willing to pay very good money for the skills that you're gonna be bringing to the table.

So it's, I think, an exciting time to be edit to the workforce.

- So if you've learned anything from this panel discussion, it is that there is help out there for you three people here just on this stage willing to help.

And that there are also employers who are looking for good people, which I know we have here in central Pennsylvania.

So thank you to all of you, Erica Mulberger, Nicholas Gilson, and Jennifer Hain.

We really appreciate your time.

We hope that this has been a good way for you to get the message out as well.

And we certainly hope that we can help build the workforce here in Northeastern and central Pennsylvania.

From all of us at WVIA, we're so glad you joined us.

Thanks for being here and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Careers That Work" was provided by the Degenstein Foundation.