The current system for transitioning from school to work is broken. Students are graduating college unable to find jobs in digital marketing because they lack digital skills. Employers can’t find the right entry-level talent with the skillset they want. What if we could sustainably integrate work and learning to bridge this skills gap in digital marketing?

You want to develop an organization that can grow, change, and learn over the years. In fact, it's a necessity. How can you bring people together to help your business succeed in the long term? Through developing a learning organization that's responsive to its surrounding environment. One of the best ways to do this is through apprenticeship and continuously developing your employee’s skills. Let’s explore what apprenticeship is and how it helps you create the learning organization that you need for your business to succeed.

This article was edited on January 11th, 2019

Some people like to tread in others' footsteps. They want to know what to do and how to do it, and they're a stabilizing force at a company. These employees do their job competently and may have done it the same way for many years. Other employees come in like a whirlwind. They're driven to change things, both themselves and others - they’re your passionate explorers. While your business could play it safe with employees who maintain the status quo, you also need employees who love growth and change.

We’ve heard from apprentice Samuel Mills on what it's like to be an apprentice and go through the training and mentoring. Now it’s time to hear from Sam’s manager, Ryan Shutt, on the experience as a client company and supervisor to an apprentice.

Sam started at Southwest Exteriors as as intern then worked his way to the full-time position of Internet Marketing Specialist and apprentice with DCI. Ryan meets with the DCI team quarterly to evaluate Sam’s learning objectives and evaluate his progress in the 12-month program.

The first cohort of digital marketing apprentices launched on January 4th and will continue their 12-month apprenticeship until the end of the year. Right now, they are 5 months in and have already developed numerous marketing skills and received training from local thought leaders. Apprentices are now certified in Hubspot, SCRUM, Google Analytics, and the Digital Marketing Institute Certification in Digital Strategy. Other skills they’ve developed include: social media strategy, video production and marketing, content marketing, and analytics reporting.

“Unifying, Unbelievable, Intense, Tenacious, Exciting, Surprising” - that’s how each of our 6 apprentices describe their experience immersed in our weeklong digital marketing bootcamp. Last week (January 4-8, 2015) our apprenticeship program kicked off at Geekdom in San Antonio, TX. The week was packed full with digital marketing skill development, sessions from instructors and coaches and real-world marketing campaign creation.