Apprenticeships in Broadband, With Craig Barber

Episode Description

Apprenticeships in broadband markets may be a great way to help solve the workforce shortage. The programs are a great alternative to a college education and offer excellent training for a future career. Craig Barber, founder and CEO of Hatbox, joins the podcast to discuss how he began working in the broadband industry as an apprentice, and what he’s doing now to support apprenticeships in the telecom industry.

Transcript

Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Intro: The following program is brought to you by the Tennessee Broadband Association. Lead Tennessee Radio, conversations with the leaders moving our state forward. We look at the issues shaping Tennessee’s future: rural development, public policy, broadband, healthcare, and other topics impacting our communities.

Andy Johns: On the stage at the Tennessee Broadband Association, Kentucky Rural Broadband Association Joint Conference here in Franklin, Tennessee, one of the speakers asked the audience, what are your biggest concerns about rural broadband in 2025 and beyond? The answer, according to the informal survey that was put up on stage, was the workforce shortage that we’re looking at when all of the funding for broadband grows. What we’ll be talking about on this episode of Lead Tennessee Radio is about apprenticeships and how that can help potentially expand the labor pool. My guest on this episode is Craig Barber, founder and CEO of Hatbox. Craig, thanks so much for joining me.

Craig Barber: Thanks. Good to be here.

Andy Johns: And I’m your guest host on this episode, pinch hitting for Carrie and Trevor Andy Johns of Pioneer Utility Resources. So a little bit of background on Craig. He was born, as you may have noticed, from the accent, he was born in England. And your hometown was one of the last in the country to go from dial-up to broadband. Connecting rural communities has been a passion for you, and your career includes leadership roles at British Telecom and Telefonica before moving to become a CIO and then CISO of a cloud technology company. Interestingly, and we’ll get into this a little bit in the discussion, but Craig moved from the UK to middle Tennessee and now lives in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, which is served by the good folks over at United. So, Craig, tell us a little bit about that move. We talked about it on stage, but what drew you to Tennessee? You could have moved anywhere, but you decided to leave the UK and move right here to middle Tennessee.

Craig Barber: Yeah. I mean, I think it was the fact that the area was growing very fast. There’s a lot of opportunities. There’s a lot of rural areas that are historically underserved by good, reliable internet and high speed internet and broadband. But at the same time, yeah, there’s a lot of growth going on. There’s a lot of new networks going in, a lot of new infrastructure. And really, I just think it’s an exciting time for Tennessee as a whole right now with the way the economy is going, certainly in this state. It also is strikingly similar to where I grew up, which I was really surprised being thousands and thousands of miles apart.

Andy Johns: Right. You said miles instead of kilometers, so that shows you’re settling in.

Craig Barber: Yeah. Yeah. Although we use miles in the UK, but the rest of Europe, not so much, but yeah. Yeah, it’s really did. You know, Chapel Hill is a very small town. Reminds me so much of where I grew up, and just felt right at home there from the moment that we found our house, and we settled down there.

Andy Johns: Now, we will be talking about, mostly about, apprenticeships and the idea of an apprenticeship program on this episode. But I did want to get into just a little bit about your background, because so many of the folks that we work with in economic development here in Tennessee, so many of the folks at the broadband providers, the telcos here in the rural parts of the state, they’ve heard about you, and they’ve talked about you, or at least the kind of person that you represent. The fact that somebody can move from anywhere in the globe and connect to the rural broadband networks that folks have built in Tennessee and be able to work, to do anything. So tell me a little bit about Hatbox and why, you know, how that works, that you’re able to do that from a small town like Chapel Hill?

Craig Barber: Yeah. I mean, to begin with, I founded Hatbox because of the fact that I grew up in that small town, passionate, as you were saying in my intro about connecting underserved communities, and, you know, reliable internet access is kind of a necessity nowadays. So, anything that I can do to help with that mission, I’m all in on. And, yeah, as I said, as with my background working at British Telecom, BT, and Telefonica, it’s the area that I’m knowledgeable about, almost two decades in that space. And yeah, primarily working on cyber security. I think there’s kind of two sides to it. So (a) there’s that kind of, you know, that’s my passion. That’s where I want to be.

Andy Johns: Right.

Craig Barber: And (b), it’s kind of a case of, I think there’s a need right there to obviously secure these networks and ensure that, you know, as their businesses grow and they invest in infrastructure, that, you know, they are protected against attacks and data breaches and so forth. Because it does have a very real negative impact on business reputation and regulatory fines and so on and so on. But yeah. And then of course, living in a rural area right now, yeah, the internet connectivity makes my job far easier because, you know, that’s the world that I’m working in. So being reliably connected is obviously a very key thing for me.

Andy Johns: I would go so far as to say not just easier, but possible.

Craig Barber: Absolutely.

Andy Johns: You could not do what you do where you do it, without that.

Craig Barber: Yeah. And I think that feeds into the whole thing of getting good connectivity out there into these rural areas is it’s not just about myself that, you know, I moved to a rural area and that’s available to me. It’s also about the residents and the people that were born in these areas, giving them good, reliable internet connectivity opens up a world of job opportunities, you know, customer support, working on, you know, on live chat for various companies, answering calls for companies, you know, it just opens it up. Project management, for example. There’s so many roles out there from a professional and a kind of personal growth perspective that can be achieved by having good connectivity and working in these rural areas. Whereas historically, you know, you’re a 150 miles from the nearest city. You’ve got a limited selection of employers there. This is opening that up, and you could almost work for any company anywhere in the country or even the world.

Andy Johns: Sure, sure. It’s pretty amazing. And sorry to detour on your, you know, bio a little bit there longer than usual, but I just think it’s an important detail. And what so many of the folks that  are a part of Lead Tennessee Radio are working to do, and you just kind of exemplify that. So I wanted to bring that up. But our main topic today is apprenticeships and apprentices. And, you know, I’ll be perfectly honest, when I hear the word “apprentice,” I think of the trades, and then I think of Star Wars. And then that’s about where my knowledge ends on apprentices. Tell me a little bit about when you talk about an apprentice program, what do you mean? And how is it different from an internship or other things that that folks may be a little bit more familiar with here?

Craig Barber: Sure. It’s a concept that’s been around in the UK since, I mean, British Telecom for example. They started their program in 1960. And it is a little different to internship. So internship typically is unpaid. Might not have much kind of structure to it. The difference with an apprenticeship is that typically the individuals are being paid a full time salary or a part time salary, and they’re working from day one for your business. And typically it’s a little more structured. So there’s some kind of structured training involved as well as spending time with a mentor or spending time out in the field or with other engineers where you’re learning. So it’s slightly different. The concept and the idea is that you’re landing a position in a company, for example, in telecoms or in rural broadband. You’re learning from day one how to do that job. So if you’re a field engineer, you’re out there, and you’re working on the networks, and you’re running cables, or you’re fixing faults, and you’re working on the infrastructure. And the idea is that you learn by doing as opposed to in a classroom setting, you know, with a degree program, for example. It’s very theory based. And, you know, there are benefits to that, right? So, depending on how you learn as an individual. Myself, I did an apprenticeship, and I learned by doing, and I learned by being hands on, making mistakes and learning from them and picking up on the soft skills as well from day one. You know, dealing with customers that are unhappy and so on, and learning how to navigate that.

Andy Johns: And I think that’s such an important piece of it, because a lot of times when you hear “apprenticeship,” you know, I think of the trades, you know, where it is, you know, it is more about the technical skill. But I’ve been interested to hear you talk about that it is a very well-rounded look, kind of 360 degrees at the role where you are getting into some more of those soft skills.

Craig Barber: Correct. Yeah, yeah. And historically it was in the trades, and it, you know, the US is slightly behind Europe in that sense in that it is still seen that way in a lot of cases. But, you know, you can apply the apprenticeship model to cyber security. You can apply it to network engineering, even customer service to some extent. You can, you know, you can apply that model. It’s really about, as you say, it’s kind of, it’s a well-rounded program. You’re learning the technical skills, but you’re learning them hands on in the role, typically from a mentor or somebody that’s been with the company a lot longer. And then you’re also learning the soft skills. So back to what I was saying about the unhappy customers. I remember on the first day of my apprenticeship, I was visiting somebody’s house to put their internet service in with my mentor, of course, because I, you know, at that point I was very inexperienced. And one of the customers was unhappy. I think she’d had two bills for two different phone lines from the same company. Had no luck sorting it out with customer service. So obviously we were the first people she saw face-to-face.

Andy Johns: So here it comes.

Craig Barber: Yeah, here comes the, and rightly so. And you know me at the time, 17 years old, just out of high school. It was a very useful learning experience to see how my mentor dealt with that and, you know, put the customer at ease and explain how the issue was going to be dealt with and that, you know, we want to get this resolved right now. We’re not going to leave until we’ve escalated it. And, you know, you’re not going to get that on a degree program. Whereas with an apprenticeship, you know, you’re getting those soft skills and those experiences and the business skills. You’re learning them alongside at the same time as the technical skills.

Andy Johns: Now, on our panel that we did today here at the Tennessee Broadband and Kentucky Rural Broadband Association Conference, Jackie Griffin was on there from Franklin Skills, an apprenticeship program. And I thought it was interesting. She said about 20% of the apprenticeships they’re doing are fully remote. And a lot of the other apprenticeships have at least a remote component to it. How do you think this opens up, particularly for rural areas when we’re looking at tech jobs in the rural, you know, in rural areas, how does that that ability to work remotely, how has that changed apprenticeships? You know, as opposed to what they were when you were going through yours with BT?

Craig Barber: Yeah. I mean, I think it kind of works two ways, right. So, you know, if you’re a rural broadband provider and you are struggling to find people in your local area, well, technically, you know, you could do something where there’s, you know, somebody slightly further afield, maybe there, I don’t know, maybe they’re 50 miles away. You could maybe kind of utilize some of that talent and bring them on board. And they could be partially remote, like a hybrid situation, or maybe even fully remote. And customer service, I think is a good example of that, where, you know, you could almost balance, you know, you want to market your rural broadband services, having US based customer service, for example, a good differentiator. Well, perhaps you, you know, perhaps you first look in your local area, look at setting up some kind of apprenticeship program there. Or perhaps you look slightly further afield and you do a hybrid, or you do a remote working situation, then you can use that, you can still market that way. But you can kind of widen the talent pool slightly. So, you know, that’s kind of something to consider. Of course, technology jobs and cyber security, for example. It applies to that as well. You know, you could look at hiring individuals that are somewhere else in the country or in the world and so on.

Andy Johns: Are there certain types of folks and you mentioned that, you know, your learning style a college lecture hall was not necessarily the space where it was going to be the most efficient and effective way for you to learn. Are there folks that that you think an apprenticeship program or what types of folks in particular do you think it’s an apprenticeship is kind of perfect for them? Are there certain kinds, you know, is it kind of just the way certain people think, learn that kind of thing? I was surprised to hear in our presentation, Jackie said the average age of apprentices they have is 32, which was significantly higher. You know, I think of folks like yourself who 17 years old, going right into it, right out of school. But it sounds like it’s the kind of program that can really apply to folks at all different stages of life. But are there some folks that, you know, you think an apprenticeship is a better fit for than others? Or what what kind of, you know, details or characteristics do you think make a person a perfect candidate for an apprenticeship?

Craig Barber: Yeah. And I think, so from an age perspective to begin with, yeah, it’s all ages. So, you know, it can be career changers. It can be veterans. It could be young people. It really, kind of, you know, the training model and the idea of it is that it helps you land a career. For example, in technology or in rural broadband or, you know, in some kind of stem field where you are, you know, you’re finding something that you’re going to have and hopefully stay in for a foreseeable future. It’s helping you to find a good, solid career, basically regardless of age or previous job experience or college experience or high school. In terms of the thought process and the kinds of types of people that I think it helps, I think you have to look at it from an affordability and an economic perspective. Because if you’re like me, you grew up in a small town. There weren’t many opportunities around. For me, it was I didn’t really, I didn’t learn by being in a classroom, really. I always learned by kind of building computers, troubleshooting, fixing things for family members and stuff. And (b), I didn’t really want to have to travel, you know, like an hour round trip, or a two-hour round trip, even to the nearest kind of technical college in an area that I wanted to work in.

Craig Barber: As I was saying, you’ve got other folks that can’t afford to go to college, or, you know, they’re too far away. They can’t afford to go to college, or they just plain don’t want to, because that’s not how they learn. They just want to get out there and get into the workplace. All of those things kind of point toward an apprenticeship and point toward that as a kind of good opportunity to go and learn and, you know, get qualified and land in a career that is going to kind of, you know, set the motion for you and get you into things going forward. I was going to say problem solving as well, right? So like for me, I’m very much a problem solver, a logical thinker. I think, you know, if you’re in that kind of situation, taking computers apart, or you enjoy troubleshooting, you enjoy unknowns, you know, if you’ve got that way of thinking and that’s how you kind of operate, then I really think it’s a win-win over, over doing a degree.

Andy Johns: Let’s get into the nitty gritty details and maybe even a little more than we were able to get to on stage in the session. The apprenticeship that you did with British Telecom was three years, I think. Jackie, our other panelist, had said they have programs that are one year, and then additional certifications beyond that. Typically these are done by the company that is looking to hire, right. Where the system and the curriculum, or whatever, is set up by the company that’s that’s looking to recruit. Sometimes there’s a partner like the group that Jackie had Franklin Skills, but usually this is something where you were going to get these skills on a track to work at British Telecom, and it’s done by the company, and usually it takes a couple of years to do it.

Craig Barber: Yeah. So yeah, the programs in the UK are typically around three years. And the reason for that is they’re kind of seen, we’re lucky in the UK in that it’s kind of seen nationally as a kind of degree equivalent. So a vocational equivalent to a degree. It would be great for us to get there in the US at some point in the future. I know it’s a little more complex with different levels of government and states being involved and stuff. But that’s the idea behind the UK program and the US is, as Jackie was saying earlier on stage, typically they’re a little bit shorter. And there’s kind of two ways to do it. So with BT, they’re obviously a huge global multinational company. So they have teams of individuals that are skilled in setting up their own apprenticeship programs, and they have a lot of structure and a lot of kind of, you know, a lot of people working on it. And for smaller companies, then a company like Franklin Skills can help by setting up that training program and that structure on behalf of the business, kind of de-risking some of it and taking some of the effort away. And, you know, that could be in cyber security, it could be in network engineering, any really kind of, you know, technology based role. Just because it’s a smaller company doesn’t mean that, you know, they need to replicate the BT model because really it’s, yeah, it’s quite different in the sense that they have a lot more people working on it full time.

Andy Johns: You had pretty much one mentor throughout most of it. Or did it rotate through, [and] you had a lot of different mentors?

Craig Barber: I had, I want to say I had three. And the reason for that was, they were quite good in that I came in as a trainee network engineer. Had a mentor that was a network engineer, I think he’d worked there for 15 years, something like that. So really experienced, really new, not only BT, but also the infrastructure and all that kind of stuff. The way that they structure their apprenticeship programs is that you come in and started out as a network engineer, and then they always give you opportunities to pivot from that. So I spent some time working with the radio team, which was microwave links, fixed wireless access, all that kind of stuff. I had a mentor that specialized in that. Did a bunch of stuff on fiber because that was then, this was back in the mid 2000. So fiber was starting to come out and the, you know, be used more on the backbone. And it was kind of different skill sets. And at the end of the apprenticeship, it wasn’t sort of a case of you had a choice of where to go, but you had options. So you could voice, okay, I really liked working with the radio team, so I’d like to, you know, climb towers, and I’d like to fix microwave links, things like that. And they would look to try and place you in that team. It wasn’t a given, but it was a, you know, we would try basically. And I think that was one of the beauties of it, was that, you know, if you were really doing well in your apprenticeship program and you were, the company liked you and the teams liked you, other opportunities in the business would then open up, and they would be there potentially. I stuck with the network engineering, but I was lucky that that was where I felt like my passion was, and there was an opportunity for me there.

Andy Johns: Worked out perfectly.

Craig Barber: Yeah. And the, you know, there was a full time role for me at the end of it. I passed the apprenticeship because there are obviously, there’s a standard, and you have to meet the standard. I met the standard. I passed. I then, you know, I was then moved from a trainee into a full time network engineer. So it paid off.

Andy Johns: Yeah. Sounds like it. It’s worked out very nicely. Last two questions here for you. So there’s the job seeker or job candidate side of things, but there’s also the employer side of things. What are some things that you’ve seen – you used the word de-risk earlier – what are some things that employers can do differently to be more open to this? You know, so many of the jobs out there, it’s a required four year degree, or required two year degree. Require, you know, master’s degree a plus, whatever it is. What are some things that employers can do to be more open to not miss out on some of the great talent that may be there, somebody that’s either looking for an apprenticeship or that’s already been through one?

Craig Barber: Yeah. I mean, it’s yeah, I mean, I think it’s being more flexible. So you know, looking at the requirements for the roles that you have and looking at, you know, making it a little bit more flexible. Because there are going to be individuals in your local area that have the right skills, they just don’t have the paperwork or the certifications or the degree.

Andy Johns: Right.

Craig Barber: And they’re there. And, you know, they’re going to be passionate about technology. You’re going to need good people. So there’s a match there. And I think, you know, being more flexible on the job descriptions can help. Obviously, setting up an apprenticeship program as well, building a bit of a structured program using maybe somebody like Franklin Skills or speaking to us at Hatbox about building and growing your business. It’s a case of the talent is there, and, you know, you really want to use that.It is, you know, it’s kind of hard to, you know, hire somebody that has no job experience for example. Maybe they’re straight out of school like I was, so they have no experience. They don’t have a degree. And I can see that a lot of individuals and a lot of businesses would see that as slightly risky.

Andy Johns: Sure. Risk was exactly the word that I was going to – yeah. I mean, that’s risky proposition.

Craig Barber: Yeah. And I mean –

Andy Johns: Or it feels risky anyway.

Craig Barber: Exactly. Yeah. And I think the, you know, I would reflect back to what BT were doing, and I’m sure they’re still doing it now, you know, almost 20 years on from when I did my apprenticeship where the interview was more about, you know, as I was saying earlier, building,. I think it was give an example of when you troubleshooted a technical problem. As simple as that, as basic as that. And it allows you, as a skilled interviewer to really understand, is that person willing to learn? Are they passionate about technology? Do they have some of the basics? And, you know, I look for it as a CISO, I look for not only, you know, I don’t necessarily look for somebody that knows every single cybersecurity or regulatory framework out there. I look for somebody that maybe, you know, they might know a couple, but they have the willingness, they have the passion, they have a way to learn them, and they can learn the others. And I think that’s, you know, that’s the kind of basis of hiring apprentices, really is, you know, make the interview more general. And, you know, you’re going to get value as a business from them on day one. There are activities in rural broadband that an extra set of hands, they can really help you. You know, running cables, testing circuits, for example. Like it doesn’t, if you’ve hired somebody that’s passionate and they understand technology, they’re willing to learn, you can explain to them how to use a fiber tester. And, you know, I could see it within a day, they could be at the other end of your circuit running tests on the phone to you. And, you know, they’re immediately giving value. So I think it’s kind of being willing to accept that yeah, interviewing individuals that maybe don’t have any credentials and asking the right questions, building an apprenticeship program. And then, you know, having that understanding of there are tasks and there is value from day one in having trainees on board.

Andy Johns: Yeah. Somebody who’s gone through the hiring process with several different candidates, it may feel less risky to see a four year degree on there, but that doesn’t doesn’t necessarily mean that that person knows how to learn, or is eager, or any of that. It may feel less risky, but that may just be a bias in the process.

Craig Barber: And for some individuals, that’s a perfectly acceptable route. That’s how people learn. It shows expertise. It shows that you’ve learned a lot of standards, and you’ve learned good principles and things. It’s just that with an apprenticeship, I found that, as we were saying earlier, it wasn’t just about the principles. You learned those, but you learned the business skills. And you learned that, you know, sometimes or in fact, most of the time, things in the real world don’t exactly tie back to the principles.

Andy Johns: To the textbook. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Last question I have for you as we wrap up here, what advice do you have for somebody who is listening to this and is thinking, you know, maybe either (a) we need to start an apprenticeship program, or (b) maybe we need to be more open to people who have been through I would say a less traditional route here in the States to have done an apprenticeship or other work there? What advice do you have for somebody who’s listening and thinking that there are some changes their company needs to make?

Craig Barber: Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to what, some of it was just kind of similar to what I was just saying in terms of, you know, there are, as a rural broadband provider, in Tennessee, there are going to be individuals in your area that would benefit your business, but that don’t have any credentials. And that is the, I think that’s the number one benefit to a business in terms of looking at apprenticeships. One thing we didn’t talk about as well is the other way around. So injecting –

Andy Johns: Oh yeah, I meant to get to that.

Craig Barber: New ideas. Yeah. New ideas, new, you know, criticizing, questioning things, I guess is probably a probably a better word to use. But, hiring apprentices is going to inject new ideas and new ways of thinking and questioning into your business. So, you know, you may have a specific process when it comes to making infrastructure changes, for example. Well, an apprentice may come in and, you know, they’re going to have a completely different background to everybody who’s worked at your company in the past. And they might go, “Well, hey, have you looked at doing it this way? Or how about if we change our maintenance window to this time on a weekend because, you know, a lot of, you know, it could be a better time to do it? Or have we looked at using this system instead?” You know, it’s a two-way thing. It’s not a one-way thing where you’re training apprentices. It’s also that your business, your employees, and the people that are acting as mentors will learn from the apprentices as to, you know, different ways of doing things and things like that. And a lot of them never have, you know, when you’re working full time, you don’t, you know, it’s hard to learn new things.

Andy Johns: A true two-way street, I think, is how you phrased it in our panel, so it makes perfect sense. Yep. Well, Craig, thank you so much for being willing to not only speak at the panel, but also join us on this episode of Lead Tennessee Radio.

Craig Barber: Thank you. It’s been good.

Andy Johns: He is Craig Barber, the founder and CEO of Hatbox here in Middle Tennessee. I’m your guest host, Andy Johns, and we appreciate you listening to this episode of Lead Tennessee Radio.