Planting seeds to grow tomorrow's workers

In order to get future skilled workers, more of us need to invest time now with school kids. Most do not have a clue as to what opportunities are available or what they want to do for their future career.

To get more kids interested in maintenance, reliability and engineering opportunities, Joel Leonard developed a great process of attracting the masses and then spent time with the curious to address their questions and feed their interest.

Instead of bringing knicks knacks, candy and give aways like all of the other employers, Joel provided the students something they all wanted: their chance to be an internet TV star.

He set up the SkillTV video camera, projected the SkillTV logo on the wall of gymnasium and asked kids if they wanted to be on TV?

Boom! Like magic, stars lit in their eyes and then Joel said alright I will put you on but we need at least 10 kids to do a TV shoot.

Bam! The kids scrambled to get all of their buddies to join them on the Y's bleachers underneath the SkillTV logo. While they were all together and he had their full attention to explain to them the opportunities and challenges facing the maintenance, reliability and engineering sector.

Several of the kids have already expressed interest in this potential career path.