BY IEC STAFF
Fourteen individuals committed to the six-month IEC Emerging Leaders program, determined to grow by participating in skills development workshops, networking opportunities, leadership exercises, and project development experiences. They got what they signed up for…and more.
“The Emerging Leaders experience has really sort of opened my eyes to a whole other layer of opportunity that is available within IEC,” says Hance Joiner, workforce development coordinator for IEC Georgia. “IEC members — apprentices, electricians, whatever — might be more familiar with our contractor or our chapter but the Emerging Leaders Program, by design, is to introduce us to that national level of idea makers, players, and decision makers. That is a very valuable stepping stone for individuals who really want to make an impact at a higher level.”
Emerging Leaders met in person, on Zoom, and remained in communication with one another via email and text. The culmination of the program was to deliver an industry impact project and present program results at SPARK to benefit their peers nationwide. The 2024 cohort dug in, beginning at an April meeting in Denver.
“We had conversation at our first meeting in Denver about the pain points the industry is facing,” Hance notes. “We started from square one in terms of identifying key issues and then coming up with ideas or solutions to alleviate some of those key issues. One of those is the workforce — making sure we have enough employees to accomplish the workload, to grow the companies, and to provide the necessary electrical services.”
The task then was how the Emerging Leaders could contribute. Believing fully that becoming an electrician is a rewarding career path and that participation in the IEC Apprenticeship Program is the best way to prepare for that career, they knew bringing more awareness to IEC was the way to go about it.
“Their goal was to resolve the electrical industry skilled labor gap by finding tomorrow’s electricians and empowering them today,” says Joey Baker, IEC’s director of workforce development. “Their project deliverable was a social media campaign that aimed to influence individuals between the ages of 16 and 24 to consider a career in the electrical industry.”
Planning and Approach
Both Hance and Jared Dziak, senior project manager at Independent Mechanical in Pennsylvania, acknowledged word of mouth as the number one way they see potential electricians enter the workforce. The cohort’s continued discussion on how to ‘scale up’ word of mouth had them choosing social media platforms as an efficient and effective way to communicate.
“One of the things we talked about early on is that the folks we’re hiring today aren’t fully up and running until they complete the apprenticeship program,” Jared explains. “It’s really a four-to-five-year solution in a sense. That’s why we chose age 16 as the low end for our messages. These ages also are perfect for social media.”
They spread the age beyond high school to reach that person looking for that next career or those coming out of active duty military service.
“We wanted to bring more awareness to IEC as an association, as well as bring awareness to the career path, the sustainability, and the job security,” Hance says. “We wanted to share that first-person experience through videos that would showcase individuals on job sites to empower video viewers to see themselves as up-and-coming electricians.”
The team began to gather media from IEC chapters and their ideas kept growing. They devised their brand, tweaked their messaging, chose their outlets, produced four videos, and handed them off to the IEC National marketing team for posting.
The campaign brand was built utilizing the new IEC rebrand and with its own unique color scheme and theme — I’M/POWER — which came into focus after the group’s discussions about providing the necessary information to empower young people to choose a trades career. And, they wanted the videos to be authentic.
“That was one of the early recommendations from the IEC marketing team — use real people and don’t just do videos or photos with fake voiceover,” Jared recalls. “People want to see real people where they can say, ‘I’m that age and maybe IEC and this career is right for me.’ It opens up a very wide mindset when you see someone you can relate to.”
Each of the four videos attacked the messaging — a great career offering satisfaction in hard work, financial security, and a partner in IEC — from different angles.
The first video was filmed by Hance when attending the 2024 SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Conference. The annual event is a week-long celebration of the skilled trades and brings some 16,500 students, instructors, industry partners, government officials, administrators, and more to Atlanta. IEC had a booth and spoke with hundreds about an electrical career. The video showed demonstrations on the show floor and ended with a close up of IEC’s floor decal stating: Warning: High-Wage, High-Demand Career Ahead. myelectriccareer.com
The second video heralded from cohort member Zach Sowards, site superintendent / project manager at Kings Electrical Service in Cincinnati, OH. He asked a few of his apprentices what they would tell any future electricians and their honest answers included work hard, ask questions, take notes, be ready to learn anything, hustle, and be open. Zach closed the video with encouraging words of his own: ‘job security — people are always going to need us.’
The third video was titled Tools Tuesday and was secured by cohort member Laura Hildreth, operations and education director at IEC Fort Worth. It featured one of her instructors showing the many tools electricians may use on the job. “If you decide to become an electrician, you guys will get paid a lot of money, not have to worry about a college degree, and get to use lots of cool stuff like this every day,” he says to close the video.
For the fourth video, cohort member Bethany Lerch, executive director of IEC Greater Charlotte, interviewed one of her contractor members, Ryan Steed, Titan Electric, about his career — from atop a building. The contractor shared information about the parking garage construction build below and then closed his comments by saying he loves his work, especially when working on high-rises, as he gets to ‘put his mark on the skyline.’
The four I’M/POWER videos posted on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
While Jared and Hance were encouraged to see these posts go live and get engagement, they know it’s just a small step into the social media marketing arena and one they hope continues on through IEC National as their Emerging Leaders project is over.
“I think everybody had a very positive reception to it right off the bat,” says Jared. “The first couple of videos had more engagement than a traditional post with more views, more likes, roughly the same number of comments, and the shares were a bit more than normal. It was great to see those results come in. It encouraged us to crank out a few more videos and see how high we could get those numbers.”
Hance adds that those already on these IEC social media platforms need to engage with IEC National posts to grow those platforms and get messages into the hands of those not following IEC at this time.
“I shared all of the videos we posted and that increases the amount of people that have the opportunity to see it and interact with it when it pops up on their page,” Hance says. “Another key piece to this is figuring out how do we continue to drive more engagement. The little brother of one of my best friends that I grew up with is a senior in high school and looking for an apprenticeship pathway. My friend found out about IEC because I shared I’M/POWER online and he saw that and responded to me.”
What’s Next?
The 2024 Emerging Leaders cohort did miss the final piece of their program with the cancellation of SPARK. They did not get to have a final recap meeting as a group or present their industry impact project to the general IEC audience. But they’ve been energized.
“Through this whole process, I started to think about other ways that we could utilize social media and consider what type of content would drive the most engagement,” Hance says. “I’m currently working on a proposal to present to IEC National about creating electrical lessons, or how-to videos, for YouTube. Homeowners looking for videos on how to change a light switch, for example, will be exposed to IEC.”
He knows that these types of videos would be a gamechanger for the high school construction instructors he interacts with on a daily basis. He’d be able to direct them to lessons on conduit bending or a three-way circuit presented by true experts.
Jared, while grateful for the entry into the world of social media, is most appreciative of lessons learned from the program overall. He cites personal growth in four areas — patience, prioritization, communication, and being heard.
“I volunteered to be a project manager for the Emerging Leaders program, in many ways because I felt it would keep me committed to the long haul,” Jared admits. “It meant I would be responsible for other individuals and seeing the project through.”
That’s where the patience lessons took hold as the program started with 16 Emerging Leaders — each with different personalities, different emotions, and different ways of doing things. Jared says that’s a big group to manage.
“Prioritization kind of goes hand in hand with patience,” he says, “I learned more about myself and the saying ‘if you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together.’ I had to prioritize people’s strengths, people’s weaknesses, think through who would be best in certain situations, and prioritize timelines and the steps we needed to take.”
Communication was key Jared says and another area where different communication styles of the Emerging Leaders needed to be considered and mastered.
“The last big one for me was being heard,” Jared summarizes. “Everybody has an idea, and some people didn’t speak up at first with their ideas while others were very quick to speak up. Every single time somebody opened their mouth to talk about the project, they had good ideas, good intentions. Speak up and be heard and this might trigger an idea in somebody else’s mind. I’ve taken this lesson back to the job and tried to improve my interactions with my boss, electricians, apprentices, other project managers, and general construction companies.”
In a short time, the 2024 Emerging Leaders expanded their known abilities, mastered new skills, and established lasting connections. Congrats to:
George Balcombe, APG, IEC Florida West Coast
Jonathan Campos, Core Electrical Group, IEC San Antonio
Jared Dziak, Independent Mechanical, IEC Pennsylvania
Tucker Edwards, Circle Electric, IEC San Antonio
Laura Hildreth, IEC Fort Worth
Hance Joiner, IEC Georgia
Ryan Landacre, Hill Electric, IEC San Antonio
Bethany Lerch, Greater Charlotte IEC
Chad Mazzei, R&A Enterprises, Western Colorado IEC
Trent Puleo, All Phase Electric and Maintenance, Inc., IEC Florida West Coast
Brett Reyes, IEC Rocky Mountain
Brandon Slover, Fayette Electrical Service, IEC of the Bluegrass
Zach Sowards, Kings Electric, IEC of Greater Cincinnati
Michael Timm, Kilgore Industries, IEC Texas Gulf Coast