The logistic sector is expanding and is expected to continue its 28% growth rate into 2031. These new jobs require different skills.
Where will companies find employees with these skills?
The story of how Alex Dipenti increased his skill set while working at Amazon is a blueprint for how the sector answers this question.
In high school, Dipenti had high enough grades to qualify for a program which allowed him to simultaneously attend community college during his junior and senior years. He chose mechanical engineering. He was armed with one and a half years of education in his desired field at graduation.
However, as is often the case, he was sidelined in pursuing his career and ended up working in fast food. Then he found Amazon. “I didn’t realize the advanced level of robotics that was used at the warehouse,” he said. “I didn’t know that I would be able to acquire the skills I needed for the job I wanted at the company.”
While working full-time at Amazon, he enrolled at a course that was offered online by Unmudl, a company that provided a portal that was specific to the skills needed for career growth at Amazon.
It took about three months, studying eight hours a week to get the technical job he wanted. His interest in the field was sparked and he wanted to learn more, so he applied for a job at another level up and will start that job just six months after his first technical job. He’s not done. In six months, he is eligible to pursue a bachelor’s degree, with monetary support from Amazon, and plans to stay at Amazon so he can continue in the area of robotic design.
He is amazed by his progress, which includes working at home on designing a robot. “Two years ago, I was working at a fast-food job, and wasn’t even thinking of my career, and now I’m taking advantage of every learning opportunity offered to me so I can have the career I always wanted.”
This success story, which is spreading across industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, aviation, and field services is due to a carefully designed network of education opportunities that precisely match skills to available jobs.
Anatomy of the Network
Unmudl, a public benefit corporation, was developed by Dr. Parminder Jassal, with five community colleges to address the skills gap between job requirements and traditional education. In 2022 Unmudl partnered with Amazon and Central New Mexico Community College to launch the Unmudl Original Mechatronics course. This course addressed Amazon’s need to hire 1000 robotics maintenance Technician II positions yearly across various U.S. fulfillment centers.
The platform, which now connects 1100 community and technical colleges, offers a model for working learners to quickly obtain skills needed for hard-to-fill positions delivered via the skills to jobs marketplace.
“Unmudl Originals are distinct from traditional customized employer training programs in that they are designed to be a direct gateway for working learners to qualify for vacant positions that do not require a formal degree," explains Jassal. “At Unmudl we belive experience should count towards "Creds" and learners should get credit for any type of learning and experience such as experience cred, street credit, certifcations or credits from colleges. The bottom line is that people are learning the skills needed for the jobs they want. They can plot their own career course within the company and gain the necessary knowledge. Our motto is: Get Skills, Get Creds, Get jobs.”
Employer Advantages
As this network educates employees, it also offers employers a single point access to a large range of education sources to create a technical talent pipeline.
It addresses issues that many companies face in terms of the structure of their talent management strategy. Often the various parts of this process are operating independently from one another. For example, human resources handles some aspects, recruiters have their own process and people managing relationships with community colleges might not be connected to those other functions. The Unmudl platform combines all of these functions.
Creating a company specific portal that offers a detailed career development plan for current and future employees is especially important for younger workers who rate career development as a top priority. This clearly defined path allows employees to secure the skills aligned to their career track.
Perhaps the most value-added service that Unmudl provides is working with companies to help them develop a talent pipeline that takes into account the future skills need to match the changing job requirements, by offering a wide range of courses online.
In the case of logistics jobs, most employees are drawn from the local workforce. The opportunity to reskill and upskill local talent is essential. Using a platform that allows employees to attend local labs, or do online work, solves the issue for many people who are unable to leave jobs to further their education. And tuition reimbursement can help as well. For example, Amazon will reimburse a newly hired technician for 100% of their course costs if the technician is hired within six months of completing their coursework at Unmudl with at least an 80% pass rate.
Best Practices
What employers need to do is ignite the interest that helped Dipenti re-discover his career. “Letting people know about the availability of these courses is the most important step,” says Dipenti. He was interested so he asked his fellow technicians how they got their jobs and was referred to Amazon’s career network program. While Dipenti said that was available on the company app, and posted around the building, it was his initiative to seek out the program.
The other piece of advice Dipenti would offer is letting future employees know how technical these operations are. “I didn’t realize the advanced level of operations of the facility,” he notes. “I thought I might be stuck packaging unless I had a management degree to move up. It turned out that if I was willing to work hard, I could train for the job I wanted.”
Looking forward, the industry will need to step up training given how automation is changing the skills landscape. “We are seeing that automation is bringing in more jobs, but they are different types of jobs," said Jassal. "And there are many more on the horizon. So, ensuring that employees have access to upskilling is imperative.”
While upskilling will make the sector competitive, Jassal sees upskilling as the way to make the US competitive. “I feel it’s matter of national security. We need to have trained talent so that we can provide what our country needs. We need to be self-reliant. During the pandemic we saw how dependent we were on others to provide what we needed and that shouldn’t be the case.”
And from a general perspective of the quality-of- life Jassal sees education as key. “If we ensure that every American has access to the education they need, we can ensure a higher quality-of- life and a better America.”
