Alice Culin-Ellison has three music degrees and before the pandemic, worked full-time as a freelance violinist. That changed when Covid-19 hit in March 2020.
"My entire inbox was cancellations," Culin-Ellison said. "All of my income for the foreseeable future was gone."
Intrigued by the idea of a career shift and finding a job she could do remotely, Culin-Ellison enrolled in a 14-week coding bootcamp program to learn software development. That led to the opportunity to join a software apprentice program with Kohl's Corp., which kicked off in June 2021.
Culin-Ellison was among the first 10 software development apprentices for Menomonee Falls-based Kohl's (NYSE: KSS). She and two other apprentices have since been hired as Kohl's employees and the others are on track to complete their training and get hired by Kohl's in June.
The department store chain announced Tuesday it's running another software development apprenticeship cohort this year with a goal of hiring 11 additional technology associates. The program is a strategy for bridging the tech talent gap in a labor market where technology talent is particularly difficult to find.
“Kohl’s first cohort of apprentices has shown great promise and strong results even amidst the global pandemic and shift to remote work, proving it to be a viable piece of our talent strategy,” Kohl’s chief technology and supply chain officer Paul Gaffney said in a statement Tuesday.
Among the first cohort of the Kohl's software apprentices, 85% had no previous academic background in technology and 25% had no college degree, according to Kohl's. They're located in Wisconsin, Florida, Kentucky and Texas, among other locations.
Culin-Ellison, 35, was an apprentice on the Kohl's user interface frameworks team. She was paired with a mentor and a manager from the company and said she was able to start contributing within days.
"I was, from the beginning, absolutely set up for success," Culin-Ellison said. "Everybody included me on everything and it was totally okay that I didn't know what was going on. ... I had people who were willing to answer any questions I had."
In January, Kohl's hired Culin-Ellison as an associate software engineer. She works remotely from Louisville and as music performance opportunities have come back, the remote job affords her flexibility to travel for gigs as needed.
The apprenticeship program is a partnership between Kohl's, the Milwaukee Tech Hub Coalition and Apprenti, a nonprofit apprenticeship organization registered with the U.S. Department of Labor.
The coalition has a $385,000 grant from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development to fund the program and is using the money to help participating employers offset upfront training costs.
Kohl's was the first Milwaukee-area employer to pilot the model and other local employers, including Associated Bank and the Medical College of Wisconsin, which have since launched tech apprenticeships, too.
Apprentices complete a 14-week training through Apprenti and then typically do a year of paid, on-the-job training. The second Kohl's tech apprenticeship cohort started their Apprenti training in March and will begin on-the-job training in June.
