Recruiting Young Remodelers Alaska

View part one in series: Off the Radar

Remodelers who lament the challenges of attracting new people to the profession often point to external factors — the demise of vocational education, the aging workforce, slackened work ethics — as the causes of their plight. By the same token, they identify educators, policy makers, parents, and other external entities as the desired agents of change.

Photo Credit: Michelle Thompson

Perhaps they should be looking in the mirror instead. In the highly fragmented remodeling industry, some of the most successful solutions to the skilled worker shortage are emerging from the bottom up, in modest but resourceful endeavors launched at the local level. These scrappy startups may seem inconsequential in the scheme of the $295 billion remodeling industry, but they're sustaining good companies and injecting them with bold new thinking for at least another generation or two. Collectively — and by the time the housing market is back on its feet — they might even help restore a sense of national luster to the building trades.

Here's a sampling of initiatives and opportunities, organized into four general categories:

• Education
• Training
• Recruitment
• Culture

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