Business View Magazine - October 2018

80 81 PREFERRED VENDOR n TKK, LLC www.tkkcommunications.com an actual wind farm and on the school-provided wind and telecom simulated towers. By December of last year, ARI had graduated its 3,000th student. “And we’re very close to 3,500 now,” Duff reports. “Over the course of the next year, we’re positioned to train and graduate, and put in front of employers, a thousand people, a year; the next year, about 1,500. The key to our program is our employer relationships.We work with all the big names. They interview and give job offers. The scalability is all there; it’s all de- mand driven. If we get employers that have a large tranche of new hires, we can expand our enrollment.We’re not just putting butts in seats - under our accreditation, we have to maintain a very high placement rate. So, we do a lot of vet- ting of the students coming in; making sure that they actually want to go to work and that they’re not here just to get some training.” “The product we are delivering is a motivated, experienced, and trained individual ready to start a new career,” Duff continues. “We are selective with enrollment because we don’t want to waste our time, the uninterested student’s time, the funding sources, or our employer partner’s time. Our success is not measured in profits. It is mea- sured by the success of our students and satisfac- tion of our employer partners. Our growth thus speaks for itself.” Last year, about 55 percent of ARI’s graduates AIRSTREAMS RENEWABLES, INC. went into telecom; about 40 percent into wind; and about five percent into other industrial sectors. “It’s important to rec- ognize that people graduating from high school, and especially the service members, more and more are being driven toward skilled vocational training,” Duff states. “It’s the skilled training programs, like ours, that can scale to meet the demand that the Ericssons, and SBAs, and SACWireless, and Comcasts, and AT&Ts - all of those com- panies have. Those demands aren’t going away and they’re all struggling to figure out how to fulfill them.We’re positioned as part of the supply chain to align with them in their hiring process with our process so it’s a smooth, seamless transition.” Over the course of the next year, we’re positioned to train and gradu- ate, and put in front of employers, a thousand people, a year; the next year, about 1,500. The key to our program is our employer relationships. JEFF DUFF PRESIDENT AND CFO