Alyssa Stone is 18-years old. She is an Instructors Assistant in the Residential Construction program at the Career Technical Education Center (CTEC) in Salem - a position she began when she was 17 and still in high school. Through the International Code Council (ICC) she serves as the President of the Chemeketa Chapter and was selected as a 2022 ICC Board Shadow recipient. She has spoken at ICC events and is certified as a Residential Building Inspector, a Residential Plans Examiner, a Residential Mechanical Inspector, and a Permit Technician. She has experience with ceiling grid installations at Modern Building Systems (MBS) in Aumsville, Oregon and has led electrical inspectors through inspections in the factory.
[Photo: Alyssa Stone (right) at the ICC Annual Business Meeting in Louisville, KY with Brian Cisneros (left) and Michele Linbarger (middle).]
But she can’t get hired as an inspector because of her age and lack of on-the-job experience even though the field she is applying to can’t find enough workers.
Alyssa grew up in an affluent area of Oregon where careers in the medical profession are pushed hard. In middle school she dreamt of taking a woodshop class but was urged by her parents down other paths they hoped would lead to nursing school.
The problem was that Alyssa didn’t want to be a nurse. She couldn’t stomach some of the things a nurse would need to do. So she wrote a 2 ½ page essay to her parents explaining why they should allow her to attend the Construction Trades program at CTEC. She explained how the English course would teach employability skills (resume building, interview skills, etc.). She addressed her father’s concern that the math would be too easy by explaining how she would build her math skills through engineering. And after the third essay, her parents finally agreed to let her attend.
When Alyssa started the Construction Trades program at CTEC she knew how to read plans but had no experience in the trades. Her instructor, Curtis Fisher, suggested she go into the Building Inspections program where she read the entire International Residential Code (IRC) book and said she “found it interesting”.
During her senior year, Alyssa was hired by Alan Rasmussen at MBS where she worked in the ceiling grid station - an area which she knew nothing about.
“I didn’t realize how efficient working in a factory setting was,” she says. Her only previous experience was building a shed at CTEC that took an entire year to complete. “Yes, we were getting a lot of education and it was built well, but it was a slow process. At [MBS] the modules I was working on yesterday were being shipped [the next day].
She also loved the learning process in a factory setting. When her station was ahead of schedule she would wander over to the cabinets, finishing or roofing stations to see if they needed help and was able to learn from them.
“I have a passion to just do more and learn more and grow - especially as a teacher. I wanted to learn as much as I could at [MBS].”
Because of her plan reading experience she also worked with the electricians installing light fixtures into the ceiling grids. She prepared all the electrical lighting inspections by doing pre-checks and removing panels so that inspectors could complete their verifications. Not surprisingly, the inspectors Alyssa worked with were incredibly impressed by the amount of knowledge she had at her age.
Alyssa wants to become an electrical inspector - something that is apparently very difficult to achieve in the State of Oregon. Besides not having the required five years of inspection experience, she is finding it difficult to get hired because of her age. Landing an interview is difficult because most applications require a certain number of years experience or certifications to be considered. She doesn’t feel like people take her seriously because she is 18 and finds that many do not believe she has the knowledge necessary to do “the job” even though she has been leading electrical inspections, teaching for over a year and has multiple ICC inspection certifications under her belt. All of this in addition to the on-the-job experience she has gained from CTEC and MBS.
The county Alyssa currently lives in is experiencing a shortage of electrical and plumbing inspectors, much like other areas of the country. She would love to obtain her plumbing and electrical inspection certifications but that would require her to become a journeyman. She is considering this option but it would make the path to becoming an inspector much longer. Alternatively, she would need 5 years of experience doing plumbing and electrical inspections out of state so she is considering Vancouver, WA, Seattle and Boise. But that option would mean she would have to leave her position at CTEC.
She is also working as an unpaid intern for the city of Silverton doing all the office work because they don’t have a permit technician. They also don’t have enough people on staff to provide her with on-the-job training.
If labor challenges are such a struggle, why aren’t we working to remove the roadblocks that have been put in place that would allow someone to move more quickly into a position that has remained unfilled? We have “prescriptive” building codes and “non-prescriptive” solutions to meet that code… why don’t we have the same flexibility and options for “qualified applicants”?
Why do we put so much emphasis on degrees or on particular lengths of time that someone has to do something before we are convinced they understand how to do it?
Why is it that a young person who has sought out knowledge and experience and has put in the work still cannot get hired out of high school for a position that no one else is applying to?
What can we do to fast-track young people who are eager to fill the positions we need filled?
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic as well as any solutions that are providing positive results.
A portion of this was previously published on Offsite Builder.