While working a $15-an-hour job as security guard at a Caterpillar plant in Joliet, Ill., Ed Richardson knew he had to get more education and training to have a real shot at a career.
The Caterpillar plant where he worked had been planning to move most of its production to Mexico to cut costs. Richardson, 25 — who had already dropped out of a junior college in Texas — wanted to get back into school.
“I needed to look for a new opportunity, and without college or any formal training, it’s tough to find opportunities,” Richardson said.
So Richardson set up a job search on indeed.com. He used keywords such as “trainee” and “apprenticeship” — the latter term being an idea he got from other Caterpillar employees who told him that apprenticeships were how they had gotten into the company.
It was that keyword — apprenticeship — that caused Richardson’s job search results to come back one morning with an enticing ad.
The ad was for an apprenticeship at the Chicago offices of Aon, a global insurance company. Richardson easily met the qualifications.
“I immediately jumped at it because it said in the job description: ‘No corporate experience and no degree required,’” Richardson recalled.
