Cuyahoga County continues to streamline its process to support local businesses and to provide residents with career paths. One recent example is the work that Cuyahoga County’s innovative new workforce training program, SkillUp, and the County’s youth internship program did to support Motorcars Honda. Through a coordinated effort, the County helped Motorcars meet a talent supply need and created career and wage advancement opportunities for internship program participants.

“This is an example of the benefits of a coordinated approach to solving workforce issues,” said Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish. “By supplying Motorcars with candidates from the internship program, the County helped the company meet a business need while also creating opportunities for our residents to get into good, sustaining jobs.”

Motorcars Honda first worked with SkillUp to develop their revolutionary service assembly line system, but it became apparent that Motorcars had another need: talent. Once the service assembly line system was developed, Motorcars expressed a need for people with technical and soft skills the company could train to become Honda Certified Express Technicians.

“As a growing business, we have a high demand for skilled workers,” said Motorcars Honda General Manager Trevor Gile. “Our unique Express Service assembly line makes it more efficient to fill that need by training candidates ourselves, from scratch.”

Members of the SkillUp team saw Motorcars’ talent need as an opportunity to have a larger impact in the County and connected Motorcars with the County’s youth internship program, which provides teens and young adults with high-quality work experience that propels them on a career path.

The County recently transformed its internship program from a summer jobs program to a paid internship program with the goal of providing teens and young adults with jobs that set them on paths to successful careers. The continued investment in workforce programs helps the County ensure that young people in Cuyahoga County are on their way to successful careers while businesses get a pipeline of candidates for vacant positions.

“For the interns, this represents a way to learn an in-demand trade from factory-trained experts, and without incurring the debt that typically comes with college or vocational school,” said Gile.

By connecting Motorcars to the County youth internship program and providing incentives to offset training costs, SkillUp supported business growth for Motorcars and created career and wage advancement opportunities for residents participating in the internship program.

“Regional growth and economic opportunity go hand-in-hand,” said Budish. “Continuing to take a coordinated approach to workforce propels the entire region forward.”

About SkillUp

SkillUp is a free workforce training and business advisory service offered by the Cuyahoga County Department of Economic Development that helps companies identify business problems, create solutions, train employees for skilled, hard-to-fill jobs, and drive business results. Employers interested in participating in SkillUp can find more information here.

About Youth Internship Program

The internship program is a consortium of workforce providers led by Youth Opportunities Unlimited (Y.O.U.) and funded by the County that aims to provide teens and young adults with jobs, training, and education that serve as a pipeline to career opportunities. More information on the internship program is available here.