Senator Donnelly to Talk Skills Gap in Fort Wayne

Senator Joe Donnelly will complete the final stop of his Closing the Skills Gap Tour today.

"We're here at Aptera with great folks, great company on a terrific growth curve.
One of the biggest challenges they have is finding people with enough skills to be
able to fill positions," Said Donnelly.

Donnelly will visit with employers and workers at Aptera in Fort Wayne to discuss how Indiana can meet the need for high-skill jobs currently going unfilled.

Due to the skills gap, an estimated 600,000 high-skill jobs across the country remain vacant. Senator Donnelly plans to work across the partisan divide to pass common sense legislation that will create more effective training and educational programs for workers to match the skills needed for these available jobs.

Aptera is a custom software and web marketing company based in Fort Wayne. TK Herman is the President of Aptera. He told WFFT, "We're looking for go-getters who are well-motivated who want to learn that don't have to be micro-managed that can help us push the company forward."

Herman says it is important not only to have technical skills but also to have people skills.

"We've got a really good culture we've built over the last ten years here at Aptera. So we're also really picky who we bring onboard. We're looking not only at the technical fit, do they have the technical skills to do the job, but also culturally, do they work with our company, " Said Herman.

Jon Fazzaro is a software Architect at Aptera. He told WFFT, "We need to teach code to kids. We need to start teaching them younger, and we need to get them caught up on some of these skills."

Senator Donnelly plans to bring that advice back to Washington. He is the co-sponsor of the American Works Act, a bipartisan bill aimed to tie the needs of American businesses to the curriculums of community colleges and job-training centers.

Donnelly says the bill, "targets federal dollars, federal education dollars to those areas where jobs are being created, where opportunities are going to be. So that's a concrete way to make sure every dollar is going to be spent prudently and that when it is spent it results in jobs here in Fort Wayne."