How MedCerts Is Training Teens for In-Demand Healthcare Jobs With Insights From Jennifer Kolb

They’re walking into. Today I am talking with Jen Kolb. She leads workforce development at MedCerts where students train for high demand careers in healthcare and it without the four year detour. How do we get young people into good jobs? Faster and smarter. This is what I want to know.

Once again, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining.

Jennifer Kolb: Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here today,

Kevin P. Chavous: uh, we’re gonna talk about MedCerts. Uh, it is a career based company that helps young people sort of. Think about and build toward a, uh, career in the healthcare industry. But I have to ask you, how did you become this career counseling guru?

What led you to this space?

Jennifer Kolb: It’s a fun question, and I asked myself how I got here too. Um, you know, being on the healthcare side, actually where this started for me was at a company called Talo. Um. You know, my initial trajectory post college, uh, go Clemson Tigers was into curriculum. Um, I was working for a math curriculum, um, company.

It was interesting, it was fun. I felt the urge to get into the education space. I saw what education could do, how it can change lives for people, how it can change and make generational impact. Um, and heard about a company called Talo that was helping. Early talent. Figure out what is their next step? How do they get into their future career?

How do they discover what opportunities are in front of them? Um, and kind of at about the time that I was hearing about Talu in my personal life, my, uh, younger brother was figuring out what his next steps looked like post high school. And I had come from a family of. Four year degree or what is success?

That is the only option. Whereas my brother was pushing a mold of that’s not the right fit for me, and he went to the local community college, took a welding program. He now has a very successful welding career where he’s overseas. He’s the chair of the welding department at his community college where he teaches.

But it was kind of like all the roads came together at the same time of. Hearing about this company that was doing something really progressive and early talent development and my own personal life kind of aligning at the same time. Um, and so now I’m in this space where, you know, every day here at Med Certs and healthcare and healthcare it, we’re pushing the mold to say, how do we bring together high schools, nonprofit organizations, community colleges?

Universities and employers, um, to build partnerships where we can educate our future workforce. The people sitting in high school classrooms now about how they get into careers, and especially in in healthcare, not your traditional doctor or nurse. There are so many other opportunities. So, um, that’s kind of how it, it kind of, you know, work things work in a funny way of where they all lead you to where you’re supposed to go.

Um, and I think it was a matter of a professional and personal things come together right at the right time.

Kevin P. Chavous: What’s fascinating about that, Jen, is. Now, believe it or not, we’re from different generations, but our experience was similar, that my generation wholly believed that if you could get to college, get a four year degree or advanced degree, then that was your ticket or pathway to success and a meaningful career and a good life.

And, but something has happened over the last. 10 to 15 years. That has changed. And I was fascinated to hear about your brother’s experience. ’cause I hear that all over, uh, you know, I have three sons and my tour, the sons did the traditional approach. My youngest son said, eh, not for me. And, but that’s not an unusual phenomenon.

What do you think is driving this whole. Sort of see change in how, uh, school age children or young people, uh, are questioning the value of advanced educational pursuits.

Jennifer Kolb: I think there’s a lot of factors that I. That go into it, but at least from the conversations that I’m a part of, they’ve seen their parents try to navigate this road.

What do I do with that college degree if I had one? How am I paying off debt? They, they, I think probably this generation now is being even more transparent about what student loan that is. Uh, yeah, absolutely. And

Kevin P. Chavous: let me jump in for a quick moment. For a lot of students, the traditional model just isn’t the right fit.

That’s why more than 3 million families have chosen K 12 power schools, offering flexible tuition free learning options with certified teachers and a personalized approach that meets learners where they are. If that sounds worth exploring, you can head to k12.com/podcast. Alright, back to the conversation.

Jennifer Kolb: Now. I think of just something simple like buying your first car. It’s, it’s not as easy as it used to be. You take that and you know about the same time of doing something like that. You’re also talking about where am I gonna go to college? If I’m gonna go to college. The, I think the conversations just look different now.

Um, and things. Are a lot more expensive. Um, and I think the landscape with high schools is changing too, where they’re bringing in more employers, they’re having more, um, career conversations with high schools where they’re thinking about what they wanna do. I think also too, I. TikTok, I’m not on it. I’m not an expert in TikTok, but TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat has kind of changed the trajectory of what am I gonna do when I graduate?

I think it’s inspired a little bit of this entrepreneurial spirit with these high school students that we haven’t seen before.

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I think that social media has played a big role. Young people say, wait a minute. You know, I see, you know, a, a certain lifestyle I want, and I see other people get it.

Just get getting it just because they have a, a novel idea or a fun idea and they’re making a living on it. But the other thing in terms of the career development, uh. The educational system, I’m not knocking higher ed, but they haven’t kept up with the pace of where young people are headed and, and these other images that they’re looking at.

For instance, uh, there there are classic examples. You know, this where young people, uh, can make more money. If they graduate from high school with a certification in computer science as opposed to having a four year college degree in computer science. So, you know, the reality is if a kid can get into a career pathway in the computer science space as a sophomore or junior, get a certification.

And make more money than their peer who has these debts graduating from college in the same area. I mean, it sort of speaks for itself. So we’re going through this whole kind of reckoning in terms of, you know, what is a practical and meaningful option for young people. Uh, nowhere is that more apparent, I think, than in the healthcare space.

I mean, uh, when, when, when I met with the founder of MedCerts and folks years ago and heard what. They were doing, uh, is tailor made for young folks to talk about MedCerts.

Jennifer Kolb: Yeah, absolutely. To your point of you can have a certification and have a very high wage, we’ve seen.

Sign on bonuses for surgical technologists, which you can be prepared for to start the day. You graduate high school as high as 2025, $30,000.

Kevin P. Chavous: Bonuses.

Jennifer Kolb: Bonuses, sign on bonuses just for taking the job. Yes, yes. Now, see,

Kevin P. Chavous: I’m going to quote you on that. Well, I’m gonna use it. I may not quote you, but

Jennifer Kolb: it’s true.

It’s out there. I seen it. My jaw drops. I immediately email them and say, let. Yeah, it’s incredible. So to your question though, of MedCerts, what we do, um, you know, traditionally MedCerts has been in the adult education space. We’ve trained over a hundred thousand folks across all 50 states. We average about 15,000 new students a year.

Um, but about two years ago now, we were. Faced with a really interesting challenge in my home state, Pennsylvania. Um, there is a school district in Harrisburg, Cumberland Valley School District, and their local CTE was full, their brick and mortar was full, and there were many students who needed to be on a high school path, or I’m sorry, on a healthcare path for those high school students.

So Superintendent Mark Blanchard. Uh, you know, what do we do? What do we do with these high school students? Um, and so the solution at that point was to bring MedCerts in as an online solution, solving the seat sort shortage that those CTEs are having locally to say students can work. On a MedCerts program, uh, working towards a certification, we actually brought in a local employer, UPMC.

They’re the largest nonprofit healthcare system in the state. UPMC looked at the catalog of MedCerts programs and said, Hey, if students take this, this, or this program, we can support them for a clinical and potentially job placement. At least give them an interview. And so with that, uh, we saw a very successful model to.

Bring this adult education program into a high school classroom? Yep. Every, every school across the state, different regions, they all have different models of how CTE is set up. Um, but often we see students in healthcare just taking courses. Maybe they’re taking a CNA program that leads to a state licensure, but for the most.

Part, they’re not actually sitting for a national certification that leads to a job as soon as they graduate. So what we’re doing in the high school space is really challenging that to say actually within, while they’re still in the walls of that high school, they can work on their. Self-paced MedCerts program.

Take a series of courses that leads to a national certification test before they even graduate, or as soon as they do graduate, and then be ready to start in a job as soon as they’re done. So started with how do we solve a need for, for students who need support right now? Um, and since over the past couple of years, it’s really expanded.

We’re in many states helping many high schools. Schools bringing in employer connections. Um, before we go live with a program, we’ll have kind of an exploratory night where students and guardians and parents can learn about jobs that are available and what these certifications lead to when it comes to jobs.

Um, and it’s, it’s been really fun. It’s really fun to hear the stories of, of where it’s taking students and what they’re doing. Post high school graduation.

Kevin P. Chavous: So let me get a little granular, uh, because there may be some school leaders listening, uh, across the country. How do you integrate what you’re doing into a career pathway program at a typical high school?

I mean, let’s say you talked about getting together and, and exploring things, but practically what does it look like? Because so many of these schools are at a different, different stages in their career pathway development. I’m sure that’s part of your assessment process, but if, if, if I was a school superintendent and a medium sized school district, hear you.

What would you tell them in terms of how you could potentially help them?

Jennifer Kolb: Yeah, so step one, let’s look at the curriculum you have now. See where med certs aligns. Are there gaps or can we expand the CTE offerings you have? Um, expand, or, I’d say also supplement, so right, if, if, uh, a high school already maybe has a.

One singular course. Maybe they offer professionalism in allied health or anatomy and medical terminology. What we could do is supplement that with a certification pathway. So we would just evaluate the landscape of the curriculum to say, okay, what are you already offering versus what do you need to offer new?

Um, and then also too, one thing that’s really important is we look at clinical. Support and employers in the local area. Um, because ultimately we evaluate success by job placement. We want the high school students. We’re training and certifying to have a job when they leave, and so we wanna make sure we’re setting up programs that are in demand for that local community.

So. I, I believe, and speaking of quoting me, I believe the stat is about 55% of students in, uh, urban cities. Now, if they are part of a CTE program, they’ll go into the workforce as soon as they graduate. But where we see the biggest help and biggest need probably right now is in our rural communities where a college is not in a drivable location.

CTE. Brick and mortars are full, and we need to meet students where they’re at in that they can work based on extracurricular activities, they can work on their program, on their schedule. Maybe it’s a summer program that the school is even hosting. Um. And so there’s flexibility in how we set things up

Kevin P. Chavous: and And it’s virtual.

It’s

Jennifer Kolb: all virtual. All virtual. All virtual, yeah. Self-paced. Self-paced in that either we can match the timing of, uh, a school schedule or it can be an afterschool program. Where students are working on their own schedule. Um, but we’d work to map out the curriculum. We would work to map out the scheduling, and we’d wanna work to map out any clinical support needed from a local employer there in their backyard.

Um, but that’s it, you know, the, the MedCerts program, uh. Is pretty off the shelf, if you will, in that our content is built with subject matter experts from the field, from our own internal team, um, folks that specialize in instructional design. Um, it’s a really neat program. We actually just introduced our first AI patient experience, so a student can talk to an AI patient and ask questions such as, what brought you in here today?

Tell me about your family medical history and then in real time get graded on soft skills such as critical thinking, communication. Um, so it’s a really immersive, interactive learning environment for students. Once they get through the program, they set for their certification and then they’re well on their way to a job.

Kevin P. Chavous: Just to clarify, uh, so once you do this assessment, and you can either work on getting certifications for an existing program, a school may have, but where you fill in the gaps, you have your own teachers and instructors that can help with them. With that,

Jennifer Kolb: we, so our programs are asynchronous. They’re instructor led videos, but we don’t provide an actual educator.

Kevin P. Chavous: I see. Yeah. And I think that’s important,

Jennifer Kolb: important call out and not necessarily needed. Um, so you don’t have to staff that room with a certified teacher. A, it could be if it’s in a not for credit example. So maybe the student’s getting high. Elective credit at their high school, not actual curriculum credit.

Then what we’ve seen is even just putting counselors in the room, you know, have a facilitator in the classroom, but you don’t need a former registered nurse. You don’t need someone who’s an expert in the field to facilitate the curriculum because that is facilitated by us.

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah. And as long as the content is where it needs to be and will build you toward, uh, potential certification.

Let me ask you this, you said something earlier that I was struck by because so many people, uh, don’t understand the depth and breadth of the healthcare industry job potential. Uh, you said it’s not just, you know, doctors and nurses. Uh, what are some of the careers in the healthcare space that are emerging?

Because many of them are attractive to young people and many of them you mentioned the bonuses. They’re in high demand. Oh yeah.

Jennifer Kolb: Oh yeah. Um, so some of our most popular ones, especially for high school students, medical assistant phlebotomist, it’s a person taking your blood. EKG technician. That’s a person checking your heart.

Um, two really fun ones. Sterile processing. Really interesting. That

Kevin P. Chavous: sounds a little dangerous. So what does that mean?

Jennifer Kolb: It’s not dangerous. Uh, it’s really interesting. Think of whenever you’re going into, into an or. There are tools and instruments used by the doctors in the room. Where do those tools come from?

Often in the basement, in a very sterile environment with very strict processes and guidelines of how those instruments get into that, or for surgery there. Um, I, I compare to the manufacturing industry, sterile processing is like the manufacturing world of the hospital. Hospital, very process oriented, very regimented.

Um, really, really neat. And we have all these videos on our website where students can explore what these jobs look like, what’s a day in the life. Um, another popular one for high school students is our surge tech program. Um, where that is the person actually handing and supporting the doctor in the or.

So, uh, not for the faint of heart. If you don’t like blood, um, or if you think you want to be in healthcare and don’t like blood, I always tell those students think about like front office administrator, you can wear scrubs, but you don’t. You don’t have to deal with the blood.

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah. Yeah. You know, that’s all really interesting and um.

Since MedCerts started in the adult education field where adults may have been in one career and they wanted to switch over into healthcare, how has that transition been in terms of now, uh, providing this similar service to. Students. Yeah,

Jennifer Kolb: they’re so fast and eager and they just are sponges when it comes to absorbing the content.

Uh, what we saw with our very first pilot is they finished in record time and they said, can I do another one? Um, so, you know, in the adult education space, we see a lot of. Like you said, career transition. So maybe you’ve been a transporter in a hospital system, moving people from room to room, bed to bed, and then you wanna, uh, you know, transition into maybe a medical assistant role.

There was a lot of career changes, um, but in high school, what’s really fun to watch is I. This is their first introduction. This is their first time getting into healthcare. And the best part from my perspective is most healthcare systems today have an employee benefit called 52 50, and that is, uh, dollars that the employer provides for someone to continue their education.

So. By offering our certifications while students are still in high school, it gets their foot in the door for the first time in healthcare. They can get familiar with the organization, familiar with how things work, decide where they wanna go, what does that career ladder look like for them, and then rather than having to pay out a pocket to go to college themselves and get to that next step and the next step.

They can actually use their employee benefit 52 50. And MedCerts as we’ve launched our high school initiative, we ha we know is equally important that students aren’t just getting this certification because so much in healthcare does still require a degree. So we’ve built a net network of universities that will give college credit to students for having completed our programs.

So. Once they can use this from a high school perspective, it’s, it’s like their launch, their launchpad, you know, they just can get into that system, use their employee benefit, get credit for their certification, go to college. And when I think about high school leadership, principals, superintendents, counselors, it’s one thing to get a student to the next step.

But where are they gonna be? Five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road? That’s our community, right? That’s our economy. Those folks are impacting what we do collectively every day in our neighborhoods, at our baseball games, everywhere. Uh, and so that’s what we wanna build, not just, Hey, you go from high school to job, but you go from high school to job to career.

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah. So Jen, uh, one of the thing I want to ask you about, and that’s the idea of, uh, of, of building a network. Of employers who can provide internships, job shadowing experiences. And you mentioned the fact that if you were talking to a superintendent in, in some, some state, uh, you would do an assessment of what the employer base looked like to see where you could.

Fill in the gaps. Uh, how has that process been going in terms of developing that network? ’cause my understanding is that a lot of these employers now are really running to the high school career tech space because of the shortage of skill certified, uh, employee employees. That they’re able to find. So talk a little bit about how you’re able to build this sort of group of employers who can fill this role.

Jennifer Kolb: Yeah. It has been super interesting to watch this change over the years. If I think two, three years ago, the buzz word was apprenticeships. That, that, that is what everyone knew as a K 12 student getting into the workforce. They were probably part of an apprenticeship. Now I see a change in healthcare where we’re skipping right over apprenticeship and just how do I get in the classroom?

How? How does that high school student know our healthcare system, know our logo, know that we’re gonna be a warm, friendly. Face place for them to come work when they graduate. Um, so it’s interesting. We don’t have to do a lot of arm twisting, you know, if we, it’s really more or less, the hardest part is like, how do we make schedules work for all of us to get on a call together?

Um, hospitals, healthcare systems, what we’re seeing are. So interested in this early talent because what they’re doing right now is competing over the same certified talent. And that’s why we talked about it earlier. You see 20, 25, $30,000 sign-on bonuses because they’re just stealing talent from each other.

So they know to win this long game, they’re gonna have to create the skilled talent that they need. There’s just not enough coming out of our traditional higher ed spaces. Um, and we know now too, we’ve learned a lot over the past couple of years of, it doesn’t take two years to become a surgical technologist.

It doesn’t take two to four years to become a medical assistant. You can get the proper hands-on training in a healthcare system. Paired with the proper didactic training to be a really great medical assistant, to be a really great surgical technologist. So I think it’s a combination of healthcare systems knowing that they have to do something to make the change.

And just finding out how do we get connected with the high school, and this is where we can kind of bridge both, right, is we can bring our high school partners, we can bring our employer partners. Um, MedCerts today works with a network of over 400 to 500 healthcare systems across the country. So it’s really just a matter of pairing.

Okay. What job openings do you have? To a drivable high school and then and building out a curriculum around that.

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah, it’s fascinating. So Jen, I have one last question. This is what I really want to know, and it relates to the young person’s perspective. We talked about the employers and we talked about superintendents, but if you’re a young person in high school and.

Many of them don’t know at 15, 16, 17 what they want to do. There are things they like, but they’re not sure how. What do you recommend? What approach do you recommend they take even to explore something they may like? Because sometimes young people may not be sure if it’s the right move, but my understanding is that.

School engagement improves once a decision is made to at least explore some career pathway. Talk a little bit about what advice you would give to high school students who are trying to figure it out and think that maybe a healthcare pathway may add some benefit to

Jennifer Kolb: them. Absolutely. Uh, be curious. Ask questions, find a mentor, go shadow someone.

Um, I think it, high school students would be really surprised how many yeses they would get. They went up to adults and said, what do, what do you do in that building? What do you do day to day? Can I watch you? Can I shadow you? Um, and just think about not what your friends are saying, not what the person over there is is looking at doing, but.

When you think about yourself 10 years, 15 years, 20 years down the road, what does that look like? Where do you wanna be? Who do you wanna be? Um, and know that you might not get it right the first time. There are so many folks we work with that change careers. One thing I find is. Very interesting is, um, you know, we have students that request a copy of their transcript because they are continuing their education post MedCerts and a very, very high volume of those students are actually pursuing business degrees.

They start getting their foot in the door in a healthcare system, and then they wanna transition into a business or administrative role still in the healthcare field. So, you know, I think about things like, I think often we bucket high school students into, oh, you wanna be in manufacturing, or you wanna be in it, or you wanna be in healthcare.

But there are so many jobs within industries. So maybe think about. Not necessarily really pigeon your pigeonholing yourself into, um, a role, but think about an industry and then you can transition within that. You know, what is it that you like, what do you enjoy? Um, and then there are so many. Spaces within that industry.

Again, sticking with healthcare. There’s attorneys, there’s uh, real estate, there’s hr, there’s, there’s so many things that go into keeping a hospital and a healthcare system running. It’s not all about taking blood and being a medical assistant or a doctor or nurse. So those long-winded advice to a high school student, I dunno if they would stick with me that long, but be curious.

Explore. Um, and the final thing I would say is no, find someone to ask about your, your benefits and what is available to you when it comes to state and federal funding. I think that is the biggest missed opportunity. We have for our, our high school students right now, there are so many resources that are available and it’s really hard to find that information.

So ask a lot of questions. Google, find someone who can help you there, especially with what we’re seeing right now with the federal administration change. There’s gonna be a lot of responsibility on our high school. Schools to prepare our future workforce. I think historically the onus has been on us as consumers to say, okay, well, you figure out what you wanna do and you figure out where you go to school and you figure out how you get there.

But with these, these, uh, funding changes, we’re gonna see that a lot of that change is gonna happen where your school, your high school, is gonna try to help you and make sure you know about access and make sure you know the information to figure out, well, how do you get into the workforce and what does that look like?

Kevin P. Chavous: Yeah. Good advice, Jen. K. Thank you so much. Appreciate what you’re doing. I also appreciate you for joining us on what I want to know.

Jennifer Kolb: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Thanks

Kevin P. Chavous: for listening to What I Want to know. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app so you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education and write a review of the show.

I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know using hashtag WI WT K on social media. That’s #WIWTK. For more information on Stride and online education, visit stride learning.com. I’m your host, Kevin Peach. Chavis. Thank you for joining. What I want to know.