Connected and Focused

Tyshaun Troy’s journey into the construction industry began at Newton College and Career Academy, where he enrolled in a carpentry class “just to have it,” as he recalls. Then something unexpected happened in the class taught by Instructor Sonny Braswell: “I actually started to like building,” Tyshaun says. Still, he didn’t have a post-graduation plan other than a possible managerial role at McDonalds, where he had worked part-time.

Then Aja Gower, Workforce Development Manager for Holder Construction, spoke to Braswell’s carpentry class during a career day event. She told the students about Hard Hat in Hand, a new partnership that would take attendees through Construction Ready’s 20-day Pre-Apprenticeship curriculum.

After completing the training, graduates would then spend 20 days working for Holder on the Meta Data Center project in Social Circle, 45 miles east of Atlanta. Having enjoyed his high school construction experience, Tyshaun jumped at the opportunity and signed up.

Out in the field, he found the Construction Math portion of the training to be critical to his work. “It was pretty easy for me to transition from the class straight to work, because it taught me [how to read a tape measure],” he says.

Tyshaun gained a lot of valuable experience during that summer job in 2022, including framing a wall for the first time. This was no ordinary residential wall, but rather a 20- to 25-foot-high by 30- to 40-foot-long structure. As he stepped back to admire his finished work, he thought, “I did that!”

Today Tyshaun is a Carpentry Apprentice with Anning-Johnson Company, a connection he made at the Construction Ready program’s hiring fair. He began work as a laborer – mostly cleaning up debris and moving material around the jobsite – but he soon earned a spot in the company’s in-house apprenticeship program, thanks to what A-J Operations Administrator Edwin Parra calls his “positive attitude, ability to work well with others, and ability to catch on quickly.”

For his part, Tyshaun quietly goes about his work according to two personal principles – “Connect with everybody you meet and do the work” – and his work hasn’t gone unnoticed. As of March 2024, Tyshaun was in the third of the program’s four phases and on track to become a Certified Carpenter in 2025. He also was recognized as a Graduate of the Year in Construction Ready’s 2023 Champion Awards program.

“He’s just scratched the surface on where he’s going,” says Parra (pictured at right with Tyshaun at the Champion Awards ceremony). “There is a five-year pathway set out for him to take to go from entry-level to management.”

Tyshaun embraces the daily challenges that come with his profession, and he says he enjoys “being able to think on my own – if there’s a problem, being able to solve it. [For example] if there’s like an obstacle in the way while we’re framing, how can we fix it so that we still get our work done and not mess any other trades work up?”

No doubt there are other young men and women out there with a future in the skilled trades – even if, as Tyshaun once was, they are unaware of it.

Asked what he would tell someone who has discovered Construction Ready’s Pre-Apprenticeship program but is unsure whether to pursue it, Tyshaun says to go for it: “It’s an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up.”