CareerConnect History

In 2004, Johnson Controls leadership recognized that the organization was in need of a long-term, diversity recruitment strategy that would help build our technician workforce for tomorrow. Each year Johnson Controls Building Efficiency group hires on average 1200 technicians nationwide. Couple this statistic with double-digit annual growth, a forecasted skilled labor shortage for the HVAC industry, (in large due to an aging workforce) and the lack of youth exploring careers in the skilled trades, we realized that the time to build a new program model was now.

CareerConnect began as a pilot program in 2004 at three colleges. The vision was to develop a partnership model that would result in a more employable graduate based on the student’s ability to learn from some of our materials, work on Johnson Controls equipment, and learn from our industry experts. This level of collaboration would help ensure that the students become familiar with the Johnson Controls brand and ultimately strive to be Johnson Controls technicians.

Today Johnson Controls has eight partner colleges and expects to double the program's size by October 2008.