Tradeshows
Career Connections
The big picture for us is to create a website to be a central location for jobs, career and education awareness in Nebraska. We also want to promote Nebraska as a place to learn, earn and live both for current residents and to attract new residents.
One of the tools we have started to develop is the nebraskacareerconnections.org. Right now our website is not complete. Partnerships endorsements are essential. Has anyone ever tracked a career pathway? It’s part of the conversation we have to have. I’ve never done this.
If you look at how young people are today, you see that they stay in a job for one year. How do you fit that reality into the career pathway model?
We wanted to focus on the milestones to accomplish. We want to have a formal launch with a celebration. We want to increase the visibility and implement these new tools. Social networking is where young people are today. We would do a disservice to not include this for anything that we want to create connectivity.
Our success measures are what we need to be able to say that this is a success. We included talent development numbers. If you look at the new reports you’ll see an increase of 12,000 unfilled jobs a year. If you look at the 78 to 55 ratio, which is 78 million people who are retiring and only 55 million people who will take their jobs.
To me, economic development is how we fill these jobs. Anything that helps us with that is included here. The website metrics will help us track where people are going on the site and what they’re using. With metrics you can find out exactly how many people are going to which tabs and how long they’re staying there.
Any questions?
Q: How does this connect to the real world?
A: My understanding of how this works is that there are 3500 pilot students who are using this for their careers. They are engaged with counselors right now.
This gives kids a brief introduction and if they develop an interest there are pathways for them to take. The issue is if we can get it into all the schools in the same way.
Q: What do you use to keep track of professional opportunities?
A: One thing I like to do is to remind employers, is that a lot of applications come by word of mouth.
If you use career link, then you create a revenue stream.
Q: If you’re looking for a particular job and have a link to career connections which shows them more opportunities for schools or options that fit their interests that would be helpful.
A: Absolutely. We have significant turnover in the engineering industry. The way to evaluate talent is to bring them in early when they’re figuring out what they want to do with their careers. That was essential for me.
Q: When I asked my niece what she wanted to do and the choice is between being a model or a doctor, how can she figure out what she has aptitude for? If she gets into high school and decides she doesn’t like math, then she hasn’t spent those years working on what she wants to. We don’t have programs in fifth grade where she can figure this out.
A: Right. We need to make this more available.
Comment: We should also take advantage of Second Life.
We need a reeducation program for parents.
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Talent Pipeline
Our big picture is to engage and educate all Nebraskans about the career opportunities in our great state that focus on high skills, high wage and high demand.
We want to expand the talent pool because of the labor and workforce shortages, we want to focus on non-traditional workers and immigrants. Somewhat tied to this is how to apply what you learn to real world contexts. We also need to engage teachers to know what real world is in this way.
We want to have collaboration between education and business. There is a fear factor here. A challenge of this is to think about retooling skills. As new careers pop up, we need to know how to help skill our workers.
The milestones we considered establishing a statewide program of teachers at a variety of levels at jobs or internships on a career pathway as part of their professional development. We want to establish business mentorships, enhanced partnerships both for teachers and students. We want to establish a statewide database of programs that offer the various resources. We want also a capability to share best practices through the website. We want to also increase the number of students enrolled in dual credit courses. We want all of these things done by 2010.
We have a list of metrics to so that we know whether we’ve been successful or not. If we were to imagine headlines for the paper we though see these couple of things would be wonderful.
We also took a cut at a template that all the pathway groups could use to help them organize their area. We would include areas for innovation and creativity, using technology that is bleeding edge and appropriate for the career pathway. We would have a list of skill sets required. Most of the pathways have done this. We also want them to develop dual credit courses. Another area is partnerships, such as citizen partnerships, high education, business and industry associations, apprenticeships and internships, career student organizations, non-profit organizations and community service organizations.
In order to connect all the pathway groups they should think of introducing the idea of entrepreneurship in students. They should collaboratively market what they’re doing so that they know each others’ work. We want to have relevance to real world experience. We want to focus on the common knowledge and skills. To assess the needs is an important to identify who is our target audience. We want to identify where the shortages currently exist and where they shortages will be in the future. We want to have local and regional coordination. We want to provide data review and to transition more effectively between high school and post secondary to employment.
Any comments?
Q: Do you want the career focus classes to be for credit?
A: It’s a consideration but right now there is no time for it especially at those levels.
Q: I think even at the junior high and high school levels, we need to make the students more aware of what’s available. Most parents still judge the success by whether or not go to a school in the eastern side of Nebraska. We have issues with this in the west.
A: They’re also telling the kids in eastern Nebraska that they need to leave the state. It’s a constant flow.
Q: We need to change the mentality of just placing kids in jobs but in their careers so that they’re in the area they want to be in.
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Partnerships for Innovation
I’d like to give you an overview. This is the only pillar that is federally funded by the Carl Perkins fund. It has been reauthorized and states were given the flexibility to form statewide consortia to meet certain obligations. The state of Nebraska has decided to withhold 10% to meet the needs of the consortia. We will have a 5 year plan submitted which gives a good problem of how to spend the $3-4 million dollars.
Our big picture is to improve career and technical education using creative solutions while meeting federal legislative requirements. Our goals for PFI are pretty well specified by the federal grant requirements. We need better technical skill assessment. We want to link data, possibly based on social security numbers. We don’t have the ability to provide feedback to individual high schools for how their students are performing. They’d have to get information from every post secondary institution in the state. I’m not saying it will happen but it does give us the opportunity to start the dialogue.
For example, professional development will start with needs assessment. We need to have emerging technologies, so that when teachers say we need ‘this’ in our classrooms, the administrators understand and have those things.
In terms of implementing this, the PFI has only been established for the last couple of months. We’ve made some decisions but the consensus is that we’ll have enough projects and sub-projects that we’ll need a staff member to oversee the sub-components of the partnership.
Q: How much do the community colleges use this?
A: Not much at all.
The department of education believes that most of this training would come from the community colleges, but that’s the first time I’ve heard it from the ESU community.
Q: Will there be an effort to target loosening the criteria?
A: We’ve written a couple of action steps to start doing these things. With the staff person we’ll write some white papers to address some legal barriers from us being successful. We’re stuck with some turf issues there. It’s hard that a teacher at the community college level cannot teach at the high school level.
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Think! Nebraska
Federal programs didn’t fit into Nebraska very well, so Think Nebraska was created. Our goal is have each student fill in a personal learning plan. Think Nebraska is focused on high school students right now. It's a clearinghouse for best practices but in order for it to be more effective we need partnerships with parents, educators, and businesses. The idea is to facilitate both rigor and relevance for each
student. We know the prescribed set of courses put out by the Federal Government may not be relevant for every student.
We were thinking about incentives. We were looking at scholarships or other financial incentives. We could possibly consider reimbursements for college loans or have businesses pay the loans back? As well, we could tie the loan payback terms to the young people staying in Nebraska. The longer they stay in the state, the more of the loan gets reimbursed. The longer they stay in the state after graduation, the more likely it is they will stay and settle.
Professional development is really important in all of this. Teachers need professional development to see how the education merges into the real world.
Another one of the biggest things to consider is to align these initiatives with the other programs like P-16, for example. Lots of programs are doing something like this, but might be calling it something different. Once the players are identified, we have to define what a state scholar is. It’s not just a prescribed set of classes. What are the purposes and benefits of being a state scholar? Why will colleges appreciate it if we identify a student as a state scholar? Why will businesses care?
Economic sustainability is one of the biggest potential obstacles we have.
If we are successful we will see increased graduation rates and increased enrollment in post-secondary institutions.
A quick story from Jim Walsh: When I went to talk to a high school class, I asked students to tell me how much they would get paid to drive a truck 1000 miles if they made 35 cents per mile. It took awhile for even a few people to try to answer. Some people said $3500, some said $35. One even said $35,000.
Industry needs people who are thinkers. We have found that a person needs to learn 4 years of English in order to extract the relevant materials out of technical manuals. Diesel technicians are going to school at night to become engineers. Industry needs people to go to all kinds of post-secondary education.
Teachers don’t often know what goes on in the business world. They need to get out of the 4 walls a little bit more.
Comment: An important point to remember is that this program could take 4 years to find some efficiency, just because of the length of time that it will take for a student to move through the entire secondary school system. We have to be prepared to take the long view on this program.
Question:
How do you reach 14 and 15yr olds when they’re thinking about other things (eg. relationships, fitting in, etc.)? Answer: We have to find a way to speak to them in terms that will resonate with them.
We need additional and different apprenticeship programs. One size fits all is not appropriate any more. FutureForce is trying to be more
flexible. We have to address the middle 25-50% of people and get them engaged. Right now w're just reaching the top 25% of the students.
Personalized programs to tap into people’s passion and smarts. It’s NOT, “How smart are you?” It’s “How you are smart?” Everyone has
strengths. How do you focus those strengths into a personal goal?
Businesses should use Nebraska Career Connections to recruit people. Boeing, for example, spends $80,000 per recruit to bring them into the company. The point is that businesses are more than willing to spend money on recruitment. We should use the Career Connections website a place for businesses to come. This will help to maintain long term financial sustainability.
There are not enough 20-somethings in these companies. Younger and older employees should be encouraged to bring young people into the company by providing hiring bonuses. Community colleges are mixing on- the-job training into their curriculum. Students are making money in a field of their choice and that is making a difference. If students are working and making money inob training into their curriculum. Students are making money in a field of their choice and that is making a difference. If students are working and making money in a field they like, they will stay in school.
Nebraska demographics are changing and we have to recognize minorities more. Some companies have ESL classes but we can do more.
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Future Force
We wanted to look at FutureForce the umbrella and not just look at the pillars. We said our big picture is that we will be the one reliable
resource for identifying high-wage, high demand careers in Nebraska. We also wll facilitate collaboration between education and business.
What is the sustainability model?
Funding (grants) is applied for each year for the following year. This year's funding ends in June. Currently the staff spends a lot of energy securing funding for the following year. We want to move beyond grants and develop a more sustainable financial model.
Our Goals
We will create a template and toolkit to help bring some consistency and alignment to the pathways. This will also be something any new
pathways can use.
We will address the barriers to success of each of the four focus areas of work.
Headlines
One of the signs of success for us is an Increase in workforce retention. We would also see new degree programs developing based on
partnerships we've helped develop. We'd want to see an increase in the workforces in high demand industries.
We want to have a website that has user generated content. We need to develop a Marketing / Communications plan to promote the website. A website with user generated content that has no content is not very successful.
What is going on across the pillars?
What are the measures of success for all of this? What is the core focus? We need to identify successful outcomes. Currently we're reporting on processes and activities but "doing things" isn't our core focus. Being successful is our core focus and we have to be able to identify and measure that success, not the activities that lead to the success.
What headline would hit home with people and make them say, “we couldn’t live without FutureForce in the state of Nebraska?” What is our responsibility to create new career paths? Can things be aligned so that there aren’t multiple organizations doing strategic planning, etc. around these same issues? Should FutureForce in fact be focused on the future and work to identify things that haven’t emerged yet?
Other key questions:
When does a pipeline end? What is the sunset clause? When does the program end? Can the conversation move from territoriality to ultimate goals? Less talk about funding and staffing. More about goals and outcomes.
Is there a component missing? We’re focusing on replenishing the talent pool…why are people leaving? Do we know that the jobs that are
being created match what people want? There are lots of jobs available… people are leaving because of personal choices. They want to go overseas or to bigger cities.
People do come back after about 5 years. What can we do to make sure that people come back after 5 years or don’t leave in the first place? Leaving is good too as it brings diversity into the group. Of the people that leave, do they know that there are new jobs available in Nebraska now? What are we doing to reach them? Alumni groups aren’t helping out much yet to communicate with former residents. We need big stories in the paper. That will help families pass the news on to family and friends. We're seeing that there are not a lot of positive attitudes about Nebraska, especially in the rural areas. Family and friends are the most effective ways to get good news out to Nebraska "ex-pats".
Teachers are often some of the biggest complainers! We need something like a campaign to get people to go back to “Nebraska: The Good Life”.
This effort is cyclical. It was experienced 15 years ago. What is not sustainable about the programs in the past? Universities in other states start recruiting as soon as alumni have kids. Further, college isn’t for everybody. High school kids can learn a trade and then apply it right out of high school.
We also need to redefine what a high wage job is: is it $100k per year? Kids are looking at how much they’ll make in the occupation and
that is some of the motivation for a career.
Career Connections presents an end state and not the ladder to get to that end state. Students don’t see where the start is, they see the end.
Some of the CEOs of railroads started in entry level positions and worked their way up to be the CEO. Teachers start at $32k per year but the total, including benefits is around $45k per year. Students also need some education around the concept of "total benefits". Right now they are focused on salary but they need to know about other perks of their jobs.
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Debrief
Michael Kaufman
I’d like to start by opening it up. What did you hear this morning in your conversations?
- That we’ve been doing this 25 years. There is already a lot of organization here and there’s a lot of energy moving in the right direction. We need to remove the roadblocks. I’m not trying to move backwards with child labor laws (laughter) but I think there are things we can do.
- There is so much commonality.
- Industry must get involved in this effort.
- Sustainability was on every one of these boards. We have to move that away from federal monies. This needs to be Nebraska money so that it can be shaped the way it needs to be shaped.
- Seeing the things that were successful in the past and learning from the past and sustaining the efforts that work. I didn’t hear anything new but I did hear how what we do works well.
Did anybody hear anything new? Or have any surprises?
- I hadn’t seen before education involved in the way that it is here.
- Some young faces in the group which helps me not become complacent and gets me energized again. Some of us know that our jobs are going to be around, but there’s a lot of new stuff out there too.
MK: There’s a famous Silicon Valley magnate who said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
- There should be more representation from the Ag industry. It’s the biggest employer in this state and ties into a lot of other jobs here. I would suggest that we invite more people.
- You can recruit more people to come. Twist somebody’s arm to come and they’ll invite someone else.
- I see the importance of communication. The value of bringing these different entities into the room to have this conversation is essential.
- We can facilitate these on an ongoing basis. You can continue to keep these issues out front by using the technologies we have, such as LinkedIn. You can keep these conversations going consistently.
MK: Anyone who wants to stay for the afternoon please feel welcome to join us to drive down and make the action plans to take this forward.
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