How Your Business Can Help Shrink the Youth Skills Gap
You’ve heard the numbers:
- American has an unemployment rate above 7.6%, and youth unemployment is double.
- The Associated Press conducted a study and found that 50+% of all college graduates had not found jobs commensurate with their skills.
What can we do about it? Traditionally, people turn to the institutions, schools and government agencies for solutions. As Peter Cappelli (Wharton) reports, it’s not working. In Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs (2012), he concludes that the solution lies with companies.
Employers can help students identify jobs that are appropriate for them while still in school, so students can take the right courses to help acquire the skills and knowledge that fit the desired career. Through internships, they also can learn how the workplace really operates, in terms of teamwork, interpersonal communication, and make better decisions. As an intern once told me, students shouldn’t get their first exposure to hospital life in their first year of medical school; it’s a little late in the game to first discover that you can’t stand the sight of blood and need to start all over again in another career.
Over a year ago, I heard Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, launch a campaign to raise money from customers to help fund a jobs training program for people out of work. Why? Because he believed companies must take the lead in helping people get jobs through training and job matching. He’s right and the Starbuck solution is just one. Let me share with you another.
Throughout my career, I’ve been offering internships to students, from high school through graduate school. I did this to let them learn about jobs and the workplace, and then use the information to help them choose more appropriate courses and ask teachers better questions, while in school. In many cases, I took students who wanted to stretch their skills and see a broader view of what might be in store for them.
For instance, at Planned Parenthood New York City, pre-med students learned about “customer” service and how long waiting times are counterproductive to “education” goals. I did it because I like teaching and as their mentor, they could learn a lot. (Also, it provided me with manpower for the many research, evaluation and development projects. It identified future employees and consultants for my companies!) . I mentored over 500+ marketing, sales, administrative, public policy, health care, etc. interns. Their feedback proved that I was right: they got jobs they wanted and felt much better equipped to enter the real world of work.
But relying on my own companies, just as Mr. Schultz relied on Starbuck customers, isn’t enough to really make a difference in the employment picture. So, several months ago, we began building Mentor Our Kids – an organization focused on helping Companies: (1) increase the number of available internships and (2) improve the quality of programs from the perspectives of the Company Program Coordinators, the Supervising Mentors and the students. Our first two priorities are building an online How-To Manual to answer questions that the Coordinators and Mentors have, and building a support community so Coordinators and Mentors throughout the nation can support one another.
Imagine the impact Vistage can have if every member’s company committed to provide student mentoring. With the average Vistage company having $5-$500M in revenues, many can mentor several students at a time. Assuming each company can mentor only one intern per spring, summer and fall semester, the Vistage Community of 16,000 members would serve almost 50,000 students! That’s a lot of impact in the battle to shrink the youth skills gap. Are you ready?
Step up to the plate, now. If your company doesn’t have a Mentoring Program or has one that can be expanded and/or improved to better serve students, let us know so we can share with you expertise and insights. It’s a true win-win-win situation. Students gain experience, Mentors gain the satisfaction of knowing who they’re helping, Companies gain by better serving the community and identifying new talent. The country as a whole gains, as we shrink the youth skills gap.
Jerry Cahn, Ph.D. J.D. chairs Vistage CEO and Trusted Advisor groups in New York and leads the Presentation Excellence Group. For more information, on providing mentoring in your company and supporting Mentor Our Kids, contact: jcahn@MentorOurKids.org or 800 493-1334.
Category: Leadership Leadership Competencies
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