Category: HR Professionals

Resilience Training for Employee Retention

by dream2career, posted in Admissions Professionals, HR Professionals, Work-Learn Solutions for Businesses, Workforce Development

Resilience training programs are designed to equip workers with tools and strategies to navigate difficult situations. These programs can help:

  • Develop a more positive outlook
  • Effectively manage stress
  • Build problem-solving skills
  • Foster healthy coping mechanisms
  • Strengthen support networks

Who Can Benefit from Resilience Training?

Anyone can benefit from resilience training! It’s valuable for:

Individuals: Looking to improve mental well-being, manage stress, and bounce back from setbacks.
Employees: Seeking to cope with workplace pressures, adapt to change, and maintain focus under pressure.
Organizations: Aiming to create a more positive and productive work environment, reduce employee burnout, increase employee retention, and improve the overall working environment.

Finding the Right Resilience Training Program

There’s a range of resilience training programs available, from in-person workshops to online courses. As part of your Operation Dream Landing project, Dream2Career developed a site-based solution. This solution uses the HIF Logic framework which is emerging as the most effective learning infrastructure.

Here are some factors to consider when choosing a resilience program:

Format: Do your employees prefer in-person interaction, the flexibility of online learning, or a blended approach?
Focus: Is there sufficient academic content to justify the program expense?
Integration: Will the program integrate and enhance our current training solution?
Qualifications: Look for programs led by experienced professionals with a proven record of success.

Building a More Resilient Workforce

Investing in resilience training is an investment in your team. By developing your team’s ability to cope with challenges, they’ll be better equipped to navigate life’s ups and downs, achieve performance goals, and exceed expectations in the workplace.

If you’d like to bring resilience training to your organization reach out to Dream2Career and see if you qualify to implement the Operation Dream Landing program for free.

About Dream2Career:

Dream2Career (D2C), a women-owned business, uses education to attract, retain, and inspire the workforce of tomorrow.

No One is Qualified to Perform Their Job

by dream2career, posted in HR Professionals, Solving the Work-Learn Problem, Workforce Development

We need to accept the fact that no one is qualified to be doing their job. We just experienced the great resignation. That means company knowledge has been drained from every company and the few knowledgeable workers you have left are contemplating leaving because you pile more work onto their very capable hands to make up for short falls in others throughout your team. According to a 2023 Gallup Poll 60% of people are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable.­­­­

A more alarming trend is that we’ve turned our back on traditional forms of education for fast and dirty online learning platforms with the hope that these quick fixes will be able to get your organization staffed and ready to meet your ever-growing production goals. Most of these degree mills don’t teach anything and your employees are going through the motions with their learning just like they do on the job. They earn meaningless credentials and they keep searching for work that inspires them when in fact they have no idea who they are or what they want out of their life.

The only solution is to go back to the basics and begin to trust in traditional non-profit learning institutions that offer face-to-face learning and that teach liberal arts education. These non-profit institutions focus on individualized education first. This kind of immersive learning environment provides students with the opportunity to try concepts and careers on. It helps them to understand problems from different perspectives.  Liberal arts learning teaches future employees how to work, communicate, be creative, and see beauty in the world, which inspires the concept of personal and professional growth. Non-profit schools teach your future employees critical thinking, the idea that learning is living, and that finding the answer often takes more than just checking the right box.  A person who has created the habit of learning is much more valuable than someone who doesn’t have an interest in doing anything for your organization except collecting a paycheck.

Online learning has created a world where people feel entitled and want a fast track to career success. All these programs do is create employees who never had to work for anything because now they have ChatGPT. Their learning is transactional and so is their life. You will never be able to teach them to work hard or achieve anything because they don’t know the meaning of hard work because they were never challenged. If someone tries to challenge them they will quit, call mom, start bullying, or throw a temper tantrum. These are our “qualified employees” who we are forced to hire because they are the only candidates with the “credentials”. This dysfunctional hiring practice is only going to get worse as more non-profits go out of business. Our workforce is unqualified and these workers do not know how to work as a team, or support others, or to believe in anything. The only people they’ve ever engaged with are one dimensional and very likely over-animated because otherwise they will not be significant enough to keep the employee’s attention for longer than five minutes.

Businesses should consider using local education providers to up-skill their workforce and to stop trying to catch lightning in a bottle with online programs that promise the world and deliver candidates that have the credentials but none of the skills your company actually needs to be successful. There is a human aspect to learning that has been lost and online learning has morally bankrupt our communities.

Businesses that want to learn more about how to use local, traditional, education programs as a strategic advantage to attract, retain, and inspire the best workforce, are welcome to contact Dream2Career.  The solutions we provide are low cost and, in some cases, can be implemented for free through tax incentives. Businesses report up to a 125% ROI when using education-based talent solutions as an employee benefit. It’s time to start building the strong, educated, human, workforce of tomorrow because the unqualified workforce of today will never provide the answer.

Build a Motivated Workforce

by dream2career, posted in HR Professionals, Trending, Workforce Development

Stop looking beyond your town and use local resources to grow the workforce that meets your employment needs. Invest in workers, pay them well, but also help them develop personally and professionally. The best way to do this is to develop and USE an educational reimbursement program (ERPs).

Many companies have ERPs, however, less than 7% of employees use the benefit. Consequently, those that do use the benefit are 80% more likely to stay with the company and to feel valued by the organization. These worker-learners are also more likely to refer a friend to the company which can help to alleviate the employee shortage problem that most organizations are facing.

Fully online learning programs should not be the mission of businesses or learning providers. Businesses should fight the urge to simplify their training portfolio and institute guardrails around the usage of online learning that includes, at a minimum, a hybrid approach. Students who attend face-to-face classes gain access to networks and experiences that they do not effectively get online.

The online learner has no allegiance to the online learning provider, and, in many cases, the student is simply going through the motions to complete the course, not because they are curious or engaged, but because they feel the need to just get through the course. We’ve made a world of exceptional test takers who lack humility, collaboration, critical thinking, or a passion for learning. They know how to check boxes, but they have zero understanding of the who, what, why, or how, which are vital to the brain’s ability to understand and recall information when needed.

Local colleges and technical schools are struggling, and this is tragic, because they can be businesses’ greatest asset when it comes to attracting, retaining, and motivating workers. Online job boards and large employment agencies may be able to offer businesses access to 10 million resumes, but, small-town America, guess what? You’re lucky if these services have 3 prospects, from your location, that will be useful to your search.

Site-based learning providers offer work-learn options like apprenticeships and internships that are effective at upskilling workers. However, the motivation problem often still exists because most students have no idea what they want to do for a career. They don’t have enough input or experience to know what is available to them and when they enroll in work-based learning they are, again, just going through the motions to get the job and they rarely consider if it matches who they are or what they like to do. These work-learn solutions, use education to grow employees, may still lead to disengagement and high dropout rates because the employees miss the purpose and understanding of how they are valued within the organization.

To reimagine the work-learn problem, Dream2Career developed what is called Micro-Drip Learning to help employees understand their value to the organization, so they know who they are and what they bring to their employer. Through the consumption of daily 15-min microcourses, users gain confidence, interest, and hope through learning and gamification.

These courses are designed to help users to understand their strengths, and weaknesses, and the strengths of our differences. Through these shared experiences, users find like-minded people, engage in local events, and they learn about educational opportunities that help them develop personally and professionally.

Imagine having employees that love to come to work every day because they are working in or towards their dream career. They become inspired to participate and contribute because you are helping them to learn and grow and you’re giving them access to opportunities that make life worth living.

If you’d like to learn more about Micro-Drip Learning and how to integrated it in with your current Educational Reimbursement Program, or if you’d like to design a new ERP and use education as a benefit, with significant tax breaks, contact Dream2Career.

Contact Kathy Houlihan at khoulihan@dream2career.org

Talent Reimagined -Dream2Career

Attract Motivated Job Seekers without Increasing Salaries

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals

Offering new hires larger salaries for entry-level positions is a very bad idea when there is a labor shortage. By continuing to raise the salaries to attract talent creates a bidding war among all the businesses seeking talent. Agencies are reaping the benefits, but businesses are wasting time and money recruiting the same candidates, who have no intention of staying with the first company when the next company is offering a little more.  This battle for talent, consequently, makes your seasoned employees upset because the newcomers are making the same salaries as they are, with no experience. This process creates resentful, hostile employees who are also going to start looking for another job and they will treat the new employees badly making the new employee unhappy before they leave. The vicious cycle is being repeated over and over in businesses across the nation.

It’s time to reimagine talent management and look for positive ways that businesses can attract, retain, and inspire best-fit candidates who will exceed production goals and add value to the company culture without having to continue to raise salaries.

Instead of offering more money and sign-on bonuses let’s fix the problem for good:

Cluster and Repackage Position Titles and Descriptions

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), there are over 11 million jobs open in the U.S. each month. Imagine that you are a job seeker, where do you begin streaming through all the jobs? The system of listing jobs on a job board is ineffective and difficult to maintain. Less than 35% of people find their job based on the job title. We need to start thinking about posting careers using a cluster method rather than just a list with keyword searches. Keywords are useless when you don’t know what you are looking for. Even advanced filters and Boolean searching has significant flaws because most users are not familiar with them.  It’s impossible to determine all the keywords that might be used to describe a position.

Dream2Career uses HIF cluster logic, which is aligned with the 16 clusters used by both the DoE and DoL and then translated into a common language that helps users find positions matching their personality and their career interests. The Horizontal Industry Framework (HIF) allows for job promotion using six personality clusters, Mavens, Processors, Protectors, Specialists, Naturalists and Visionaries. This process of organization works with current systems, and it helps the job seeker understand where they belong based on who they are and what they like to do. Just like STEM helps businesses communicate effectively across industries and with career seekers, the HIF categorizes all positions in the same way, providing understanding, structure, and personal connection to the career choices which leads to happiness in the workplace.

Attracting talent is a positioning problem. Career seekers are not motivated unless they see the job as value added. We need to think about that when writing job descriptions, especially for entry-level work. When a product is incorrectly positioned in the marketplace, even if it’s a great product, it will not sell. This is true for job posting too!  Positive messages bring in positive workers so keep the terms motivating and simple.

Shorten the Message

In a competitive market, getting to the point is most important. If you can list an entry-level job description with 5 bullet points or less do that! As much as you want a potential employee to research your organization and come to appreciate what you have to offer, that is not the way to attract people to your business. It is your responsibility to attract them to you! This requires thinking about a communication plan, instead of job lists that no one scrolls through and lists that are impossible to maintain having positions that you don’t currently need.

Generate Leads Using Position Clusters

Many organizations attempt to collect all the candidate data right off the bat.  Fifty-seven percent of job seekers are passive job seekers, and making the application process complex from the beginning is unadvised. It is not necessary to capture every detail about a prospect on the first encounter and the less information you ask, the more likely you are to get a response from the right kind of candidate. Consider creating an evergreen HIF communication process using career clusters. It will take a little time on the front end, but it will make the process easier to maintain, easier for the job seeker, and more cost effective in the long run.

Collaborate Locally

Helping people find their best path forward means being selfless and collaborative. HR professionals often know each other well, even from other industries. It is important to make referrals to colleagues when you have a great candidate who just stumbled into the wrong business. Make the recommendation to your colleague and help the job seeker find their pathway to success. Even if the applicant could do a great job for you, if they are unhappy, you owe it to your community to allow that candidate to become the best version of themselves. It will come back ten-fold if organizations stop trying to “steal” talent and help each other and help the candidates. We are all in this together, so let’s work together to solve the talent shortage.

Offer Quality of- Life Benefits

Improving the quality of life for all your workers will offer the greatest return on investment. When people are happy and they have hope that tomorrow will be better than today, they are more productive, and they create an environment that is fun and exciting. Offering local benefits, rewards, and recognition programs will make your employees feel safer and more committed to their career. This small mindset shift will lead to innovation and company growth that every business needs right now.

These steps allow companies to reimagine talent acquisition so that the process works for everyone, and it will help to put the “human” back in human resources.

If you would like to discuss ways to create evergreen communications plans for talent acquisition or if you are interested in using HIF logic, contact Dream2Career.

About the Author:

Kathleen Houlihan, CEO of Dream2Career, is on a mission to help students and career seekers find onramps to their dream careers. Kathy taught full-time at the university level for over 6 years and continues to teach as an adjunct while consulting for businesses and educational providers. She’s serves on several workforce development groups including the T3 Innovation Network and Midwest Credential Transparency Alliance and has a Ph.D. in Organizational Management, an MBA, and B.A. in Psychology.

Earn-Learn Programs: Minimizing the Skills Gap

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Workforce Development

In my 20+ years of experience working with workforce development and education, I’ve seen the use of work-learn solutions as the most effective model in reducing the skills gap. The outcomes far exceed the investment for the company, the mentee, the mentor, and the community.

Businesses and educators often look for someone to blame for the skills gap. Each entity wants to blame the other group instead of working together to solve the issue. Our philosophy at Dream2Career has always been don’t blame, collaborate! When business and education work together, like with internships or apprenticeships, both sides experience significant benefits.

When businesses spend a small amount of time and resources developing learn-earn programs, they get customized training that fits their specific needs it boosts company morale and increases employee retention.  When seasoned workers have the opportunity to teach another person about their job, they experience a greater sense of responsibility and importance to the company. This sense of achievement also helps to reduce stress and creates a sense of belonging.  The apprenticeship model has a net positive effect on the company culture and ultimately the bottom line.

Students also gain from the work-learn model because it so neatly helps students match the classroom lessons to related concepts they learned “on-the-job”. Now that math problem has context, which increases comprehension and interest in math. It also helps give student a sense of hope about their future and lets them discover a pathway forward.

I like to describe our current workforce system by giving students the opportunity to understand their personality using HIF Logic and then matching who they are to the work-learn onramp experiences that inspire and delight so they can see a future that is bright. It makes so much more sense to give students access to career pathways that match their interests and their aspirational goals so they can succeed in learning and in life. Workforce-related learning give students the opportunity to see the outcome and how they fit into the structure. By creating this work-learn connection, students have the opportunity to find a successful and rewarding career that they love.

If you would like to discuss internships, apprenticeships, or other educational reimbursement solutions that inspire and delight, contact Dream2Career.

About the Author:

Kathleen Houlihan, CEO of Dream2Career, is on a mission to help students and displaced workers find onramps to their dream careers. Kathy taught full-time at the university level for over 6 years and continues to teach as an adjunct while consulting for businesses and educational providers. She serves on several workforce development groups including the T3 Innovation Network and Midwest Credential Transparency Alliance and has a Ph.D. in Organizational Management, an MBA, and B.A. in Psychology.

Staffing Crisis: It’s Time to Get Back to the Basics

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Workforce Development

Is your inability to find employees causing a crisis? Hiring managers, don’t panic, take a deep breath, and get back to the basics.  Here are 4 tips to get your staffing levels back to normal; simplify the application process, hire local, collaborate in the community, and retain employees through quality-of-life benefits.

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Tip #1 Simplify Don’t make the process any more difficult than it needs to be for the prospective employee. Jobseekers who are inquiring about a position, should not need all their transcripts, clearances, and background checks right out of the gate, specifically when you need entry-level workers. The process for onramp positions should be designed to be simpler and utilizing temp-to-hire positions is a great way to manage expectations. Another option is to start an internship program working with your local colleges.

Designing a communication plan that is focused will yield better results. Most companies have positions for several industry sectors at the same time.  Prospects don’t understand your workforce jargon so keep it simple in the job description and stay away from posting on job boards. There are too many jobs listed on job boards and your best candidates are not going to be found there.

My first job, as a newspaper carrier, came from a referral from my sister; she asked me to come along with her and she showed me the route. It wasn’t until after I completed the work with her that I actually applied for the job. You may not want to encourage something this extreme, but it proves a point. Doing a job is about learning what is involved and seeing if it works for you. More companies could utilize job shadowing days so that prospective employees could see the job for themselves. BONUS: the current employees in the division will feel empowered to have input into the hiring process.

I was in a meeting yesterday with a government entity that is in dire straits, having almost 500 positions open and they were explaining the application process so we could help our clients to complete the application. The process was daunting and not user-friendly. Nothing turns candidates away, especially when there are jobs everywhere, than a long, complicated application process for a minimum wage entry-level position.

Tip #2 Check your surroundings I’ve said this before, your best workers are in your neighborhood. We’ve become so focused on the internet, job boards, and the pandemic that we forgot that we work in HUMAN resources. It is so easy to stay hidden away, especially if we have a cushy job that now allows work from home. Psychologically, the home is safe but it also limiting and not all positions can be completed from there. It is important that you set self-imposed rules to engage, in person, with other people at work. If you don’t force yourself to change, you will stop growing and then depression and loneliness will follow. If you don’t start today, tomorrow you might not be able to leave. The pandemic has created a nation of agoraphobics and we must fight this disease in ourselves if we want to get things back to normal. You will be happier in everything you do if you find reasons to connect face-to-face with the world around you.

In addition, not every position can be performed remotely which means looking in the neighborhood is advisable. Offering referral bonuses to current employees is smart, but also using local media to offer reasons for people to come to your business, not just to complete the application, will work too.

Tip #3 Find Allies

There are lots of ways to interest prospects. Leverage your marketing team and brainstorm ways to recruit prospective employees or develop a local communication strategy with other local businesses to create community-focused messaging like Operation Dream Landing. Don’t perceive other businesses as competition with regards to hiring, see them as collaborators. Activities like an industry scavenger hunt at several local businesses could be fun. Another idea is to have local awards programs for specific industries, make it open to the public, hire a local band, and really celebrate your employees. This will improve company morale and change the entire mindset around the worker experience. In Colorado, they have Server Appreciation Day, and all the local businesses participate together to celebrate those who work in the hospitality industry. These kinds of initiatives are underutilized, and we are working with the Champaign, IL community to improve collaboration and accelerate site-based hiring initiatives.

Tip # 4 Keep Employees Motivated

Do you have employees that show up late and when they get there, they offer nothing but bad karma–complaining and checking out mentally? One approach is to fire them, but you know that right now it’s difficult to replace them.  A preferred option is to inspire them, there is no question that there are bad people in the world, but most people are naturally positive, but lack motivation because of all of the sadness in the news and, today, they have no hope for the future. Instead of using discipline, offer quality-of-life benefits and rewards programs that will help employees navigate their options more effectively in life. Celebrate those who are outperforming in the workplace, provide promotions, and other pathways to success including educational reimbursement programs. There are countless options that will cost less to implement than onboarding new people. Bottom-Line: Motivated workers consistently exceed production goals and improve the working conditions for everyone. Try these steps and you’ll see that you have the workforce you always wanted.

If you would like to discuss community-focused recruitment strategies that inspire and retain quality workers, contact Dream2Career.

About the Author:

Kathleen Houlihan, CEO of Dream2Career, is on a mission to help students and displaced workers find onramps to their dream careers. Kathy taught full-time at the university level for over 6 years and continues to teach as an adjunct while consulting for businesses and educational providers. She serves on several workforce development groups including the T3 Innovation Network and Midwest Credential Transparency Alliance and has a Ph.D. in Organizational Management, an MBA, and B.A. in Psychology.

Dream2Career (D2C) is a women-owned agency that reimagines talent acquisition and optimizes the system for candidates and employers. D2C provides human-centric solutions that filter-in candidates who exceed expectations in the workplace.

Hope: The Secret to Worker Retention

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Work-Learn Solutions for Businesses, Workforce Development

According to US News & World Report, people feel sad and hopeless when they read the news.  This is having a huge impact on communities across the nation. When we feel depressed, we are not motivated to work. The consequences for businesses are less workers seeking employment, less workers showing up on time, if they show up at all. The blaugh feeling, that we are all feeling from reading the news, means businesses are forced to cut hours of operation and reduce production making it impossible to get things back to normal. We don’t have the conveniences that we once shared because people lost hope that things will get any better and they even believe things are getting worse. Perception is reality and this hopeless feeling must change if we ever want to feel accomplished, happy, and productive again.

Companies are offering hiring bonuses and better salaries, but these options do little to change the employee sentiment about having to go to work or their overall feelings of hopelessness. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not happy,  it makes it difficult to enjoy the benefits that financial security provides.

Today’s workers prefer work-from-home jobs, not realizing this level of isolation is leading to more feelings of depression and hopelessness. According to the American Psychological Association, a study conducted by Cigna in 2018, found that 40% of participants sometimes or always felt isolated. Note this study was conducted before the pandemic. The article posits that isolation leads to poorer health, early death, and a reduced quality-of-life. These challenges impact the individual but, they also negatively impact our families and communities. The sentiment of being sad, from the news that we read, is passed on to the next person forcing everyone into feeling angry and scared, lacking the confidence we once had to fix the situation.

Schools used to be seen as a place for connection, discovery, and growth but schools are now being attacked in the media, from all sides, because of opposing views, costs, and lack of trust. These feelings of hate and fear are causing communities to turn on each other making them more violent and less productive. Schools used to give a sense of belonging, offering a place where it was safe to develop and learn, but now everything is under a microscope. We are all looking for ways to control the schools because we feel so out of control in our personal lives. The worst part is that the children are the ones who are impacted the most. Children don’t know who to trust or who to believe, which is negatively impacting their psychological development.  Society cannot flourish when there is fear and violence.  Remember the Dark Ages?  Children are forced to do active shooter drills and they are told the police are bad and their teachers are bad. These generalizations don’t reflect most of the people performing in these professions in my community. I bet most of the professional teachers and police officers in your community are good people, too.

Business leaders have an opportunity to step in and support their community and their employees by offering benefits and experiences that improve their overall quality-of-life. This means looking beyond the salary and using resources and influence to make communities a better place to work, learn, and live. Empowering employees to become the best versions of themselves will make them better contributors to your community and, consequently, better contributors to the bottom line. The process begins with a mindset shift and a focus on solving the things that can be fixed and giving people hope.

Instead of blaming the government, the schools, the workers, or the general state of the world. Focus on what can be done and look for ways to work with others interested in supporting positive endeavors to make communities thrive. No one is perfect and it is time we start to look past what we read, our flaws, and our differences and focus what we have in common; an interest in raising and working with productive collaborative citizens who are living without fear or hate. We can bring about positive change if we just learn trust and respect people again.

This minor shift in mindset will change the culture of your organization and your community. Leaders manage challenges and objections everyday and if they lead by example; by showing kindness, humility, and support, the climate will change. Employees will respect their employers and start to trust that things can get better. They will feel a sense of accomplishment and purpose about what they are doing.  Employees will be compelled to support their employer because  they will see that their employer wants them to succeed. The idea that tomorrow could be better than today will help them get out of the house and show up to work—show up for life.

Follow the lines from Beauty and the Beast:

Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly

Just a little change
Small to say the least
Both a little scared
Neither one prepared…

By Celine Dion, Peabo Bryson

Our nation will always be the Beast; rich, powerful, and in some ways ugly, but we will not win if we don’t support each other, especially during our darkest days. Every interaction gives us the opportunity to return life to normal and provide hope for what is yet to come.

If you would like to discuss community focused talent development strategies that offer hope and inspiration, contact Dream2Career.

About the Author:

Kathleen Houlihan, is the CEO of Dream2Career and writes about creating synergies between workforce and education. Houlihan taught full-time at the university level for over 6 years and continues to teach as an adjunct while consulting for businesses and educational providers. She serves on several workforce development groups including the T3 Innovation Network and Midwest Credential Transparency Alliance and has a Ph.D. in Organizational Management, an MBA, and B.A. in Psychology.

Dream2Career (D2C) is a women-owned agency that reimagines talent acquisition and optimizes the system for candidates and employers. D2C provides human-centric solutions that filter-in candidates who exceed expectations in the workplace.

Quality-of-Life Benefits Inspire Employees

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Workforce Development

In the past, high school students had three choices; 1. go to college, 2. go into the workforce via the trades, or 3. go into the military. Today, these three options have evolved into countless options including badges, internships, co-ops, and certificates, just to name a few. According to Credential Engine, there are close to 1 million credentialing options in the USA alone. These new educational pathways have increased the number of nefarious training options designed to take a students’ money while offering limited employment opportunities upon completion.  Undecided career seekers are mesmerized by clever marketing campaigns with false employment promises making it very difficult for them to find the best pathway forward.

Business leaders like Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey believe that young people don’t want to work, but it is more likely that young people just don’t know who to trust and they, often, do not know who they want to become, making it very difficult to chart a pathway forward. Students are frozen in fear, not being able to find the best career on-ramps that match their interests and aspirational goals. These individuals are not shown how working for a company like Whole Foods, even entry-level, provides tremendous opportunities for networking, education, and professional growth.

Social media is flooded with volumes of data about high demand career options and careers with the highest salaries. These factors might be important to a job seeker; but they are far from the best measures to help candidates find and prepare for their dream career. The practice of pushing supply and demand or high income logic onto career seekers limits their chances of finding interesting career pathways that would help them to navigate the workforce system more effectively. These types of traditional workforce data limit career seekers ability to discover ways of making a career doing what they love.

Reimagining talent needs to focus on helping students/entry-level employees to discover opportunities that make them excited to learn and grow; where they see personal potential for career success. If the individuals can find jobs that match their passions, help them onramp, and gain requisite skills matching their interests, they will want to work. Employees will see work as a learning experience and they will want to grow with the company so they become the best versions of themselves. Providing educational benefits to employees has been shown to create loyal employees and increase job satisfaction, while offering 5x ROI, according to several studies conducted by the Lumnia Foundation.

Innovative companies use quality-of-life benefits (QoL), like education, in their talent recruitment portfolio to reimagine talent acquisition.  The most effective quality-of-life programs support local communities by creating an ecosystem that attracts new businesses and commerce to the environment. Building a community of engagement, through QoL programs, highlights what is happening locally and it helps individuals find career pathways to success. Reimagined talent acquisition, using QoL, incorporates the three-pronged work-learn system of the past; college, trades, and military experiences, into a new blended system that helps networked employees navigate this new complex work-learn environment as it inspires and delights career seekers as they on-ramp to dream careers. QoL programs are the best option to attract talent, improve working conditions, and provide more profitability, while reducing hiring costs. For businesses struggling to attract and retain talent consider QoL programs because we’ve found that it is the best strategy to reimagine talent acquisition into a system that works for everyone.

Think Local – Hire Local

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Marketing Professionals, Workforce Development

Businesses are seeking talent for vacant positions.  Why not consider hiring the person who is bagging your groceries or someone who holds the door for you? We come in contact with great people everyday, yet we turn to job boards to determine who we might employ. Instinctually, we know a good person when we meet them and for entry-level positions and, maybe, mid-level positions it might be more beneficial to your company and your community to think local.

If you need specialized training or skills for your employees turn to the education providers in your community. These local training providers will serve you better and for a fairer price then  “big-box, little content” degree mills that steal, money from the student and the opportunities from your community. If you work with the local education providers, they will help you to create a workforce pipeline that will serve your needs in the future and they will reduce your talent acquisition costs and even improve employee retention rates.

Try contacting your local workforce development teams and even get involved with projects in your community. Local groups offer community-based projects that are reimagining talent development and provide win-win solutions that benefit the employee and the employer.

Technology is cool, but it is only one of many tools that solve the worlds problems. Dream2Career believes that companies should start using collective impact solutions to bring back small town America.  This means using data, but also using logic and intuition. If something makes sense, it doesn’t need to be backed by years of research. It’s time to step back from technology and find new ways to inspire hope and innovation in the next generation workforce.

If you would like to discuss collective impact opportunities for your organization, contact Dream2Career.

Dream2Career (D2C) is a women-owned RPO agency that reimagines talent acquisition and optimizes the system for candidates and employers. D2C provides human-centric solutions that filter-in candidates who exceed expectations in the workplace.

Investment in Talent Pays Off For Businesses

by Edu-Advisor, posted in HR Professionals, Marketing Professionals, Workforce Development

Here are a few reasons to consider investing in talent during this time of record low unemployment.

  1. Using education to attract and retain talent is cost-effective. Paying job boards to post an entry-level, site-base position to reach candidates across the nation, wastes time and resources. Because job boards are keyword driven, they are designed to filter candidates out rather than filter candidates in. Only 35% of career seekers find their job using the position title, which is the main filter when using job boards. Because of the pandemic, candidates are searching for remote positions and the job boards can’t handle this search request uniformly, meaning quality candidates get missed and don’t become part of your prospective applicant pool. A better solution is to work directly with local educational providers when on ramping new talent. Not only can the educational system provide a talent pipeline, but it can also provide motivated candidates who want to grow with your organization. These prospective employees are also invested in the local community making them more likely to stay and thrive within the company.
  2. Here is a link to five studies, conducted in collaboration with the Lumina Foundation, that show talent development is worth the investment for businesses. Education related solutions offer a 5X ROI and inspire hope by upskilling current workers, which builds a community around education.
  3. Communities can work together using education to provide “collective impact”. Organizations have a shared mission to attract and retain qualified talent and organizing locally helps to streamline the messaging by illustrating career onramps that simplify outreach to students and career seekers. Harvard Business Review, recently conducted research with 73 business leaders, and they uncovered the need for this type of collaborative process which includes a “common agenda, explicit goals, metrics to measure success, and a funded “backbone” organization to ensure continuity.” This process can also benefit from a shared communication strategy like the one provided by the Horizontal Industry Framework.
  4. The most innovative companies are using education as a strategic talent advantage. InsideHigherEd and CNBC show how companies like Chipotle, FedEX, and Walmart are using education to attract and retain top talent. These companies are not only using education programs, they are expanding their offerings with new employee-focused training solutions. These companies are offering their workers something more than a paycheck, they are on ramping them into dream careers and providing their employees with a strong sense of belonging. By taking an interest in their employees’ personal and professional growth, they now have loyalty in the culture which provides an opportunity for relationship building in fun and engaging ways, consequently, helping employees to live their best life.

If you would like to discuss opportunities for your organization to use education as a strategic advantage, contact Dream2Career.

Dream2Career (D2C) is a women-owned RPO agency that reimagines talent acquisition and optimizes the system for candidates and employers. D2C provides human-centric solutions that filter-in candidates who exceed expectations in the workplace.