Niesha Taylor: Best Practices to Bridge Higher Ed & Industry

Work Forces

Niesha Taylor, Director of Career Readiness at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), concludes our three-part series with Jessica Perez from LaGuardia Community College and Bryan Quick from Abbott, showcasing how institutions and employers are successfully implementing NACE's career readiness competencies. The conversation explores practical examples of breaking down silos between higher education and industry, from LaGuardia's digital badging program that has provided 700+ students with paid internships to Abbott's skills-based hiring approach achieving a 70% intern-to-full-time conversion rate. Taylor emphasizes the critical need for faculty professional development to help students articulate their classroom learning as career-relevant experience, while Perez and Quick describe how career readiness competencies create a common language across the education-to-employment bridge. The discussion offers actionable strategies for creating supportive environments where students can confidently showcase their skills and for employers to develop comprehensive frameworks that prioritize workforce readiness over traditional degree requirements.

Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the third and final installment in our special mini series with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, or NACE. In our first episode, we spoke with NACE, President and CEO, Shawn VanDerziel, who provided a high level overview of the college career services and recruiting landscape. And then we dove deeper into the data in our second episode with Mary Gatta, who leads naces research efforts.

Julian Alssid: Now in this third episode, we'll explore how colleges and employers are optimizing academic programs, career services, and recruitment practices for our evolving economy. We're excited to be joined by Niesha Taylor NACE's, Director of Career Readiness, with a background as a former Dean for Academic Innovation and Career Success at the City University of New York's Gottman Community College and Senior Director for career pathways at the New York Jobs CEO Council, Niesha draws on her range of experiences bridging higher ed and industry in her role at NACE. In an exciting new twist for Work Forces, Nisha will join us today, along with a college and business leader who work actively with NACE to implement innovative models. Jessica Perez, Director of the Center for Career and Professional Development at LaGuardia Community College -- my former employer, too, Jessica, we'll have to talk about that -- and Bryan Quick, Director of Global University Relations at Abbott.

Jessica Perez: To give a bit more background, Jessica oversees the SOAR Experiential Learning Program, the Almezzi Foundation Career Fellows Program, CUNY Career Launch, Spring Forward and several other internship programs at LaGuardia. She's also an adjunct assistant professor at Lehman College and a Career Research & Development Consultant for Virginia Peninsula Community College. And Bryan is the head of Global Early Careers at Abbott, responsible for a worldwide team accountable for the design and delivery of the enterprise strategy to attract and recruit next generation talent. In his role, he oversees a global team dedicated to building strong partnerships with universities and managing early talent engagement programs. Jessica and Bryan are both involved with NACE, serving on various committees and in leadership committee roles. So welcome to you all. We're excited to have you with us for today's conversation.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. So as we jump in today, Niesha, we'll start with you. Can you please tell us more about your background and your role at NACE.

Niesha Taylor: I think the sort of critical first chunk of my time that makes sense to mention here is that I worked in higher education for many, many, many years, always with a focus on increasing access and really expanding economic mobility for the City University of New York students. I came out of K through 12 background, so I've always been thinking about that, that access point, and helping students become more successful and really get the most out of their college opportunities. In the last couple of positions I had, I worked on a variety of grants and initiatives that really worked to integrate career thinking into higher education. That actually started with Jessica Perez. I'll say she kicked off all of my thinking in this area. Gave me the sort of sort of background tools. That's the first time I heard of NACE and learned a little bit about the NACE career competencies, which I'm sure we'll talk a lot about in today's conversation. So really helping students see how they're learning and academic experience and beyond academic experience, were things that were really relevant to mention and put forward in connecting into their first career opportunities. So as that happened for me in higher education, I got deeper and deeper into the commitment to helping students really see that next step beyond college. In the role that I had at Guttman Community College, I kind of learned more and new ways of connecting career thinking into the classroom. Working with faculty quite a bit, which was really where I started to do a lot of faculty professional development to help them see how to bring the academic experience, sort of in connection, or bridging into the world of first jobs and first interviews for students. As I headed into the New York job CEO Council, my first step outside of higher education, it made me really understand how siloed higher education can be, and how much more we need to connect with employers and really help students see that bridge more clearly, take those steps more directly. And so that's really kind of what landed me at NACE is kind of building that firmer stance for students understanding how their learning connects into the first step into career. So NACE has developed itself in this area of career readiness, and again, that connects to this idea of understanding core competencies, those competencies that employers are looking for. I'd worked with those so much over the last stretch of years, and had started to work with NACE in building an assessment tool for those career competencies. And that kind of walked me towards the experience of starting, as you know, working with NACE full time and doing a lot of faculty professional development and really connecting into our employer partners to see how NACE competency development could really be developed across that bridge into employment. Yeah, I think that's kind of the sort of core story there and and really, the area that I oversee is really called Career Readiness and and connects down into the focus on those competencies and career learning in the classroom and beyond the classroom for students.

Julian Alssid: Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of how then you're, you know, what are the tools and services that that NACE offers, and you talked a bit about your faculty development work and the competency work, obviously, and and then how are you working with both educators and the employers to break down these silos?

Niesha Taylor: What's interesting is that there's such a strong presence at NACE of career services professionals and leaders, and they have for many, many years, been focusing on those career competencies as a kind of foundation and a structure to integrate into various student experiences. So NACE really, has for many years worked with career services folks, and I think part of what's happening now is there's a broader awareness that this is a critical part of the college experience, and they're looking for ways to expand the professional knowledge and really tap into the professional knowledge of career services and stretch it across colleges. So what that looks like is always continuing to have deep and focused conversations with career services professionals, but help them advocate for expanding that focus across a college experience, so connecting it into academic affairs, teaching faculty about it, having program development that builds NACE competencies over time, so that it's not it really can't sit just with career services, especially because career services are typically very under resourced. They just cannot stretch. I mean, Jessica will tell you maybe some of the numbers of like, how many students her office is supposed to serve, and it is often true that there's not enough people in career services to have, like, a decent caseload of students. So NACE works a lot to help a college see how to start to integrate that career thinking across the experience, how leadership can get on board, how faculty can start to learn what's going on, and then how to build just an ethos of focus on career readiness from beginning to end of an academic experience. So that's really the higher ed side. And I think that numbers are something like 75% of the colleges we work with engage career readiness and the core career competencies, something like 30% do that really across the college. I think about 40% do it in a like department wide or stretched across a couple of departments. LaGuardia actually does a really beautiful job at it expanding, but it's, it's really rare that a college gets and really spreads it across the college experience, which is ideal for a student so NACE really brings in efforts to the college to help do that work, particularly to me, that's faculty professional development for the most part. But we also might work with, let's say, if it's focused in career services already, might expand it into advisement, for example, or take it over into student leadership work or things like that, to start to take those next steps, but it's a lot of professional development and support and community engagement to get that going. On the employer side, it's working with recruitment folks, and you'll hear this story from Bryan, more specifically, of understanding that so many colleges. Across the US are really building on this idea of of career readiness and how to engage that conversation as they're focusing and talking to students on college campuses, and then how to help them build their skills as they're coming into early, early career or internship programs at the college so that trying to sort of create the common language across higher education into employment, so that students can really leap, you know, and grow as they enter into those first layers of employment on the other side. And that work is newer to me, but really is exciting. It's, you know, you'll hear this story, but it's there are so many employers that I've spoken to are really grabbing this idea and being able to tell the story better for students as they're bridging over into employment as well. Great.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, thank you so much for explaining at a high level how you go about doing this work across higher ed institutions and with employers. And so we're excited to dive into a couple of examples. Jessica, I guess, and Niesha, let's let's start there. Can we talk a little bit about the relationship between NACE and LaGuardia Community College, and you know, how did the relationship develop, and what have been some successes you've experienced in your work together, and some challenges or things you're working on as well.

Jessica Perez: A little bit about my history when I started in higher education back in 2009 I think I'm aging myself now, but that's when I first was introduced to NACE being the Assistant Director of Career Services at Bronx Community College, which is also part of the City University of New York. And my involvement started it very simple as resources, right access to professional development, really being up to date with industry trends, that was really the goal of being involved with NACE and then let's fast forward to my role at LaGuardia Community College. When I first started at the college about maybe a few semesters in, we started this new initiative of co-curricular transcripts, and how could we document the student experience outside of the classroom, but with that twist of career readiness. So what we started, and that was when my work started with Niesha, was that we developed digital badges at the college in different areas, but I'll speak specifically what we did in career services. We have the Career Readiness Digital Badging program, which still exists to this day. We started very small with just federal work study students, providing professional development to those students so they have a real experience versus, right, not just being in a front desk answering phones. And then what we did was we aligned the job descriptions of the students for each department to the competencies, and I also aligned with the competencies of the college. So again, we're speaking one language when it comes to competencies, right? Because competencies, the word competencies, could be very foreign to our students, and from there, it has evolved to our current SOAR Experiential Learning Program, which is funded through the LaGuardia Foundation, and students are placed in entry level internship positions related to their major. So if they're interested in accounting, we will find them an entry level accounting position, and they will do a 12 week internship, and they get paid a $2,000 stipend, and they get awarded a digital badge. So actually, I just presented on Friday with some colleagues at City Tech, which is also part of CUNY, and we were talking about these microcredentials, and the value that students find. It motivates them to want to complete the internship, and they also build self confidence for our students. So again, right to answer the original question, that's what has allowed me to continue being involved with NACE and also in various leadership roles, because I'm very passionate about the work, especially for our first generation students that is mostly our population within CUNY, and helping them find value in their own career readiness and also leverage career connectedness across the college so because really, career is we all own it right? Career services, we lead the work, but we need our stakeholders and our partners, specifically faculty, to be successful in this work, and they have been my biggest stakeholders.

Julian Alssid: I'm interested to hear a little bit more about kind of the successes and challenges that you've experienced in this work.

Jessica Perez: Sure. So successes I just mentioned that, right? We want to, we have a really successful internship program. We've, we've provided at least 700 students with paid internships that have earned digital badges, which have led for them to either find a second internship, I get hired at a second internship on their own because of the career readiness competencies, or the student has been hired by the employer, or even found independently, right with our resources, another job which right a couple of years ago that was unheard of for community college students, that they're completing at least two internships before graduation. That's a major success. But again, that's all thanks to right? The framework that NACE has developed that we've been able to tweak and make our own at LaGuardia. Challenges, of course, is getting buy in from across the board, right? Especially when it came to the digital badges. Not everyone... They feel that it's extra work on the student or it's extra work on them, whether it's right, whether it's a staff or faculty member. So it's really having those conversations of what is the value, especially from the student perspective. They are finding the value in this. They are finding it helpful, and it's helping them align what they're learning in the classroom in their minds, right to what they're doing outside of the classroom. Because when they're meeting with an employer and Brian, you could probably speak to this, right, they don't know how to articulate what they're learning in the classroom as experience. They say, I have zero experience. Now let's talk about the different projects you've done, research projects, service learning activities, they're like, oh, wow, I actually have a lot of experience in this area. But again, it's our job as career services professionals or higher education educators, right in general, to educate, coach, and and help students articulate these skills that they actually have. So I would say that it's a strength, but also a challenge getting students to really be able to understand that they are proficient in these skills. It's just a matter of they. I had a sorry, I'm gonna go into a little rant, but a student of mine, and actually in one of the courses I teach, didn't feel confident that they actually have skills to put on their LinkedIn. But it's a coaching and saying, Hey, what have you done in the classroom, in this in this class? Oh, you've done two presentations. What does that mean? Oh, I have communication skills. Yes, you're able to present. And he's, he's done an excellent job in doing that. So again, it's about coaching and bringing that awareness to the students, to be able to share and not feel shy, to show off everything they've accomplished.

Niesha Taylor: If I could jump in here too. So I really learned about the challenges when I was first working with Jessica. We were working on a project that brought advisors together with faculty. We were doing, like an advisement team, and it was the first time I like Jessica, just like, brought her folks to be a part of those teams, and then where things went well, faculty members who had been kind of like, I would like, say, dismissive of career services under started to understand the depth of knowledge that those folks brought to the table. This happens over and over again. It's worth mentioning that, like in higher education, there are all of these hierarchies where the faculty feel that this is a side thing. It's an over there thing. And so the more we can really dispel those myths and really raise up the expertise of this group of folks that have a critical function at the colleges, I think we start to help to bring that conversation into the classroom and help because it shouldn't be that a student goes to that class that you just described, where they presented twice, but they never thought of what that real learning meant and how to bring it into the into the room. And I always use that idea of showing off Jessica, because I have met so many CUNY students who like I think there's a lot of sort of cultural barriers to that, that feeling of what you're supposed to do in an interview, which does feel like showing off or bragging. And so I had a faculty member I worked with who framed it nicely. She said she'll have her students practice talking about what they accomplished, and then she'll ask them to do it again with pride and try to put their shoulders back and say, like, what would this look like if you walk in and you just feel like I really do have an amazing set of skills here, and I'm going to tell you about it, so that articulation point is really critical. When we do faculty professional development at NACE we make sure not only that a faculty member understands how to point to those experiences that might work on a resume or in an interview, but that the student is handed the opportunity to talk about it, to say those things, to try to feel what it feels like, to show off a little and say how good you are at something, because we know that's what they're gonna have to do when they sit in that first interview.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Just as a follow up to this part of the conversation, I'm wondering regarding the career readiness, competencies, how are they continuously updated? I mean, maybe, I guess, you could say, how were they developed, but also just, how are they updated and kept current and I think you know, as you're talking about your work with Jessica, with students and work with faculty members, how do you ensure kind of, there's this process of continued refinement?

Niesha Taylor: Yeah, I mean, this is all all developed sort of before I walked in the door. But I've really learned a lot like how seriously they take every step of the research that brings them to the competency. So the initial set was, you know, it's always through our members. So we have members who are employers and members who are high in higher education, in career services, but in all different areas of higher education, talking about what really works, what really matters, and what is going to make that difference. So you'll hear a lot about now a skills based hiring, right? We have fewer and fewer folks being hired because they have, like, the highest GPA, and these skills tend to be things that that are looked for in a variety of ways by employers, like through an interview process, an assessment of some sort, et cetera. And so we're updating them based on feedback in the second so they were developed, and I think in 2015 and then there was an update in, I think 2020 where they went through and kind of looked through them and adjusted, and that all takes a good long time. This, you can sort of refer back to Mary Gatta and all the research, because we've tried to think about even adjusting them a bit. And it just every step. If we're going to take that step, it's going to take time, because it's such a serious process. I will say that, you know, if you look deeper at the at each competency, we have a definition and sample behaviors. And those sample behaviors were also confirmed through a really broad research project where we had a technical sort of partner who was able to push these skills out and really confirm that these are the skills that made sense to connect up. So for example, for critical thinking, which is can be a blanket term, can mean a million things. We had to kind of get specific about data analysis and decision making like, and what does that really look like in terms of expectation in the workplace, and then validate those behaviors. And so, you know, any adjustment or shift will again, take that much time and effort. And so I think, you know, obviously we saw a shift at about five years. And so there will be a process again, like, okay, when do we need to take a refreshed look at this? And that's when we are all engaged Task Force at NACE, the research team and a variety of processes for looking at those sub behaviors and things like that.

Jessica Perez: If I could maybe jump in as well from the career services side, what we do is speaking with our industry partners is extremely critical in maintaining right everything that we do up to date, and we use, you know, like cast as well, to stay up to date with what are the current trends, especially in the majors that we offer, we have developed advisory councils, which includes faculty and our employer partners. So they're a huge right voice in the work that we do, but also the faculty really engaging them in this work, which we started back in 2015 and has evolved over the years, like, for example, now we're working with the English department. They're creating assignments for the health sciences majors, a new major that we have, and really developing a reflection for students, which then is going to be followed by mock interviews with partner employers coming in. So I do my best to kind of integrate right the academic with also bringing in an industry professional. And that's how we keep our badges and anything that we do related to career readiness updated and right and up to par

Julian Alssid: Well, so speaking of the voice of the employers, Bryan, you've been very patiently listening to this great discussion of the education side. But of course, none of this is going to happen if we don't have employers on board and in sync. And so really interested to hear from you about the relationship with NACE, how it came about and about your work, and the sort of the successes and challenges in applying this approach to the recruitment side of the equation.

Bryan Taylor: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Julian and Kaitlin, and thanks for inviting me to provide that employer perspective. As you mentioned. You know, this is a really personal topic for me, because I grew up in a really small rural area in South Carolina as a young student, and I was a first generation college student, as Jessica was talking about, one of those first generation college students. My parents never went to college. One of them never even finished high school. So you know, I understood really early the importance of being able to decipher, you know, the code of how to be ready for a career whenever you, you know, you do go through a university experience and get a degree. You know, that's not the stopping or the stop point, it's, it's the starting point. So I've been very passionate, not only just in my work at Abbott, but also whenever I first got engaged with NACE, which was actually when I worked at the Walt Disney Company. Before working for Abbott, I got a very early start understanding the benefits of the NACE partnership in my work at Disney, prior to coming to Abbott. And having served on many committees with NACE, as well as currently, right now, actively serving on the board of directors for NACE, I can tell you firsthand that I've had the privilege of being able to witness this evolution of my relationship and Abbott's relationship with NACE. I think it started when, and maybe it was Niesha that mentioned this as a challenge that employers have is really connecting the dots and bridging those gaps between education and employment. And we recognized, I think early on, the value that naces research brings the resources and really even the community that you get through NACE that helps you shape your hiring practices as an employer. So over time, not only just in those committees that I've served on, but also through our relationship with NACE, we've been able to grow our programs through these initiatives, my team participates in a lot of NACE events. We partner with the community to align on a lot of these, these elements that go into our recruitment strategy and build workforce readiness. And as I mentioned right at the beginning, this is something that's been very passionate for me and my team, and I think one of our busy, biggest successes, in terms of a success story, has been to integrate into our hiring practices a framework of skills based hiring. And I'm not just going to throw that word out there, skills based hiring, because I think that's used a lot really specifically. What it meant was helping define for our team members in talent acquisition the differences between behaviors and skills and competencies and how they are all related together, how they build workforce readiness. And that's really helped us understand what we need to do when we not only just go out and interact with students and engage with students before they come on to internship opportunities or or full time opportunities with us. But what we do once they're here and once they're in in our in our industry and in our organization, how do we continue to develop those skills and develop those behaviors so that students are what we what we like to call workforce ready whenever they graduate from university. I think what this has helped us really do is not only just tap into a more diverse talent pool, but it's also helped us really move, I think, beyond those traditional degree requirements that I think a lot of industries and companies are used to having as a factor whenever you are interviewing students. Of course, you know, we still have challenges with that, like aligning to some of our recruiting teams and internal stakeholders. You know, we still have, we are 145 year old company. So you know, you're always going to have some of those, those challenges of an evolution, of changing some of the old behaviors, especially when it comes to how most of these teams have been used to going out and engaging students or recruiting students. But I will tell you that the partnership that we've had with NACE has really helped bridge those gaps and help help us evolve as an organization, I think we've used a lot of the NACE data and the dialog to help keep us moving forward.

Julian Alssid: And so are you seeing, then greater adoption, you know, from your colleagues?

Bryan Taylor: We are, we are. And you know, it's interesting too, because once you start seeing some of the best practices put in place in some of the return on investment from those best practices. For example, we'd have, we now have, it Abbott, about a 70% conversion rate of our interns to full time. So that's a key metric for us, right? You know, our programs exist at a intern and co-op program standpoint. To convert talent to full time. We want students to work for Abbott. Our CEO is very passionate about this. He has mentioned several times that Abbott is not a training ground for other companies. We are a starting point for people that want to get their career started here. So how do we do that? We do that by really making sure that our recruitment strategy. And our techniques and our development opportunities that we provide are tapped into those workforce readiness competencies that NACE has put out there. So we have built a lot of our internship programming and co-op programming around those eight competencies. We design a lot of development opportunities for our students to really continue, as I mentioned, to build on those skills that we look for when we're actually going out on campuses and having discussions or interviews with students. So not only are we we, you know, convincing the business that this is the right thing to do when we're out out recruiting, but it's also an important part of the experience that they play a key role in, right? So the managers and the assignment leaders that interact with these students when they're with us during internships and co ops also have to understand that it's it's part of their role to help develop those competencies too, as well to build those skills. It's not just about technical skills anymore. It's about, you know, everybody used to call them soft skills. We call them foundational skills, but it's also tied into the behavior piece too, as well. And, you know, those two things coupled together really build on the competencies for for NACE, and that's, that's the approach that we've been taking. It's not revolutionary, but we have had to have some change, you know, in terms of being able to adapt and and adopt this as a core part of our development strategy for for early talent at Abbott.

Niesha Taylor: One of the things, just to jump in, you know, part of what I've learned by talking to Bryan a little bit more and understanding how he's incorporated, you know, NACE competencies into his work, is really that he had to kind of build a lot of the curriculum. I'm calling it curriculum because, you know where I come from, but the kind of learning that happens in the early job experience, he's developed ways that he's really teaching those NACE competencies to the folks that are coming through the internship in the same way we think about teaching them in higher education. And so we've gone through a process of developing a curriculum. It's a kind of a first step of like, how do you expose students first to what are these competencies, very specifically and hopefully hands on? And we're looking at that higher ed curriculum, and now we're going to bring it over, and I've invited Bryan and a few of our other employer partners who've done this work already, to see if we can come up with a framework for employers that are sitting in that same area to not have to build from scratch, but to really help folks develop those skills that are going to help them succeed and grow in their careers, and hopefully stay right what the employers really want to have folks that are retained and growing, and so that's part of what the competencies can offer.

Bryan Taylor: And Niesha, I'll just add in there, you bring up an excellent point that, you know, I think a lot of employers are probably sitting on the sidelines of doing this type of work because they don't have that framework and they don't have that playbook, right? So, creating a playbook for employers to really just get some ideas on how they can do it and they can, they can adopt and adapt, you know, you know, elements of of that framework to make it work for their own organization. That was key for us, right? We didn't have to, you know, take a specific example and go word by word, or, you know, chapter by chapter, on how to, how to execute this type of curriculum in in a work for a workplace environment. We built our own and, you know, but, but we didn't start from scratch. You know, the partnership with NACE was really important in terms of, like, understanding what was going to be really successful for us, and how do we build it so that we accomplish the things that we wanted to do, which nyesha mentions, you know, we want to have students that stay with us and and stay long term over the years well.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I feel like this conversation is is leading us to we always kind of ask, given that the podcast is called Work Forces. We always ask a question about forces, and I feel like this conversation is leading us right there. So you know, as as as we're all, as you all think about these experiences working both within your organizations and then across organizations to make this work really come to life, or learners and and employees and interns. What steps can our listeners take to become forces in preparing workers and learners for successful career navigation? I know, Bryan, you just mentioned, right, this concept of this playbook. Jessica, you talked about really, you know, making it really clear to learners like this making it really transparent. These are the skills you have, right? Like this is what this what? How you can explain them. But we'd love to hear any other action items or steps you would recommend.

Jessica Perez: I would say, creating a supportive environment for your audience, right? So if you're in higher education, your career services, professional or faculty member. Where it's really creating that safe, supportive environment for students, also aligning the competencies to what already exists. So it's right. It's not about reinventing the wheel or creating new structures, but it's really about what are we doing, making an assessment of what we're doing, and just elevating and enhancing it for your students. So like, for example, right? Simple assignments that are already happening have been designed by our amazing faculty. It's then just aligning the career readiness competencies and then that safe environment for students, and it just a lot, right? It's like one happy community. And also for career services, is really involving industry professionals like Bryan that are passionate about this type of work, that really want our students to succeed. He's not saying that others don't, but really encouraging lifelong learning for these students and making those connections, helping them make those connections of what they're learning in the classroom and in their co curricular programs, and really being an advocate for career education, because right, we all went to college for a reason, and it was right for our careers. So it's really bringing that to the forefront, as this is the main goal of our students. How do we attach all these extra things that we do and package it really well in that safe environment for students.

Niesha Taylor: I'll add there Jessica, that I feel like sort of what, what's represented in this conversation is a bridge that doesn't always and off or often exist. Having worked in higher education for most of my career, and really how I was an advocate, right? Like, you know, starting with that work that I did with Jessica at LaGuardia, building up to the work I was doing at Guttman, I really was advocating for this, but I didn't understand how little I was engaging with employers until I went to the New York job CEO Council, and really was sitting in front of recruiters and employers for a stretch of time and hearing them. So I think one of the things is to really break down some barriers to employer engagement, to start to get very direct about that need. So that's one thing is to really just realize that higher education has siloed itself away from employers. It's the sort of critical endpoint is degree attainment instead of job attainment. And I think the more we advocate for looking at that as the critical step that needs to be offered, you know, as a result of the time and effort, especially for first generation, for young people of color, for the folks in New York that Jessica is serving, you cannot ignore the need for a job. As a result of higher education. Folks are sacrificing their time and energy and efforts there, and they need to have that return on investment. And then the other thing I would say is internal to organization, internal to higher education, there's a real sort of push away from what I think feels like the corporatization of higher education. And I think the reframe, and we've heard it very much in this conversation, from Bryan's really sort of personal focus, is this is not an issue of like bringing a corporate lens into the classroom for that the sake of takeover. It's really a focus around equity and access and really like economic mobility, fundamentally. And if you see it from that direction, I think you can start to loosen and open really the broader academic experience to making stronger and more real connections to our employer, partners, folks that really need to offer the jobs to those books that we're teaching. So I think that's, it's a reframe that's really necessary, and getting and getting folks on board in that way. So that's some of the advice I would offer is Think carefully about really what the endpoint is, and try to be a little bit more supportive of what students really want out of their education.

Bryan Taylor: Yeah, and I'll say, just from the employer side, I think a lot of us get into this role and into this line of work, because we are passionate about giving people more access, giving people more opportunity, right, and and that's aligned with what nace's mission is, too, is to increase access and opportunity for for students like Jessica, students at her school and and all across the country. And I think one of the biggest steps to doing that, if you're an employer, is you first got to understand what it means to be embracing skills based hiring practices, right? You know, I think, as I mentioned before, a lot of times, people utilize that terminology, but they may not fully understand that. Uh, there are things that, if you're if you're sitting here thinking, Well, I don't have a skills based hiring approach, do some research and figure out if that's actually true or not, because in some cases, you may have some practices in place, like you may have already started to look at your job descriptions as an employer and and really reframe those so that they're focused on skills. That's a skills based hiring, you know, tactic and approach, right? Very simple, but it is, it is an element that is an employer element of this, this whole discussion that we're having, you know, thinking about how you're training your assignment managers, as I mentioned before, they are key to this whole experience of, you know, develop, you know, development around workplace or workforce readiness. So, you know, all of us, I think, in this space, are are enthusiastic about working with the business and making sure that the managers are the right managers, and they're the ones that are trained to be able to deliver the right type of curriculum, from an industry perspective, to help develop students that is a skills based hiring approach. So those are two great examples right there that that I think oftentimes, some people on my on the industry side, might sit, sit here and say, I don't have a skills based hiring approach you do. So just, you know, thinking about it and being more intentional about it, and using your partners like NACE. And then finally, the last thing I'll say is, you know, I never thought of myself as a as a data guy, but there is so much data that can be leveraged to really be able to tell the right story to your business leaders, if they are ever, you know, wondering whether or not this is the right approach, or what the return on investment is for, for going down this path, use the data that is, you know, my number one recommendation I always give to my team and to any, any of our colleagues that I partner with across the NACE organization, is the data is key, and it will really tell you, Like, what's working, what's not working. And you know how this approach really has, has helped us not only just convert students into full time roles, but keep them long term. So those are just some of my recommendations. I mean, if you're an employer, you know, listening to this, just trust me that we've all been in the same place at some point in time where we're like, this is a heavy lift. Where do I get started? You know, those those small, simple things, I think can really get you, get you to start building up momentum, so that you get to a point where it just becomes practice for all of your recruiters,

Niesha Taylor: I think, understanding that we're talking about an ecosystem here, right, like you're getting all the way to that place of building talent and helping folks, you know, become economically mobile, like once they reach into the employer side. But it's really an ecosystem coming from higher education and the variety of ways you can get a degree or certificate and start to build out, and that's it's a whole ecosystem you need to pay attention to across all of those lines, and it takes a lot of flexibility. And so I know, having worked with Jessica a lot and having gotten to know Bryan's work, these are flexible thinkers, there's a lot of innovation involved in trying to navigate systems that are really stuck and opening new roads here, one of the ways, and Jessica mentioned this, is to be flexible. In the land of higher education, with the things that are already in place, that sort of are forced by our creditors or measured, there's usually a set of outcomes that are required for your college to stay accredited. Those outcomes are almost always at least, like 80% aligned with these NACE competencies. And so finding those connection points is really critical. We have been working with the AAC&U, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, and their leadership is very open and committed to seeing these alignments, I think in the next year, you'll see a sort of more official statement that shows our the commitment to the competencies and the the outcomes that are listed by AAC&U these things have a crosswalk, and there's no reason for us to see them as separate things, and that we need To really take those steps to be flexibly connecting, you know, sort of the those sides of the house in higher education. And then I think that same kind of flexibility is what you need to see across the bridge. Look at your intermediaries. There's usually a ton of folks that are helping to bridge between higher education and employment. How are they making those links and connections, and start to think flexibly about doing the taking, the kind of steps that Brian has been able to take, to really kind of pull and open up the doors from higher education into employment.

Julian Alssid: Yeah. What's so interesting to me, listening to you all is how, how so much of this is, is there to be had. And I think, you know, like, you know, on the education side, this idea of, you know, industry being kind of anathema to what we do, it's like no. And especially the more we see AI creep in, the more they need those academic skills. I mean the employer sides, like, yes, we do skills. We look at skills and so but sort of teasing that out and so much is about this framework that NACE and you all are bringing to your work that, to me, seems to keep the framework. It's the processes. It's drawing on the data, and then the relationships within and among you know your various partners. So as we wind down, how can listeners learn more and continue to follow this work?

Niesha Taylor: A very simple way is to go to, you know, NACEweb.org, to go to our website, to get linked to some of the core information. There's tons of resources we have. Not only we have publications that are really from our research team, deep research reports, but just tools and resources. If you go to the career readiness section, you'll see how to really navigate these competencies, and lots of examples of articles, of folks that are, you know, model practices in implementing the competencies in the way that's been described in our conversation. So that's one way is to connect there, yeah, and keep, keep your eye out for for NACE events. You know, ways that you can come into conversation and hear folks who are doing this work learn from those specific examples in our webinars, in our annual conference. And you know our offerings in terms of, you know, really learning space that NACE offers.

Bryan Taylor: Yeah, I'll just echo that, uh, plug for, you know, just become a NACE member. Because, you know, a lot of the key learnings that I've gotten over the past 15 years have been from attending, you know, the annual conference, or some of the events that NACE puts on, even virtually, just so many ways to just get plugged in and connected. And it's not that difficult to become a member, for sure. So, you know, if you're an employer for you know, out there that you know, has two recruiters, it's, you don't have to have a team of 200 to become a NACE member. You know, it's, it's open to everybody. And I think that community, as I mentioned before, is just, is so important, you know, to be able to bounce off ideas and and be able to have the collaboration and the in the just the conversation around these types of topics.

Julian Alssid: Great. Well, thank you so so much for taking the time. This has been wonderful, enlightening conversation, and we look forward to pushing it out there.

Niesha Taylor: Thanks so much for having us.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you.

Jessica Perez: Thank you.

Bryan Taylor: Thank you.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We are also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.