As more companies get serious about work-based learning, demand is rising for training that helps jobseekers get ready for the customs and expectations of office work. This is particularly true for employers that are creating on-ramps for jobseekers from lower-income backgrounds, who tend to get less of that preparation at school or home.
Yet teaching these skills—how to write a work email or what to wear to the office—isn’t easy. It takes time and money, and can be a challenge even for the most respected training providers.
“For the population that we’re most worried about, that’s where some of the biggest deficits are,” says Brent Orrell, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s the kind of skill that is embedded in everyday interaction. We don’t actually have a curriculum to teach that.”
Verizon is a good example of an employer that has made a big push in recent years with internships. That growing program, along with apprenticeships, seek to “create a pipeline to full-time talent,” says Tara Orlando, Verizon’s senior director of talent attraction and emerging talent programs.
The telecommunications giant is committed to increasing the diversity of thought and demographics among its roughly 105K employees, Orlando says. And she says internships are one way for the company to “recoup some of our female workforce” after seeing a decline during the pandemic.
Internships at Verizon are incredibly competitive, however—the company got 50K applications for 400 positions this year.
To help ensure that women have a better shot at those coveted internships, Verizon has partnered with Break Through Tech, a nonprofit that seeks to help a broader range of students land roles in tech, an industry dominated by white men.
One of the group’s signature programs is its “sprinternship,” a three-week microinternship designed so participants—mostly women from lower-income and diverse backgrounds—can move into highly-sought, paid summer internships and eventually full-time jobs in tech. Break Through Tech also recently created a virtual, one-year extracurricular experience focused on data science, AI, and machine learning.
In its work with Verizon, the organization developed a customized cohort-based pipeline into internships.
“Companies are getting a lot of noise in the system,” says Melissa Jones, Break Through Tech’s senior director of program delivery. “We’re really trying to reach students who don’t have these types of opportunities.”
Groups of five microinterns, all recruited from the same university, spend three weeks tackling real-world business problems on-site at Verizon. The pilot program placed 80 students with the company during its initial session. Participants who complete the program are automatically enrolled in Verizon’s 10-week internship. Break Through Tech hopes its work with Verizon can serve as a model for other companies.
“The best way to learn about being in an office is to put students in an office,” Jones says.
Break Through Tech recently tapped a group of advisors from HR and higher education to identify the professional skills students need in a work environment, and how to help interns develop them.
“We’ve discovered that it’s not enough to simply teach the skills in a traditional pedagogical sense,” says Jones. “We also need to provide opportunities for practice, coaching, and mentorship along the way.”
The need is urgent, says Verizon’s Orlando. She pleaded with readers of this newsletter, including philanthropies and training providers, to put more resources into the development of everyday office skills. The problem extends far beyond internships, she says, to the broader talent pipeline and the workforce at large.
The Kicker: “It’s a generational challenge,” Orlando says. “We need to better set up the success of the talent.”