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From Classroom to Career: The Soft Skills Journey
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Discover how mastering soft skills can unlock new opportunities in your career with insights from our distinguished guest, Ashley Adamson, Senior Program Manager at JA Innovation Team. Learn why employers are shifting their focus from technical skills to competencies like collaboration and communication. We'll explore the groundbreaking JA Career Ready Credential, a digital platform that equips students with micro-credentials in essential soft skills, making them more appealing candidates in today's competitive job market.
In this episode, we dive into the collaborative effort to implement a micro-credentialing system in Fort Wayne Community Schools, specifically for 11th graders. Hear from experts Carly Buchanan, Nick Dara, and Patrick Bushing on the role of employer feedback in shaping a system that meets the varied needs of students and businesses alike. We'll discuss how industry leaders are ensuring that the curriculum remains relevant and effective, preparing students for the workforce by fostering essential habits and self-determination.
From early education to entering the workforce, we emphasize the value of nurturing soft skills across all stages of development. Our conversation includes success stories from partnerships with Junior Achievement and how these initiatives are addressing talent shortages in the community. Don't miss out on this enriching episode that highlights the importance of recognizing and cultivating these often-undervalued competencies in the workplace. Join us for more valuable discussions in our upcoming episodes.
Welcome to MICE, the podcast where we empower HR excellence one conversation at a time. Today, we have Ashley Adamson here. She is the Senior Program Manager on the JA Innovation Team for Northern Indiana, and we will be discussing the newest program regarding credentialing and why it is important to introduce soft skills early on. So thanks for being here, Ashley. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and what exactly this new program entails?
Speaker 2Hi. Yes, thanks so much, brittany, for having me here today. Again, my name's Ashley. I am a senior program manager on our innovation team at JA and we get to do a lot of the things that are a little bit outside the box from our traditional in-school programming where volunteers go into the classroom and our capstone programming where students come on site to JA BizTown and JA Finance Park. And one of the big projects I've been working on for the past few years has been our credentialing project, and this has become a passion project. And to help talk about the importance of competencies today, I invited a few extra guests with us, and so we have Carly Buchanan with us, who's the Director of Human Resources at Brooks Construction and also President of NYRA. We have Nick Dara, who is our Vice President of Partnerships and Government Relations at Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, and we also have Patrick Bushing, who's a Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Don Wood Foundation, and I invited them because I thought they would all have some really great comments and feedback.
Speaker 2As we talk about the importance of competencies and soft skills and when we talk about credentialing and the project that I've been working on, I want to start a little bit with the why and why we went down this road to begin with, and a lot of it really came down to some of the research that we had been doing on a national scale, as well as things that we kept hearing locally from our community partners and our business partners. And so some of that research that we've been looking into includes a 2023 IPSOS study, where almost twice as many employers had mentioned the need for soft skills over hard skills or technical skills when hiring young adults, and similarly, a Stanford Research Institute international study said that 75% of job success comes from having well-developed soft skills, while only 25% comes from technical skills and knowledge. And along that same lines, we kept hearing repeatedly, from both our education and our business partners, that young people who are entering the workplace are coming in unequipped for many of these real world competencies, because either they don't understand that they're important or they maybe don't know what they are or how to talk about them or how to utilize them. But on the flip side of that, it also means that our higher education and training institutions and employers have to spend a lot more time and money and energy to help skill up these young workers to get them job ready, instead of focusing mainly on the jobs that they really want to be working on. In fact, it appears that approximately 33 hours of training and $1,252 goes into every new hire that a company onboards, so you can see where that gets very time consuming and also fiscally expensive.
Speaker 2So, yeah, and on the other side of that, though, we have young people who really understand that soft skills are important, but they may not know what they are or be overwhelmed and don't know where to start, and so, in that same episode study, we saw that 64% of young adults seeking an entry-level full-time position within the next year know that they need to improve their soft skills. They just don't know how to go about that, and so, when we started working on this project, we reached out with our national office, our national JA office, to develop a digital platform, predominantly for our students, but recognizing it could be used beyond school-age students, and that eventually became what we are now calling the JA Career Ready Credential, which helps solve this problem by meeting young people where they are and allowing them to work through learning modules and also earn micro-credentials. What is an IPSO study? It's a marketing research study. Usa, the national office. They work with this marketing research company quite a bit, and so it's a national organization.
Speaker 1Okay, so let's discuss how the competencies and soft skills play a role in all the different industries here in Indiana or nationwide.
Speaker 4Yeah, so I can jump in on that. So the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership we go by NEI now is a regional economic development organization. Our job is to attract new businesses to Northeast Indiana and a big piece of our ability to do that is to demonstrate talent pipeline, talent availability, so access to high skilled or the appropriately skilled talent that our companies that we're looking to attract need. And we do all of this by working very closely and collaboratively with our business community. Already and our foundations and our nonprofits and everybody else JA Don Wood Foundation and Brooks Construction are all active participants in the work that we do to help build this region, to make it saleable for new companies to come in, and having those conversations with industries and companies and business leaders from across the spectrum.
Speaker 4We hear all of this stuff that Ashley just mentioned on an anecdotal basis, not necessarily an academic study being done.
Speaker 4But companies need people and they need people with the right skills and oftentimes they're willing to train for the specific skills that the job needs done.
Speaker 4But there are certain non, there are certain those soft skills that we're talking about that any good employee, regardless of industry, needs to have in order to be attractive.
Speaker 4And having these conversations with our stakeholders and our employers in the area and, knowing that talent is important to our ability to do things, we shifted away from pure talent attraction a while ago to really understanding how do we help enhance and increase the talent and the labor pool that we have here.
Speaker 4And it just really coincided that our workforce council, underneath our regional opportunities council, were having these conversations, as JA of Northern Indiana was working on this project for JA USA, and we felt it was just an easy fit to marry up what Ashley was leading with what our stakeholders were saying, and so we were able to convene a bunch of regional leaders, business leaders, HR managers, et cetera, to help provide that input to JA of Northern Indiana as they developed this pilot and this curriculum and program. Talent, soft skills, hard skills, but particularly just employable people are really needed and fortunately for us it's not unique to Northeast Indiana. This is an issue elsewhere, but fortunately for us Also, we have JA of Northern Indiana here working on this project that we can help be first movers on getting the soft skills credentials done.
Speaker 1So with the construction field and you can speak on the construction in general or at Brooks what do you see being really important when it comes?
Speaker 3to soft skills and how they play a role in the construction field. To echo what Nick said, the soft skills and just being able to show up to work and we can train on the rest right that attendance, punctuality, the right attitudes, work ethic puts you miles ahead of the competition of these jobs you're applying for, and creativity and critical thinking and just all these soft skills are skills that Brooks needs, and there's been a trend over the past few years of shifting from is college for everyone or is it not, in a push for the trades and the manufacturing. So we've worked alongside JA and a lot of the groups that Nick spoke about as well. Brooks feels 18 is too late. So if we are marketing to I just graduated high school it's too late. You gotta get in their minds when they're middle school, maybe elementary school, and start letting them explore construction, explore working with their hands, explore manufacturing.
Speaker 3It's 18 is too late, and so it was an old recruiting thing of I need people today, right, I need people tomorrow to fill roles, partnering with JA and learning more about their credential program. To us at Brooks is more about long-term plan of us getting a pipeline and reaching and impacting students earlier on and getting them these credentials. It's a long-term, it's not short-term. It's no longer the role I need to fill next week. We've shifted and we believe in that at Brooks and lots of other construction companies are along with us as well as manufacturing. It's just a. It's a big thing in construction and lots of other industries and we're glad that JA has these right tools to get these students workforce ready.
Speaker 1Patrick, I'm sorry, I feel like I cut you off.
Speaker 5No, you're all good and I appreciate that. Nick and Ashley, you're absolutely right and although this was not stated from research that the Don Wood Foundation did, there is a lot of research out there that talks about how technical skills can get you a job, but non-cognitive employability skills prepare you for a career. That's absolutely important. And when you take a look at two groups of folks, these studies had indicated again, not Don Wood Foundation studies, but these studies had indicated if you take a look at two groups of folks and one group has high level of technical skills and a lower level of non-cognitive or employability skills, and you look at another group that has a higher level of non-cognitive skills and employability skills and a lower level of technical skills, if you follow those two groups over time, you will find that, as measured by career growth and career wage growth, that the individuals that had a higher level of non-cognitive skills and, unfortunately, a lower level of technical skills will be more successful over time.
Speaker 5I think that's absolutely spot on and prior to my role with the Don Wood Foundation, I was the CEO and president of AD20, which was a large manufacturing firm in Whitley County. And, nick and Carly, you're absolutely right the company was founded by Don Wood, who's the namesake of the foundation, and he was absolutely, from the very beginning, spot on about you. Give me an employee with a great attitude and I will teach them the technical skills they need in order to be successful, and that's absolutely true. So, ashley, the work that you and JA are doing with these certifications and credentials are just absolutely important for this region.
Speaker 1So, ashley, why do you feel it's really important that regional businesses support this JA Career Ready credential?
Workforce Skills Development for Students
Speaker 2Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is that, in order to be able to offer this program on a wider scale, we really need employers to embrace it and say yes, we understand that this is something that is important. Yes, we want to work with you to find a better way. Yes, we'd like a way to be able to identify some of these qualified candidates a little bit faster, or else we don't have a program right, and that's really what it comes down to. And so, if you're what you're hearing today, if you think it sounds like a great project that you and your company want to benefit from or be involved with, then we need your help. We really need you to just have a conversation with us, maybe share your business name and contact information, and then we'll keep you posted as we continue to move along.
Speaker 2We still have a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2We've started some of.
Speaker 2We've just done an expanded pilot test over all of the six micro-credentials that this project covers, but next year is when we'll really start to roll it out in parallel with our Fort Wayne Community Schools 3DE students in the 11th grade year to see implementation standpoint.
Speaker 2So still a lot of things to do, but we definitely need that employer support and I want to thank all of you, as well as Nick especially, and the Workforce Council and their help in giving feedback. It's been super helpful as we've pivoted to make sure that this is a system that is flexible enough to meet needs of students who have had all sorts of JA programming versus students who maybe haven't had JA programming, and also hear feedback that this could be something that employers could even use in some of their new hire training practices as well. So without that feedback and involvement from our company business partners and also from our education partners and getting student feedback, the product wouldn't be as good and as robust as it even is today at this point and as robust as it even is today at this point and I'll add on, just in general, when we talk to employers.
Speaker 4we're a business driven organization, we're supported by the business community, we're funded by the business community. We, our businesses, want to have input on this and it's nothing against traditional studies and foundations and higher ed institutions, but one size fit all doesn't meet it. And traditionally, when you have educators who are great, again nothing against it, but saying this is what you need. When we have somebody like Carly who lives in construction every day, she knows what they need in their construction. Someone like Patrick who lived in manufacturing day in, day out and knew exactly what manufacturers needed, or somebody in healthcare or somebody in insurance.
Speaker 4I talk to a lot of employers and a lot of companies and a lot of different industries and I have a high level understanding of what is needed.
Speaker 4But we're bringing all these people around one table to provide their input and tell specifically, to tell JA specifically what is needed in their company and then JA can take those, identify what are the common values and what has the most value to everybody, or possibly even in the future. How do we customize some of this to have specific, industry-specific micro-credentials that are going to add value? So really having it from those experts, from those people who live in that every day, who breathe that every day, to tell the people developing the curriculum this is what's needed. That way, we're not building a program that's not relevant to the market. Instead, we're using the market to tell us what is needed. And it's been super valuable and the business community has been very happy to. They jumped in two feet and wanted to provide that input, so it's been a great relationship all around to create this asset that we're going to have available to us.
Speaker 1And so I want everyone to chime in on this next question, because everybody on the call right now all has different backgrounds, so why do you guys feel that it's important to begin talking about soft skills early on, before Carly said the age of 18?
Speaker 3Oh, can I take a little stab at this. I think it's about forming good habits early on, and I'm a mother too, two elementary age kids, so it's good to get them working on these good habits and good behaviors and good skills early. So then by the time they're workforce ready 16, 17, 18, after graduation they're ready to take those skills into Northeast Indiana and to the workforce. Again, repetition is key. Habits take what? 21 days to form, I think. Ja, getting into schools early and often and being consistent this is key. We just don't think it's an employer. We can't change behaviors and such it's not easy once they hit our payroll. So again, it's a team effort and we like that. It's happening early and it's elementary age and earlier.
Speaker 5Yeah, and if you think about it, carly, you're absolutely spot on, because this idea that young people need to develop a sense of agency and self-determination, that doesn't occur when you're 16 or 17.
Speaker 5That occurred way early on in the development lifestyle of that child. And it was funny because Ashley and I were in a meeting a couple of days ago and I said how do you anticipate if I am a student that shows up to an employer and I say, hey, I've got these micro -credentials from junior achievement and the HR person says I don't have any idea what they are, and that self, that confidence and that sense of agency and self-determination will say, hey, that's great, let me explain to you what they are, and let me explain to you what I did and why it's important and all that sort of stuff. And as an employer, you're like hey, that is spectacular, because there is an individual that had a roadblock, that said I don't have any idea. They were able to overcome it and communicate positively and move the conversation on. And that's exactly those types of employees that everyone needs.
Speaker 4And, I'll add, in a kind of macroeconomic environment that we've been in for a while.
Speaker 4We've had a tight labor market for a decade now, so the power has really been in the hands of the individual, of the employee.
Speaker 4They've had a ton of opportunity. When I graduated college it was shortly post-recession, so there weren't a lot of job opportunities out there. You had to be able to differentiate yourself so you couldn't just graduate high school or graduate with a bachelor's degree and expect to walk into a livable wage or a good wage job, much like you can now in three, three and a half percent unemployment that we've been living in for, like I said, about a decade. At some point in time that dynamic is going to change again and so to have kids getting these skills now and I say kids not sometimes refer to college students as kids, but kids like actual children developing these skills now and growing into that, so that when the business cycle changes, when the labor environment changes, they are going to be able to differentiate themselves and become more employable instead of being able to just okay it, okay, you need me, I'll show up if I want to. That's not always gonna be the case.
Speaker 1So how do you feel they need to start learning the soft skills?
Speaker 2what was sorry. Can you repeat that?
Speaker 1how early on do you feel like these individuals should start learning the soft skills?
Speaker 2oh, I was gonna say so this.
Speaker 2So the three of you all hit the nail on the head, I think in the last podcast that we did with Brittany, we talked a little bit about our JA continuum and how we have programming from pre-k all the way through 12th grade and beyond, and being able to build on skills that students are learning year after year is really important, because that layering aspect and being able to hear things in a variety of ways from a variety of different people more than one time, and so, while the platform itself was developed for six, for students age 16 and older, our program started at pre-K to be able to allow students to understand these are those competencies that are most valued by our higher education institutions, our employers, and also give them that language that Patrick was talking about, to be able to talk about them and self-promote, and so one of the biggest things that we're going to be working on here over the next year or so is to start to trickle down some of that language into our younger programs so that way they can start to think about these and learn these concepts and terminology in an age appropriate way, but learn about them younger so that they continue to hear them year after year as they get older.
Speaker 2So then by the time they get to high school they're ready to start to take those micro-credential skills tests and then earn that full credential.
Speaker 1And this isn't necessarily completely live yet right. It's more so, a small group of schools are using it right now.
Speaker 2Yeah, so right now for the expanded pilot, we worked with Fort Wayne Community Schools their career academy, heavily. We also worked with the Boys and Girls Club to be able to test this full credential, as well as some other JA offices throughout the country. But it really was a grassroots effort here in northern Indiana. So next year again we'll start working with those 3DE students in 11th grade because it really nicely aligns with what they're already doing in class, as well as any other schools who want to be early adopters. So we can work with them to figure out how do we implement this best based on what you're already doing in your classroom and your programming. So you can access it now through me if you reach out and want some more information. You can access it now through me if you reach out and want some more information.
Speaker 3But the full rollout is going to be starting next fall and beyond. And Brittany, if I may, speaking on behalf of NYRA, who represents nearly 500 HR professionals, I would ask anybody listening to this or viewing this to dive in. Reach out to Ashley, reach out to JA. You may not know how it's going to help you in the talent acquisition and the recruiting at your employer, but you've got to dive in, partner with JA. You're going to be thankful that you did and impacting students and they can think of you when they're looking for a job and then apply in the future. It's just one of those things. There's a give back and just dive in. They will get you tapped into all the things that JA is doing and I think they're one of the best, if not the best, resources we have up here in Northeast Indiana to reaching students and our future employees in the area. Reach out, do it, you won't regret it.
Speaker 1Thanks for that.
Speaker 3Carly.
Speaker 1Success story, Carly, that you have with Brooks being partnered with JA.
Speaker 3Yeah, so I've actually been a JA volunteer for 17 years I'm showing my age so I've been in classrooms and schools and biz towns and here to careers, all the things, and since I've been partnering with them, we have students wanting to reach out to us for job shadows, like they're wanting to see job sites.
Speaker 3They're wanting that more intensive experience after hearing what we do and what we're all about and then leading to then hopefully they graduate and they want to apply and work for us and we are hiring 16 and older. Now Again, that's new to a lot of manufacturing and construction and I emphasize that because it's a big deal to get to that point where you can have internships and summer jobs for high school students. But they're reaching out, they're applying. They said they've heard about us through these job sparks and these events. I would just make sure all the NIRA members or HR practitioners and recruiters hear that this is an amazing resource and avenue for you to solve some of this workforce and talent things and it's a great group to get involved in and I highly suggest you reach out to Ashley and get on their list, get involved and then, knowing everything we know now about the JA Career Ready credentialing, how do you see this changing our future workforce?
Speaker 1Anybody can answer.
Speaker 4I'd say again, in terms of being a tight labor environment, if you can pair up on both ends of that, that visibility that Carly was talking about, by partnering with JA and getting those students actually what it's like. 30,000, 38,000 students come through JA every year, or something.
Speaker 2Last year we had over 185,000 student interactions. Okay.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah. If you get that visibility where a young person knows your company exists early on or your industry exists early on, and then they know that there's career tracks there and then they also can see that if you recognize the micro-credential that they went to, then you're a preferred employer for them to apply to because they know that you are also a preferred applicant for them as they're going through the process. I think it's a way to just again increase the skills and availability of skilled talent and valuable talent. It's a resource that then in our role and external business attraction, we can sell and say we have this. Not only do we have this in our backyard, a lot of people have JA, but RJA developed it right. Rja is better than your JA, so we're able to say we've got this asset in our backyard that's going to feed high quality talent to you guys and that's going to provide exposure to your company that people are going to reach out and say they want to have an internship opportunity and we've seen data that demonstrates the value of internships. I know you guys probably know that in and out more than we do, but the increased likelihood of a student choosing that community that they've interned in increases every time they have an internship there.
Speaker 4We want that as an economic development organization. We want students and young people coming here having internship, experiencing, knowing that our industries exist, knowing that those opportunities exist, and they find that oftentimes, particularly at younger ages, through resources like JA, and then again having this credential program that helps them skill up and that is recognized because of the input that the community, the business community in this region, has had in it. It's recognized by that business community as a valuable skill, making that individual that much more attractive, that much more attractive. So it's this virtuous cycle. I feel like that we can. The earlier we get those students enrolled and actively participating in JA and the more we get our local businesses participating on the other end. It's just, it's a win across the board.
Speaker 5Plus the advantage of having, like Ashley said, the plethora of programming all the way from pre-K to high school. It's not a one and done so. They show up and congratulations, you're hired. It's this idea that you've got to provide folks with learners, with skills they need today, but also agility for the future, this idea of being a lifelong learner, a willingness to learn Circumstances. Think about AI. Five years ago, nobody knew about AI. Now, all of a sudden, it's changing the way that all of us potentially do business, and that ability to be able to learn and to continue to learn and have this willingness and eagerness to learn. That's really beneficial after an employee has already said yes and signed up, and I think that's very important.
Speaker 4And to that point, patrick, you know how we got involved as a workforce council. The initial idea was how do we tap into that group of high school students that aren't necessarily moving on to the military or higher ed or something like that? So that was the conversation we were having and Fort Wayne Community School Superintendent, dr Daniels, he said he refers to them as the forgotten 50. He said he refers to them as the forgotten 50. So the 50 percent of high school graduates that we don't know where they ended up, but we know that they're somewhere and that's a population that we as an employer community could tap into if they had the right skills and the availability. So it's not.
Speaker 4This is going to be a great resource for students in that high school age, that high school age, but it's also for that early career post-high school individual who may not have the direction that they should have at this point but they're looking for the next job opportunity. This is a way for them to set themselves apart and to gain those skills. And so it's again that kind of continuous learner, and having that input from the business community makes it flexible, makes it ever evolving and living as the industries evolve and change. They can have that direct connection with JA as they evolve that curriculum and make it relevant to the industries that we have here in the region. So it's a really I think having the communication on both sides is invaluable to the goal that we're trying to achieve here and valuable to the goal that we're trying to achieve here.
Speaker 5Yeah, and the idea that post-secondary training can occur at any time at multiple situations and at multiple times throughout a career.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've gotten played on it a little bit and I like it so far. Everything that's on there. I feel like they're really important skills that you know coming into the workforce you need to have and I know, ashley, this is your baby and you've been working on it for a while. Is there anything else you want to touch on about the program?
Importance of Soft Skills in Workplace
Speaker 2No, I think you all again did such a good job communicating this. But I think back to Nick's point about that middle 50% of students. I think it's just important to acknowledge and recognize that these are skills, again, that are important no matter what industry you go into, and they're not just for those high academic achievers. So we need you to be able to be good collaborators and good communicators, and many people who maybe are not high academic achievers in the traditional sense have some of these skills. They just may not know how to communicate them or realize that they are special and highly needed in our workplace today.
Speaker 1I want to thank all of you Nick, ashley, carly Patrick for being on the episode today. I'm really excited to share this with everybody, with the Naira and then anybody else who listens. Thank you for listening. Stay tuned for our next episode.