Can corporations play a role in closing the skills gap?

In your opinion, could there be a deeper dialogue and collaboration between the education and business sectors? If so, why? Do you think that post-secondary educators are preparing the next generation adequately? What would you change?

Have educators ever asked you or solicited a better understanding of your employment needs – the skills you are looking for? Do you think this would be helpful?

What if I were to tell you that with a little time and effort – a minimum of 90 minutes a month – you, your executive team, management team or employees could all actually help close the skills gap, build a more efficient pipeline and better prepare youngsters to fill your 21st century employment needs?

Below is a model that has been working in community and state colleges, education adjacent institutions and nonprofits for the past decade, with examples and a methodology that enjoys proven, positive outcomes for both the companies and the next-gen students who participate.

Welcome to ‘Project Based Mentoring’

As described in my book, Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Menteem and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap In America, this form of mentoring includes real practitioners as part-time adjunct mentors to students at local community, state colleges or high schools. Indeed, it puts real-world projects at the center of learning experientially and includes in-person or virtual sessions from a mentor/practitioner who is versed in the project field.

I contend that through this ‘Project Based Mentoring’ methodology, leadership skills are gained by both the mentor and the mentee.

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is a nonprofit that teaches educators how to teach entrepreneurship. With an award-winning business curriculum, the program was established over 35 years ago and has grown globally in scope. Each student, whether in high school or community college, must write and defend a business plan that fulfills an identified need of the student’s choosing.

In the NFTE TECH class, students were tasked with designing an app and outlining its purpose, its audience and an implementation plan. SAP was both a NFTE donor as well as offering tech mentors to help build functional apps, and to bring real world input to the student’s ideas.

One young man (whom I’ll call George) loved sports and wanted to build an app for all the local sports competitions – football, basketball, baseball soccer and lacrosse – based on his own need for current information. He wanted to know ahead of time when the games were scheduled, where they were being played and who was competing. Most importantly, he wanted to know in real time who had won. He was passionate about sports and his idea. Maybe others would have a need to know, like he did.

To his credit, his sports app grew exponentially. You can imagine his audience: school teams, fans, fraternities, parents, teachers all throughout the community year-round. In fact, he courted a multitude of paid sponsors from fast food chains, sports drinks and sporting stores. As you can guess, the success of this project changed this young man’s trajectory.

What skills were gained by the mentee?

Delving a little deeper, what were the skills gained by George? If we look at the student assignment, we can imagine the kinds of skills George gained and how they apply to a real work environment.

His assignment was to create an app. But George identified a project based on an observed need – there was no available communications systems that reported timely local sports information. Indeed, that is what you call critical thinking: an ability to discern an unmet need and build a new product or service based on that need.

His assignment was to build a master plan to execute on his project. (I might add that in schools, this master planning only applies to study and papers, not to real world activities.) Let’s look at the skills learned from actually planning. They include forecasting steps that need to be taken in the future and building a timeline of tasks that meet a deadline.

You cannot achieve goals without building a plan; it is part of real-world learning.

In his product development and implementation, George had to do research about his audience and to incorporate strategy integration into his product design. Skills learned included understanding the market, assessing its needs and building a workable model to meet them.

By working in tandem with his mentor, and doing so on a recurring schedule, the mentee learned about collaboration, teamwork and respectful interactive dialogue. Indeed, this relationship includes learning new technology skills as applied to this product and augmenting them to meet the need of the marketplace.

Alas, no hypotheses are absolutely correct. There are bound to be problems, obstacles or competitors that come in the way of progress. George learned new strategies to conquer difficulty, a mindset to approach change and the grit to stick with it.

Part of the assignment was to prepare a succinct oral defense about the project. To date, George had only to proceed quietly – but having to prepare an oral defense, he learned to include an audience, to explain his logic and to share his project impact, recommendations and takeaways in a short outline format. An ability to communicate with others and thoughtfully answer questions is always valuable in work life.

What were the advantages of having a mentor?

Having a mentor at his side contributed to George’s success in many ways:

• He learned a new interest in technology – from meeting a person in the field
• He took greater risks into the unknown
• His project outcome was most likely greater than if he was on his own
• He was taught new tech skills with real-world applications
• He learned the language of sales and contracts with his new sponsors
• He learned to keep his promise and deliver on his contracts
• He could fail, yet have support in reconfiguring a strategy
• He took full ownership of his idea
• He became a leader with vision

This unique project orientation in mentorship can apply to any field. Why? Because all projects include a problem, a hypothesis, an objective, a master plan, implementation, research, obstacles, pro-con results and oral or written defense.

Whether we are talking financial analysis, cyber solutions, app development, biotechnology, computer science, research, market analysis, journalism, R&D or entrepreneurship, most, if not all, work assignments are based in project orientation.

I opened this article with a few questions, and I’d like to leave you with two: Would you hire George? Has he gained the kinds of skills you are looking for?

With a little investment of time, I suggest strongly, that you, too, could be closing the skills gap. You could inspire and deploy ‘Project Based Mentors’ from your company to schools within your community.