BUILDING JOB SKILLS BUILDS SOCIAL CAPITAL
For young adults, meaningful work – whether through a paid job, internship, or volunteer experience – is a way to develop skills, build relationships, and explore careers. But youth cannot do it all on their own. They need structure and support from adults willing to co-develop work experiences that benefit their organizations and their young employees or volunteers.
Our Career Skills and Connections (CS&C) framework can help youth, their managers, and organizations work together purposefully. Built on alignment and intentionality, the framework ensures that every step serves both the young person’s development and the organization’s needs. It starts with creating a clear youth-focused job description and moves through skills assessment and development goals, meaningful work assignments, resume building, and references. The framework is a cycle in which an organization builds upon past youth employment experiences to continuously improve. The result: work experiences that generate high rates of return (ROR) for youth and organizations.
Career Skills and Connections
Why The CS&C Framework Works
Alignment and intentionality are woven throughout each element of the CS&C framework. Starting with an age-appropriate job description, the young person and their supervisor can complete a skills assessment and development plan that aligns the young worker’s growth goals with organizational priorities. This will motivate them to be effective employees while building the skills and relationships necessary for long-term success. This intentional approach continues through meaningful work assignments, designed to build skills and complete important tasks, which can then be reflected in a young person’s resume and references. The framework works because it purposely balances the young person’s and the employer’s mutual long-term interests.
What’s Coming Next
Over the next few months, our newsletters will explore each part of our CS&C framework in greater depth. Our aim is to promote youth employment and the opportunities it provides young people to build skills and relationships, while helping employers and organizations build a more capable workforce today and develop their talent pipeline for tomorrow.
What’s On Our Mind
We recently had the pleasure of presenting at the National Summer Learning Association’s Professional Learning Community for Youth Workforce Development and Internships. We focused on how youth employment offers opportunities for building social capital. We distinguished between Bonding social capital – the network that helps you “get by” and Bridging social capital – the network that helps you “get ahead”.
The conversation with workforce development professionals reinforced something critical: workplaces can provide fertile ground for bridging social capital because they often bring together people from different communities and educational backgrounds who might never otherwise cross paths. With intentionality, managers, supervisors, and other adults in the workplace can be an immense source of bridging social capital for youth. Our Career Skills & Connections framework is designed to promote this intentionality.
LET’S STAY CONNECTED
We would appreciate your thoughts on our initiative and welcome opportunities to collaborate. You can reach us at info@youthworkconnect.org, and we look forward to staying connected.
