Introducing Workforce Developers
</ Workforce Developers />Welcome to Workforce Developers, our new email newsletter highlighting the journeys of career programs, software engineers and platforms who are building technology to help job seekers access sustainable careers.
As software developers with backgrounds in career coaching, job training, and workforce development program management, we believe in the power of technology to support (NOT replace) CBOs, bootcamps, workforce centers, and colleges as you prepare 120 million global job seekers for the Future of Work. Workforce development programs are doing extremely important work, but the tech industry has largely ignored these programs as users of their products.
As COVID-19 impact jobs seekers and workers across the nation and distances marginalized job seekers from career resources, we feel that it is urgent to start a multi-stakeholder conversation about how job training + technology can evolve to meet the needs of our job seekers in a post-COVID future of work.
Each month, we will be spotlighting our own progress towards building meaningful workforce tech, workforce stakeholders who are leading innovation within their organizations, and resources to help your organization achieve its digital goals. Please feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom if you are not interested in future emails!
Amina + Harris
<section>Are you a workforce development hero? Do you become a workforce development superhero with the use of technology?
We want to spotlight you! Reach out to harris@talkhiring.com or amina@jointhebloc.com if you’re interested :)
</section><section>What are we working on?
Harris: What is Talk Hiring (talkhiring.com)?
Talk Hiring grows the capacity and impact of workforce development programs by conducting unlimited realistic, automated mock interviews. Within a few seconds of completing a mock interview, users receive automated feedback from us on their presentation and content. Career development programs use our product to help participants improve their interviewing skills and ultimately find better jobs. More about why we built it here.
This month, we completely revamped our automated interview feedback! It’s now more visually engaging, shows how users are improving, and scores users according to a rubric. We’re working on increasing the technical accessibility of our tool by adding support for mock interviews via a computer; we currently support mock interviews via landline or mobile phones. We’re also building out a Google Classroom integration for all of you LMS fans out there!
NYCETC wrote a spotlight on us and a high school teacher showed off his students practicing their interviewing skills before the wave of school closures.
Amina: What is Bloc?
Bloc is a resume builder + CRM for job seekers and job coaches as automation ups the ante. Bloc's platform provides job seekers with 24/7 access to job search support, while providing career coaches and program administrators with automatic progress reports and the ability to provide digital support.
This month, Bloc released a free version of our resume builder + job portals, allowing programs to build a Smart Resume & Job Search Guide for their job seekers during a challenging hiring climate. Each guide includes a COVID resource guide, which includes real-time updates on job boards, companies, and career resources that are still active.
Learn more about our platform and our work with The Knowledge House + Bronx Digital Pipeline through Kapor Foundation’s Tech Done Right Challenge.
</section><section>What We Are Reading
Sometimes a career coach has to wear the hat of psychologist. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is the approachable memoir of a psychologist. She chronicles the weekly sessions with a handful of her patients, explains key psychological concepts, and made us tear up more than once.
We all report our metrics (hiring rates, retention rates, income growth, etc) to stakeholders. But do we spend enough time thinking about selection bias? Mississippi has much higher average SAT scores than Connecticut, even though Connecticut ranks much higher in terms of educational quality…this is because a much smaller percentage of students in Mississippi take the SAT ( https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/).
</section><section>Technology Product Spotlight
Brett Kopf is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Omella.com. He previously founded remind.com with his brother David, which is the largest and fastest-growing communication platform in education. He has been featured in the NYT, WSJ, Fastco and Forbes.
Brett started Omella after seeing 100’s of teachers, schools and non-profits collect money using check, cash, and paper spreadsheets which was incredibly time consuming and inefficient. In 2020, he thought there has to be a better way. Omella hopes to solve this problem.
How one of Omella’s customers used to collect money
Omella helps small organizations like non-profits, schools, PTA’s and clubs easily collect and raise money from large groups in seconds, for free. If you have to collect or raise money and it’s either time consuming or expensive because of all the credit card processing fees, please email the founder: brett@omella.com and he will personally get in touch! Omella is currently accepting new customers.
Brett currently lives in Denver CO with his wife Cortney, and 100lb Swiss Mountain Dog, Nana.
</section><section>Resources & Innovation Funding Opportunities
Data.org will be launching a new $10 million impact challenge to crowdsource scalable and sustainable data science solutions for non-profit, civic, and government organizations.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will be funding projects within the $150,000-$350,000 budget range and with a project term of between 12-36 months. The goal of the Pioneering Ideas Brief Proposal funding opportunity is to explore; to look into the future and put health first as we design for changes in how we live, learn, work and play; to wade into uncharted territory in order to better understand what new trends, opportunities and breakthrough ideas can enable everyone in America to live the healthiest life possible.
</section><section>How we can support you
Talk Hiring is offering generous free trials to organizations that think that our mock interviewing tool could be helpful. Reach out to us at hello@talkhiring.com if you would like to participate or learn more (demo is here)!
Bloc is offering a free Smart Resume Guide with real-time COVID job search tips to training programs and school. If you are interested in a personalized version for your students, take a look at our demo (which is built off of Princeton’s Resume Guide) reach out at info@jointhebloc.com.
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This is so dope, Amina and Harris!