The US government and many states are investing millions of dollars to support workforce development for young people, funding Career Technical Education programs and other career readiness initiatives. At the same time, both our workforce and educators are grappling with the changes brought on by artificial intelligence and its impact on the future careers of our youth. Our young people need guidance navigating their career journeys more than ever, and one of the best things educators can do is provide career exploration opportunities and adult mentors to guide them along their journey. To do this, partnering with the business community is critical. After nearly a decade working with over 120 business partners in support of our AIME career mentoring and internship program, we at the Anaheim Union High School District have learned several lessons about partnering with businesses and other organizations to support young people in their career exploration journey.

Honor Business Leaders’ Time

Early on, we recognized that for a business partner, time spent meeting with us and participating in mentoring and internships is time away from profitable activities. Whereas internally, we might set a one-hour timeframe for a meeting, with our business partners we default to thirty minutes or less. Shorter meetings help us stay focused and get right to the point. In addition, we make sure we are prepared with a clear agenda and know what our ask is. A meeting that ends without a clear ask or next step is a missed opportunity.

In addition, when hosting a guest speaker or coordinating a mentoring event, we do our best to ensure that the event starts and ends on time. If transportation is required to bring students to a business location, we allow plenty of time for traffic to ensure the students and chaperones arrive on time. To help with this, we have worked closely with our district’s transportation department, and they understand the importance of being on time for events hosted by business partners. When we honor a business’s time, we increase the likelihood of working with them again in the future.

Be Professional in Attire and Language

Knowing that it’s critical to be professional in appearance when meeting with a business, we match the attire of the business community in our area. For many years, this meant a shirt and tie (or suit) for men and a business suit or equivalent for women. In recent years, business attire has become more casual, although this may vary depending on whether we are meeting with a corporation versus a government organization. Professional attire applies whether the meeting is virtual or in-person.

In addition, when interacting with a potential business partner, we keep our language professional and avoid divisive topics or politically incorrect comments. In addition, we present our school district in the best possible light. We all deal with bureaucratic hurdles and conflicts with colleagues that can be frustrating (it happens in the business world too), but sharing those with outside partners can undermine our credibility and damage the relationship.

Make Agreements and Logistics Easy

When arranging guest speakers or mentoring field trips, we do not require formal agreements since our staff will chaperone and supervise the experience. This makes these events easy for businesses to participate in, since signing an agreement would likely require involving their legal and risk management departments.

For internships, formal agreements are required, but we do our best to make this process easy on the business partner. Our district uses standard, pre-written internship agreements for all of our partners, which include the legal requirements and protections our risk management team and legal counsel require. This saves us having to create new agreements for each partner, or accidentally leaving something off of an agreement because we are cutting and pasting from a document we have used in the past. If a business would like to request a change to the language of the agreement, we ensure that our risk management team and legal counsel respond in a timely manner to keep things moving.

To meet state requirements and keep students safe, our internship agreements require background checks for those working directly with our students. To streamline this process, we allow partners to use the same background check facility we use for employees, with costs covered by our work-based learning grant funding. Our agreements also offer the option of letting the business certify that they will handle the background check, since many organizations already do this as part of their onboarding process, again making the process as easy as possible.

Respond and Follow Up Quickly and Consistently

While we all get overwhelmed by email and other forms of communication at times, we have found it’s critical to respond in a timely manner to our business partners. Many businesses and executives are used to moving quickly on ideas and projects, and if they do not hear back they are likely to move on to other things. If communication comes in from a business partner, we respond as promptly as possible.

We also make sure someone on our team is keeping leads organized and following up when we do not hear back from a potential business partner. For us, this involves a simple ongoing spreadsheet, but longer term we may move to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program, similar to what a sales team at a business would use.

Create Plug and Play Opportunities

One of the early decisions we made for the AIME program was to create a tiered system of engagement, so that business partners could choose how to support students, essentially selecting from a menu of options. This not only makes our programs easy to understand, but also makes working with us that much more straightforward and user-friendly.

Our program is organized around four tiers. Tier 1 offers Career Exploration through guest speaker visits and field trips to businesses. Students explore career fields, tour businesses, and learn about the education requirements for various industries.

Our second tier is the Career Mentoring Series, which involves two or more events with the business partner in a series. These events allow students and businesses to develop deeper mentoring relationships. A tier 2 event might involve site tours, keynote speakers, small group mentoring and projects in collaboration with the business, or simply going deeper to learn about the industry through multiple visits.

Tier 3 is a Professional Internship, which takes place either over the summer or during the school year, and as mentioned above requires agreements as well as staff coordination. Even though an internship is a much larger commitment, businesses appreciate that we have a ready-made program with curriculum, staff support, and template agreements.

Tier 4 is a Teacher Externship, where our teachers visit a business for a two-day experience. The first day typically consists of a site tour, career pathway conversations with various employees, a summary of the careers within the business and the education required, and coverage of the key skills desired in the organization. During the second day, the teachers work on curriculum development to incorporate what they learned into their classrooms. These have proven to be highly valuable experiences for our teachers, and the learning will reach every student in that teacher’s classes for years to come.

Having these plug and play opportunities has lowered friction for our partners and increases the likelihood of businesses being willing to participate and continue participating into the future.

Final Thoughts:

For educators, working with businesses to support students’ career exploration is often new territory, and it certainly was for us when we started the AIME program. With business and education speaking different languages and seeking different outcomes, sometimes these differences can prevent collaboration between educators and businesses. We believe the lessons learned above have increased our likelihood of success. Considering the urgent need to help our students discover their future careers, the tremendous support businesses provide is more valuable than ever.