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Intro to Inspire Video
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Three Ways to Get More From Your Inspire Profile
Increased Participation = Increased Value
While the students are on Summer break, it’s a great time to think about your company’s strategy for participation in Inspire Madison Region this upcoming academic year . What message do you want the upcoming workforce to hear? What resources does your company have available to offer?
In this post, we’ve listed three easy but powerful ways that your company can improve its Inspire experience. In doing so, you’ll also help more young people from the Madison Region make smart choices as they navigate their academic and career pathways.
- Add more careers to your company profile. This is the number one easiest way to make your company more visible in Inspire. Log in to your profile, then click on “Update Company Profile” then “Career Profile Links”. You can search for careers to add here. When a student or educator is using Xello to research a career, one of their options is to look at local companies who said they hire people in that career. The more of your career fields you connect your business with, the better the chance a student or educator will find you.
- Recruit online career coaches from within your company in key career areas. One of the great things about Inspire’s career message boards is that answers from career coaches benefit anyone who views that thread long after the question is answered. Young people may be curious about a career, but don’t have anyone in the know to talk with about it. This is your opportunity to be a local resource, answer questions and give guidance to the future workforce. If you signed up already as a career coach on behalf of your employer or independently, log in to your Xello account and see which careers you picked by clicking on “Update my Profile”. Also, see if there is information about your work history that you can add. If your company has not recruited career coaches, please consider it. It’s an efficient way for employees to log volunteer hours from anywhere, including at work without leaving the office. To recruit employees, send them the following information: Employee Recruitment Flyer; Career-Coach Registration Link
- Add a “Who We Hire” section to your profile. This is where you can spell out the qualities, skills, certifications, education and experience that you look for in potential candidates in general or for particular in-demand careers you want to promote. For example, if a company had a great need for pharmacy technicians, they could include information on that career, what the educational requirements are and potentially any direction on where to get that education. Or, if you wanted to talk more generally about what your company looks for when hiring, you could write that instead. Information like this is very helpful to educators and students trying to understand the local career landscape, what’s available and what’s needed to get there. Simply log in to your profile, click on “Update Company Profile” and then “Who We Hire”. You can add a URL to your careers web page if you have one, and then fill in the rest of the information you want the future workforce to know about.
As always, please tell your friends about Inspire! The Inspire team can only do so much to recruit employers to join this network of businesses, schools, and community-based organizations. But with your word-of-mouth power, we can go much farther. The more employers we have, the better the system will be for everyone involved. If you have acquaintances, colleagues, friends or rCBLEtives you think might want to join Inspire as a company or career coach, send them to: http://inspiremadisonregion.org/employers to register.
We hope that you and your company or organization will take advantage of the simple suggestions we’ve listed to improve your Inspire experience. But even if you only choose one, it will still make Inspire Madison Region a more powerful tool for students, educators and employers who participate.
To log in to your Inspire profile and make the edits you decide on, go to : http://careercruising.com/partner
As always, if you have any questions or need your log-in credentials, send an email to: acrabb@madisonregion.org
Thank you!
Inspire Summer Updates
Inspire Madison Region is all about making connections. Those connections are continuing to grow over the summer months as new employers and career coaches join the network of schools, employers and community-based organizations.
By creating a company profile, serving as an online career coach and/or offering experiential learning activities to students, educators and job seekers in our region, employers from the Madison Region can improve the local understanding of the labor market and explain the steps needed to pursue careers in many industries. Inspire also gives employers the ability to positively impact the local talent pipeline.
With the help of our education, business and community-based organization partners, we’ve made great progress over the last year building Inspire in Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Green, Iowa, Jefferson and Sauk Counties. Below are some current stats that highlight important metrics on the Inspire Madison Region initiative. We now have:
- 510 Career-based Learning Activities (CBLEs) offered to students, educators and job seekers
- 130 Online Career Coaches answering questions from Inspire users
- 117 Employers with profiles highlighting their business
- 14 active districts with a total of 34 active school sites: Madison Metropolitan School District, McFarland School District, Deerfield School District, Mt. Horeb School District, Cambridge School District, Baraboo School District, River Valley High School, Highland High School, Monroe School District, Beaver Dam School District, Columbus School District, Madison College, Dane County Job Center, Jefferson County Job Center. Middleton, Portage, Sun Prairie, Johnson Creek, and others getting ready to join as well.
- 22,976 active student portfolios in the seven county region and nearly 1000 educators with active accounts to get access to Inspire.
Industry Highlights – Number of employers with profiles in the top eight focus industries in our region:
- Advanced manufacturing = 45 employers
- Healthcare = 35 employers
- Life Sciences = 40 employers
- IT = 48 employers
- Construction = 41 employers
- Agriculture = 33 employers
- Finance = 33 employers
- Real Estate = 5 employers (Attention: Real Estate companies 🙂
Interactions through Inspire to date:
- Career Coach Message Boards: 159 interactions between September 2015 and May 6th, 2016
- Career-based Learning Activities: At least 50 experiential learning activities completed between September 2015 and May 6th, 2016
In April 2016, Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) assumed leadership of Inspire Madison Region bringing with it new opportunities for partnerships to develop between post-secondary institutions, school districts, employers, government agencies and community-based organizations.
Inspire’s geography is also growing. Grant, Lafayette, Crawford and Richland Counties are joining through the leadership at Prosperity Southwest Wisconsin. That will make Inspire Madison Region an 11 county implementation, one of the largest Inspire networks in the nation!
There is still a lot to accomplish to take Inspire to the next level. In the coming months, many more school districts from across the region will be joining the initiative – giving your company a further reach to your future workforce.
Here’s a link to ways that you can increase the value that you and/or your business receive from participating: http://inspiremadisonregion.org/threewaystoincreasevalue/
Remember, to login to your Inspire profile, go to : http://careercruising.com/partner
If you’d like to recruit career coaches from within your organization, please have them register at: Register Now as a Career Coach!
Thank you again for your participation in this important initiative!