September is Workforce Development Month.
It arrives at a moment when schools are working hard to ensure their graduates are ready for the world of work, and when employers are looking for reliable ways to hire the talent they need. Cengage Group’s 2025 Graduate Employability Report puts a number to the gap. Nearly half of the college graduates surveyed, 48%, say they feel unprepared to apply for entry-level jobs in their field. The report’s conclusion is direct: stronger collaboration between schools and employers is what closes the readiness gap.
In the absence of a formal school-employer partnership, some employers have taken the initiative to address a need they’ve identified. Braun Brush Company, a 150-year-old specialty manufacturer on Long Island, NY, built its own way to bring people in and grow them before anyone called it workforce development. Lance Chaney, the fourth-generation team leader, structured a path for its employees, from the new hire stage to the Master Brush Maker role, with a captured record of retiring employees’ expertise built into the training.
Schools and employers are actively and urgently moving on this. Program leaders are redesigning around employer input. Employers are becoming more intentional about how they nurture their team members into job pathways. The tricky part comes later, when a partnership has to hold together across seasons and staff changes.
Where partnerships tend to break
School-employer partnerships tend to fall apart in a few predictable ways. The most common is the succession problem, where a partnership gets set up between a champion at the school and a champion at the employer, and when one of them leaves, nobody was named to take it over.
Undefined scope is another pitfall, where “we’ll host a student” isn’t really a scope, and when the student shows up without a supervisor or a defined project, the employer walks away thinking the arrangement wasn’t worth it. And plenty of partnerships end quietly for a simpler reason: nobody debriefs. One cycle wraps up, no one sits down to review what worked, and the second cycle never gets scheduled.
The alumni angle both sides underuse
The warmest entry point for a school is often its own graduates. When alumni sit in employer decision-making seats, they know the program and are inclined to take the call. Schools that keep a working list of who’s where, and stay in touch before there’s an ask, have a starting point most competitors don’t.
The reverse works too. An employer who wants to build a school partnership can start with the school its own team members graduated from. Schools want to engage with alums, and you’d be surprised at the reception they get when they contact their former school.
Since school-employer partnerships benefit both sides, here are a few ways each can initiate contact to explore a formal relationship.
What schools can do to open the door with employers
- Start by calling an employer’s HR, People, or Talent Development teams. In the absence of that, start with the President or CEO.
- Start with a specific hiring need. Ask what role they can’t fill and design from there.
- Prepare a shortlist of what students can contribute at their current stage. Employers hire for the work in front of them.
- Take on the parts employer’s dread, like candidate screening and paperwork.
- Go deep with one or two employers before scaling. Developing proof points and best practices are seeds for improvement, repetition, and introductions to other employers.
What employers can do to show up ready for a school
- Start by calling a school’s Workforce Development or Community Relations team. In the absence of that, contact the school’s President Office.
- Be specific by naming a job role your seeking help with, with specific functions detailed and a description of what “ready” looks like six months in.
- Assign someone on your team that currently does the work or has the need, as your point of contact. Faculty respond to practitioners.
- Offer a defined project a student can actually finish.
- Commit to one full cycle before deciding whether it works. Real partnerships don’t prove themselves in a quarter, these things take time.
The cultural shift nobody talks about
For employers new to this, partnership is an internal change. Managers may have never supervised a student. Teams need to understand why a partnership is happening and how it may impact them. HR processes weren’t built for short-term learners. Internal communications can be an ally to help manage the change of developing a working relationship with a school.
Schools that anticipate this can speed up the trust that needs to be built among partners. A manager onboarding guide, internal messaging, and clear expectations can help establish credibility and establish shared ownership.
What Lance would tell you
Lance Chaney and his team built their model because nobody was going to build it for them. In our conversation with him, he said it plainly: “I want to make sure that the people who work here are fulfilled in what they do and fulfilling their own aspirations, because they’re helping me fulfill mine.” That’s the mindset that turns a partnership into something that lasts.
Read the full interview with Lance Chaney, part of BOUNCE’s Workforce Voices series.
The partnerships that hold are the ones where two organizations enter into it clear eyed, focused, and specific. If you’re wondering how ready your organization is to build partnerships that hold, take our readiness assessment.
