How Innovation Can Connect Students to Future Jobs
Applying an equity, diversity and inclusion lens to recruitment and programming is essential for post secondary-institutions and employers
Dr. Wendy Cukier, founder and academic director of the Diversity Institute (DI), delivered a presentation on innovation in higher education to the Future Workforce Conference held virtually December 7 and 8, 2022.
The conference had an audience of employers, campus recruiting specialists and post-secondary leaders from student services, career centres, cooperative education and experiential learning offices. The program focused on how to develop better linkages between post-secondary institutions and employers.
Current trends in the Canadian labour market have been a recent focus of DI’s work. Dr Cukier highlighted the importance of digital, green and hybrid skills for employability both now and in the future. She highlighted the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the labour market, given they account for almost 90% of private sector employment. Businesses across many sectors face challenges hiring staff with the right skills, even as recent graduates are facing difficulties finding relevant employment.
As DI research has shown, the increasing digitization of work across many sectors in the economy and the rise of new sectors in the green economy have created gaps between post-secondary education and the labour market. At the same time, recent graduate and student populations are becoming increasingly diverse, and these diverse populations face many different types of barriers.
As a result, Dr. Cukier said that post-secondary student services and career centres are facing many challenges in providing relevant services to students, and outlined strategies for post-secondary institutions and employers to engage students from equity-deserving groups while preparing them to make the jump from education to work.
Applying an equity, diversity and inclusion lens to recruitment and programming is essential for post-secondary institutions and employers. Dr. Cukier said that post-secondary institutions need to make access to work-integrated learning more equitable by creating more opportunities outside of science, technology, engineering and math programs. She said student services and career centres can help by connecting students to these programs. Likewise, employers need to do more to engage in work-integrated learning programs so they are better positioned to recruit top talent, which is increasingly diverse.
The assessment of student skills needs to improve, Dr. Cukier said, adding that doing so requires contributions from employers and post-secondary institutions. Employers need to do a better job of analyzing and communicating skills needs. While many companies think they need science, technology, engineering and math graduates to do digital work, they are often better served by a humanities graduate with a good understanding of digital platforms. Dr. Cukier noted that improving skills assessment also helps make recruitment more inclusive. Post-secondary institutions need to pay closer attention to skills trends in the labour market and work on improving student access to innovative programs like micro-credentials.
The end of the presentation highlighted innovative approaches like DI’s ADaPT program, which is designed to bridge the digital and business skills gap between recent graduates and the labour market. ADaPT has trained more than 1,200 young people since 2014, many of whom are from equity-deserving groups. A key part of the success of ADaPT has been delivering work-integrated learning that is responsive to labour market needs while reducing barriers to students from equity-deserving groups.