Transcript

Jake Hart:  Four, three, two, one. VR Workforce Studio, podcasting the sparks that ignite vocational rehabilitation through the inspiring stories of people with disabilities who have gone to work.

 

Flora Frazier:  Working in a field that I understand.

Jake Hart:  As well as the professionals who have helped them.

James Hall:  A job and a career, you got to look at how life-changing this is.

Jake Hart:  And the businesses who have filled their talent pipelines with workers that happen to have disabilities.

Debby Hopkins:  To help expand registered apprenticeship.

Jake Hart:  These are their stories.

Anonymous:  Because there’s such a great story to tell about people with disabilities.

Jake Hart:  Now, here are the hosts of the VR Workforce Studio, Rick Sizemore and Betsy Civilette.

Rick Sizemore (00:43):  This is episode 140 of the VR Workforce Studio. We are recording this live. It’ll be published at vrworkforcestudio.com later this month or in YouTube at VRWorkforceStudio. So if you’ve not listened to our podcast, we invite you to become part of our community. It’s so great to be here and look out and see people who have been on the podcast like Liz from Stout, the ASAP staff up ASAP segment we did. So great. It’s good to be here. Today’s show’s going to be very great. It’s spectacular guests that we have and a great story as we look at the Disability Innovation Fund and all of the project directors who are here today. Powerful story on tap.

Betsy Civilette (01:30):  Right. And today’s conversation highlights how DIF intersects with vocational rehabilitation, employer engagement, and apprenticeship development to create meaningful career pathways for individuals with disabilities in emerging industries like AI.

Rick Sizemore (01:46):  But this isn’t a theoretical conversation. This is not some academic journal article. This is a real story from a great employer and some folks who have been out in the field getting this work done and helping. The most important goal of those people with disabilities actually winding up in great jobs that’s meeting a workforce need.

Betsy Civilette (02:05):  Right. So today we’re talking about the collaboration between Virginia VR and Enabled Intelligence, a company working on the forefront of artificial intelligence. And as you’ll hear things about geospatial talent pipeline initiatives. So some fancy words, but it really bottom line is we’re getting hiring people with the skills that they need to be an effective business. Well,

Rick Sizemore (02:31):  Let’s meet our panelists first from Virginia DARS, the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services. Good friend of mine. I’d like to say we’ve worked together for several years, but I think it’s actually moved into several decades. David Leon, who directs the agency’s workforce development programs. Again, we call that DARS. And he brought a rockstar of his along, business development manager, Jackie Kanup, and from Enabled Intelligence, their chief people officer, Laura Bacon-Smith.

Betsy Civilette (03:05):  All right. Well, this conversation is really about the opportunities, as I said, created by the DIF when business VR and workforce strategy align around the talent, access and just overall effectiveness of this program. All right. All right. Well, so joining us first is the brains behind the operation David Leon, director of workforce programs at DARS. So David has played a key leadership role in leveraging the DIF resources, apprenticeship strategies and employer partnerships to expand the workforce opportunities for Virginians with disabilities.

Rick Sizemore (03:45):  Yeah. One of the things David does that I appreciate so much is he represents DARS in assessing workforce needs. He gets out there, he finds out about the workforce sectors, and then they reach out to try to find new and exciting opportunities like the one that you’re going to hear about today. But he doesn’t do that alone. He has a team of workforce development managers who are out there pounding the sidewalks, learning about these opportunities. So we’ll look forward to hearing more from Jackie as this story unfolds.

Betsy Civilette (04:20):  All right. Well, so David, help us set the stage for our audience. You’ve been involved with many types of grants and outreach over the years, but tell us about this Pathways grant that you’re currently ending up or finishing up this year.

David Leon (04:35):  Thanks, Betsy. First, DARS has always been focused on how we can do things together. We have been involved in the time I’ve been with the agency in Disability Employment Initiatives that focused on co-enrollments and integrative resource teams. We then did some great work with GMW and CSAVR around targeted communities that also informed parts of this grant. And we had the Career Pathways first round of DIF grants. And when this opportunity came about, former Commissioner Hayfield said, “What could we have done better? What didn’t go the way we had hoped?” And we built this grant with that in mind.

(05:17):  This grant focused on working across very specific sectors with three unique positions and focused on the adult population. Included is a registered apprenticeship VR liaison that is housed in VR, but works hand in hand with our workforce agency works alongside. We’re a state apprenticeship. State works alongside the registered apprenticeship consultants, attends apprenticeship council meetings, really learning how this works in our state to become that subject matter expert. We also have a DHRM as the Department for Human Resource Management Voc Rehab Liaison who is focused on helping individuals with disabilities enter into state employment while also federal and low level employment. And then the third piece is we have a quick response counselor who’s there to move at the speed of business and help individuals who may already be in a program where they’re struggling, maybe they didn’t disclose their disability. And when we were working on conceptualizing this work, we saw the opportunity to use that position to help employers see that they might already be working with people with disabilities and that maybe they should trust us when we say we have someone who we think has the right skills to be successful in your organization.

(06:44):

The other piece that we work with is any jobs that are STEM or adult care. And then lastly, just because they came up before, it is a larger team and we’ve done a lot of work around the state to make sure that our vocational evaluators, our managers, our council works, our job placement staff, our staff at Wilson WWRC also understand where we’re trying to go. And Mars, did you hear that same language for the workforce?

Rick Sizemore (07:15):  It’s amazing outreach. You’ve got DIF involved, you’ve got business development managers. Really look forward to hearing more about this story.

Betsy Civilette (07:22):  All right. Well, Jackie, we’ll turn it over to you. She serves as business development manager with Virginia DARS and has been instrumental in developing employer partnerships focused on workforce apprenticeship development and emerging industries as we’re going to talk about. So welcome Jackie.

Jackie Kanupp (07:40):   Thank you for having me.

Rick Sizemore (07:41):  Yeah. Jackie, how did the relationship between DARS and Enabled Intelligence, how did that come about and what made you decide this partnership was worth pursuing?

Jackie Kanupp (07:55):  So I initially received a referral to work with a client and it was actually the parent of a client that asked me to reach out to the business. I did not have a contact with Enabled Intelligence, so it was literally a cold call. So I reached out to Lauren and we had a really good conversation just about their recruitment process and what they had been utilizing up until that point. And she had told me that she was actually paying a third company to help them find individuals with disabilities. And I was like, “You don’t need to do that. We are here. You’re already paying for our services. You should utilize us as a pre-screening tool.” So that’s really kind of how the partnership started, was just the conversation. I certainly knew it was worth pursuing when I heard about their hiring practices and their retention rate for a business that started around COVID and that they still had employees and they weren’t losing people and people weren’t leaving.

(08:46):  I certainly knew that they were doing something right, especially in the disability field. So I wasn’t going to let this gym go. And you’ll hear this from Lauren in a little bit, but there’s certainly a unicorn business when it comes to their hiring practices and their business model. So honestly, it was a dream to work with them, so I wasn’t going to let it go

Betsy Civilette (09:05):  For sure. Well, one of the fascinating parts of this story is that it started, like you said, with listening to the employers and what they need. Can you talk about the importance of the technology roundtable event that you organized and what DAR staff learned from it?

Jackie Kanupp (09:21):  Yeah. So shortly after Lauren and I had met, I organized a technology round table for our district for us to just gain more information and become more knowledgeable. So that was in March of 2023. We had managers, we had district directors, counselors, placement staff, pretty much everyone that was working with the client in that capacity to attend to just have conversations. So I started off with a few prompting questions and then I let the room ask questions of the employers. So enabled intelligence there. We had businesses like General Dynamics and Max Potential from various sectors of technology, not just labeling as IT. And we were just able to ask questions and really find out how to apply the business models that they used, certifications that were required so that individuals could get their foot in the door because we were receiving so many clients that had certifications, but they couldn’t break into IT or into the technology field and we were trying to just gain a better understanding of what was needed.

(10:19):

So that event was really helpful because the counselors were able to ask direct questions and then they were able to use the feedback to provide better guidance and counseling.

Rick Sizemore (10:28):  That’s amazing. We’ve got quite a collection of professionals in the room. VR, academia, partners of all different types, but the one commonality is the DIF. How did you bring that into play to help enabled intelligence?

Jackie Kanupp (10:49):  When Lauren and I first started working it, this partnership has been happening for three or four years now. So we started obviously with the first few people getting in, doing some work experiences and hiring just mainly one-off clients. But as they had told me that they were applying for a large contract, wanted to brainstorm how could we front load some training. Part of the recommendations or requirements for that contract were for them to be able to start work immediately. So Lauren’s like, “We need to have people that are ready to go as soon as the contract is awarded.” So our discussion really involved that front load training and how were we able to help with that? So they designed a week-long bootcamp and then following that bootcamp, we were able to offer a paid work experience to the clients so that they could learn in the environment that they were going to be in while getting paid.

(11:41):  And we had many clients that were very invested. They were already working a job and took off a month to go and do this paid work experience with enabled intelligence. So they were very committed to it. So we as DARS paid the individual for completing that hands-on training and the grant allowed us to be able to do that. We also were able to utilize the quick response counselor that David had mentioned earlier. Being able to move at the speed of business was really important. Lauren was like, “I need a hundred people now.” And I’m like, “Well, we can’t help you maybe with all 100, but we can certainly funnel people through, but as anyone that works in VR, nothing moves that quickly. So having that counselor be able to quickly enroll a client in a couple of weeks to even a week, get them into service, get them stable, and then move them to an office was really vital for us to be able to keep up.

(12:32):  Enabled intelligence also really unique in the fact that we were able to do that reverse referral. So they are very keen into the people that they look at to hire and then actually who they hire and work with. So when this grant or for the recruitment, it was open to the public. So as they were receiving referrals and people were going through their assessments, they would say,” I think they might actually need DARS services based on how they did. “And so they were able to actually come to us and say,” I think they actually need services. “And so the quick response counselor was actually able to take those cases as well, get them into service, and then get to them to office. So the partnership worked both ways. We were able to get referrals both ways.

Rick Sizemore (13:12):  Yeah. Well, I bet everyone in the room and many of the people listening to this podcast at home or wherever you are face the question all the time. Okay, so what? You got a bunch of money, you did some cool things. How did you measure this success and what successes are you most proud of in terms of this work?

David Leon (13:35):  Well, a few things jump right out. One, we’ve been able to make plans to sustain our RA liaison position so we know that work will continue. Some of the other work we believe will continue. But the biggest numbers wise, we had a goal of 75 individuals working in a registered apprenticeship. We are up to 50 individuals who have actually accepted and started or finished.

Rick Sizemore (14:05):  That’s so cool.

David Leon (14:07):  But we’ve also had another couple hundred individuals who have done pre-apprenticeship. And we just had our first,

(14:14):  One of the things the grant did was made our WWRC Building Trades Program a pre-apprenticeship program. We just had our first individual entered into a recognized apprenticeship through that program. And the work has spread to where it is now part of the informed choice conversation about what a career looks like. The other part that’s really successful, just because you mentioned the reverse referrals, our work with state government and our alternative hiring process has led to 350 large referrals and a local county, Fairfax County adopted the work we did and have made their own version to create a hiring initiative for people with disabilities. So those are some pretty powerful results.

Laruen Bacon Smith  (14:58): Well,

Rick Sizemore (14:59):  That is amazing. You mentioned WWRC, that’s the Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center. We’re fortunate to have their director, one of the comprehensive centers in the country. Allison Schoener is with us today, so welcome and congratulations on that building trades initiative. Yeah.

Betsy Civilette (15:18):  Well, Jackie, what did employers like Enabled Intelligence teach VR professionals about the fast-growing sectors like AI? What were some takeaways from this partnership?

Jackie Kanupp (15:29):  So as I stated in the first question, we really just needed a baseline understanding. No one that really works in VR, at least in my district, had a good understanding of what the technology field needed and what individuals were looking for as far as the businesses were going. So working directly with industry allowed us as a vocational agency to really gain a better understanding of what was needed in technology. The technology field is just really vast and it’s changing all the time. And so as I said, clients were coming out, they were getting certifications, but they weren’t able to break into the field. So Enabled Intelligence really showed us how using skilled-based hiring in the technology field worked and that it worked well. And so we were able to really see that and Enabled Intelligence has become a champion for individuals with disabilities, not just because of their hiring model, but because they really strip everything down to look at what is actually needed for a position and then applying that to how they recruit.

Rick Sizemore (16:35):  Yeah, that’s so awesome. Many of our stories on the podcast will also feature a counselor or other team members like yourself that’s been involved in the process. It always comes down to what’s the secret sauce? What supports did you leverage in this relationship to help it be so successful?

Jackie Kanupp (16:56):  Well, because of the grant, we were really able to transition smoothly from that paid work experience into permanent employment. Enabled Intelligence also created a registered apprenticeship program after. It wasn’t there initially when we started the process, but again, this took a couple of years to really develop and get to where it’s at now. So throughout that process, they developed the registered apprenticeship program. So all of our hires were able to go into an actual registered apprenticeship program, which made it very helpful. But I think just as being practical, us being able to communicate throughout those years. I mean, I think at one point when we were doing the bootcamps, which were literally back to back, every other day we were communicating either via email, phone, we had charts. I mean, it was constant communication and I think that’s really necessary to have the relationship that we have.

Rick Sizemore (17:48):  Post – COVID.

Jackie Kanupp (17:49):  Yeah.

Rick Sizemore (17:51):  That was an unusual time.

Betsy Civilette (17:52):  Well, I’ve learned so much about different grants. I have a journalism background, so I had to do my research, but I know everybody’s at different levels, different years. This grant is in year five, so they’ve got some of that expertise. But grant funding ends and everyone’s like, “Oh no, what do we do? ” So tell us a little about your future plans for sustaining this Pathways to Careers initiative.

Jackie Kanupp (18:18):  Well, we will certainly continue the paid work experience. We’ve been doing that with Enabled Intelligence, but with other businesses in general, it allows an individual that has received a certificate or a degree to get into a field where they’ve studied. So it helps them break into the field. Also utilizing on – the-job training, co-enrollments with business partners. As you’re going to hear, Lauren was a rockstar to go find multiple resources. And so we were braiding funding and making sure that everyone had some type of coverage or some support for the business. I think at this point, at least for our agency, enabled intelligence has become a household name. At first, I had to really market like, “This is a great business you guys need to refer.” And now I send out an email and I’m like, “They’re hiring. This is what we’re looking for. ” And immediately they’re like, “I’ve had 10 people apply already.” So it’s become very seamless in the referral process.

(19:16):  And because of that skilled-based hiring, we’re not just looking at certifications and degrees, which makes them very unique, I know. But we can look at that and narrow down where we should be looking for clients and what skillsets they should have.

Rick Sizemore (19:28):  Well, that’s great. Well, I think it’s time we meet this amazing representative from Enabled Intelligence, Lauren Bacon-Smith. She is the chief people officer. Have you ever heard the term chief people officer before? That is so cool. I love that. What does it mean to be a chief people officer?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (19:51):  Some companies call it chief human resources officer. For us, we are very people – focused at our company and have really built the business around our people. So it kind of encompasses everything from HR to people operations and culture. That

Rick Sizemore (20:08): Is just great. Well, we want to hear about enabled intelligence that’s become a recognized leader in AI data labeling and geospatial intelligence. Whoa, what is that? And workforce innovation, of course, because of the pathways work that’s gone on to create a way for people with disabilities to move into these high-demand tech careers. Tell us what you do.

Laruen Bacon Smith  (20:33):  All right. So Rick gave the technical description. So what data annotation is we are creating training data for AI models to learn from. So we created the company with a very specific mission to support the federal government, mainly the Department of Defense and Intelligence community on mission-critical national security programs. And we are helping them develop AI and technology that increases the accuracy and the timeframe that decisions are made for analysts and war fighters on the ground towards national security.

Rick Sizemore (21:21):  Awesome. Well, in terms of getting ready for this podcast, we’ve had some online meetings. We met the first time today. And last week when we’re getting ready, I realize we were fortunate enough in 2021 to interview on this podcast, Peter Kant, the CEO of Enabled Intelligence. That was an amazing opportunity. I want to reflect on a couple things that he said back in the day. It’s episode 94. If you want to hear it, you can find it in our back catalog at vrworkforcestudio.com. But even back then five years ago, 45% of their employees at Enabled Intelligence had disabilities. And so as we began to talk about that, this amazing man talked about this group of people being underappreciated and an overlooked population with skills. And he said, “You know what? And we’re going to put them to work.” So that’s been an amazing thing over the past few years to see this vision actually come to life.

(22:28): And as Peter said, have these folks with superpowers do this work. Tell us more about that.

Laruen Bacon Smith  (22:37):  Yeah, so I was the first hire enabled intelligence back in 2020, which to me, a technology company making their first hire a people – focused person said a lot. And we really built the company around this unique workforce approach. Peter, years before we started the company, had recognized the need for this type of technology service, and we started looking at the skills that would be needed to build a truly expert and professional data labeling team. And those skills like attention to detail, ability to hyper-focus, strong pattern recognition, ability to work on repetitive work. We recognized that a lot of people within the neurodivergent and disability community have those skills and unfortunately experience high levels of unemployment and underemployment. So we saw an opportunity to create a company with a double mission where we have our national security public service mission, and then we have our mission to create meaningful career opportunities for people that are underrepresented in really any industry, but especially IT and AI.

Rick Sizemore (23:55):  Give us an example of data labeling. What are some of the actual jobs that they’re technically, what are they actually doing?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (24:03):  Yeah, so we look at a wide variety of data. A bulk of what we do is geospatial satellite imagery, so images that are taken from satellites in space, very massive images. But we’ve done satellite imagery, telescope imagery, x-ray imagery, videos, audio projects, facial recognition, handwriting recognition. Our analysts are trained on how to analyze the specific type of data they’re looking at, and then are normally looking for objects of interest in that data where because of the size of the imagery and how tiny the objects are, they’re trained on very specific key features. So let’s say it’s a foreign military aircraft. They are trained on how to identify the exact wing shape, the fuselage size, the nose shape of the plane, the tail, how many bombs are on it to be able to figure out exactly which plane it is. And it’s teeny, teeny, tiny in a very pixelated image.

(25:07):  And by doing that over and over and over and over again, they’re drawing boxes and tagging it of what it is. An AI model will eventually learn how to auto-detect those objects. And instead of an analyst having to sit there and do all of that work, an AI model is helping them get the intel that they need to be able to make decisions a lot quicker.

Betsy Civilette (25:31): Well, that’s a great example of humans teaching AI. I know we had that session yesterday about AI, so people aren’t going away. They still need jobs to train AI. So Lauren, share with us though, what are some workforce challenges that you were trying to solve when you first began working with DARS?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (25:50):  Yeah, so like Jackie said, when we first met, we were slowly growing the company. We had this focus on wanting to hire from a specific demographic and a specific skillset. So Jackie and I had been working together for a few years. We had a opportunity coming up to, we were competing for a very large contract. It was going to be our largest contract with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency that was going to give us opportunity to hire about a hundred new people. And we had about 30 people at the time. So very significant growth. And we knew if we won this contract, we were going to need to have those people not only identified, but also trained and ready to go pretty much immediately. We also needed a large portion of them to have security clearances. So we knew that we needed to start doing this work pretty far in advance.

(26:45):  I was a team of one. To hire

Rick Sizemore (26:48):  A hundred people.

Laruen Bacon Smith  (26:49):  Yes, and manage the company that we had existing. So that was the big challenge set forth in front of us. So we developed this week-long geospatial data labeling bootcamp. It was a intensive training program and those that passed that went on to do a four-week paid internship to get people trained in advance.

Rick Sizemore (27:18):  That’s amazing. What made the partnership with vocational rehabilitation valuable as you looked at trying to find that many people and bring them on board and knowing the commitment you had to people with disabilities?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (27:31):  Yeah. Jackie, along with some other local organizations, had created what I call our talent partners. Given that I was a team of one and we had very specific hiring goals and needs, being able to develop this partnership over years in this relationship, we were able to use DARS as kind of an extension of my team to have recruiters out in the field that knew what we were looking for and could pre-screen people and refer people to us. So that’s where, yes, we posted our jobs online and we would get some aplicants online, but really the bulk of our hires up until this big volume hiring and then even since have been through referrals through talent partners like DARS.

Rick Sizemore (28:25):  So would it be what my daughter says to me about being captain obvious if I said, so DARS really made a significant impact in you being able to find those hundred people?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (28:36):  Oh, absolutely. Because it wasn’t just about finding people, it was also about the training that we had to do ahead of time. As a small business and as a government contractor where all of our employees are 100% or almost as your goal for them to be as billable as possible to the government on projects, any of this training we were doing was going to be overhead. So we also had the challenge of not only finding the people, but how we were going to fund this training. So I reached out to Jackie and said, “Okay, I’ve got this idea that we’re building this program. We have this bootcamp, we have this internship that we want to do. ” We had done the paid work experience with DARS in the past with a few people and it’s normally eight to 12 weeks. Because we needed to do multiple cohorts, we ended up doing eight cohorts of this bootcamp and internship.

(29:31):  I needed to shorten it to four weeks. So I took our partnership and an existing program and funding that DARS had and tried to tailor it to our specific needs. And David and Jackie were able to make that happen. And we would not have been able to have that training program if it weren’t for the funding that DARS was able… Able to provide and a few other local Fairfax County programs as well.

Betsy Civilette (30:05):  Well, amazing results. This is great. So you mentioned apprenticeships earlier, Jackie, but Lauren, you’ve gone or both of you have gone through this apprenticeship process for several years. What insights do you have about what makes it work? What have you learned about apprenticeship and hiring individuals with disabilities throughout this process?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (30:27):  Yeah, I think we’re the first national registered apprenticeship for data labeling and having that Department of Labor certificate at the end of a training program that a candidate or a team member can walk away with even outside of the company is just an extra incentive for them. And then for DARS talking to their clients about a job opportunity that they also get that credential at the end I think is an added bonus. Yeah.

Rick Sizemore (31:04):  Wow. Well, a lot of people listen to this podcast because of the inspiration that they derive from hearing these stories about people going to work. I’m going to put you on the spot because a lot of times we’re talking to clients or consumers or individuals with disabilities about what would your advice be to someone else who had a disability that was considering voc rehab? We always follow that up as what is your advice to employers? We got a room full of people here from a diverse number of settings with a variety of viewpoints about this whole dynamic of disability in the workforce. But as you’ve gone through this, and I’m going to ask Jackie and Dave to jump in here as well, what is the takeaway? What are the numbers of takeaways that you have from going from facing a shortage of a hundred people and getting the technical, the financial and the expertise needed to extend your capacity?

(32:11):

What are the takeaways?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (32:12):  Let me start. Okay. I think really approaching from the employer perspective and the VR perspective, looking at it as a strategic partnership and really an extension of your team. We were able to be so successful because I worked really closely with Jackie and her team, all of the counselors that are working directly with the clients on educating them on exactly what we’re looking for. I think if you can find one or two positions within a company that are a good fit for your clients and then you can repeat that and really get to know the type of candidate and profile that is going to be successful in that recruitment process and at that company, that’s where you’re going to start to see success. For us, the data annotator position, we hire for at volume. So Jackie and her team have gotten to know exactly the type of profile that we are looking for.

(33:20):  Like Jackie said, we don’t require degrees or certifications or really any type of previous work experience. We are going off of skills-based hiring. So we use technical assessments, but they know the soft skills and intangible skills that are required to be successful. And also the type of person that’s going to be like what their interests are. Are they going to enjoy this type of work? Are they going to be engaged and be able to stay focused in this type of work? So by working really closely with them, not just sending them a job description saying, “Hey, send me some people, ” but really acting like they’re a part of our team. So on the VR side, offering that up and asking for that from your clients and trying to work with them a little bit more strategically on what type of roles you can help them fill versus you just trying to send them a person and saying, “Hey, where can this person fit?” Or, “Hey, this person applied to this job where you don’t even know if they’re not really the right fit for what that company is looking for.

(34:18):  I think that’s where you’re going to start to see a lot more success. And once they realize the talent you can bring to them, then they’re going to start coming to you like I do to Jackie all the time.

Jackie Kanupp (34:31):  I think I would add just being flexible, being creative in your approach. I mean, I think when we had that brainstorming session, it was just like, this is what I got.” And then we were like, “Okay, what can we do to be creative?” And I’m very fortunate to be on David’s team where he’s pretty much, “Let’s try it. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll try something else.” So I think being creative and flexible in your approach with a business and just making sure that you’re listening to what they actually need, really this initiative has made me look at that and be more intentional about how I move forward with business.

David Leon (35:06):  I think one other thing that was really important, Lauren allowed our vocational evaluator to see some of the skill-based assessments. So we were working from a place of a different level of understanding. And then for many of you in the room that are running or working on one of these grants, it can be messy. We’re trying things. And was fortunate to have a lot of calls with our project officer where we were saying, “Hey, if we do this, is this going to be okay?” Which allowed us to move paid work experience in a little bit different way and do some other things. So I’d just also say it was nice to have that other level of support to make sure that we were being good stewards of the funding towards that end goal.

Rick Sizemore (35:52):  Yeah. Betsy’s going to lead us into Q&A in a couple of minutes. So if you have questions, think about what they are and jot them down. We’ll be moving into that. I have to ask one other question. David, in our discussions leading up to this podcast, you talked about reverse engineering the apprenticeship model at DARS based on what you had learned from enabled intelligence. How did that work?

David Leon (36:20):  It’s been really exciting to see where I think we’re going with that as an agency. One of our staff who worked across our department where the registered apprenticeships at Virginia Works. We’ve established ride-alongs so that our job placement counselors, business development managers are going out to potential employer sponsors with the registered apprenticeship coordinators to again, learn how to talk the language. And what we’ve been able to do that I think is really unique is as we understand how related technical instruction works and utilize resources at both WWRC and through our adult ed system, we are actually customizing and have created several new apprenticeships in the state of Virginia. So peer recovery specialists, we’ve put a bunch of people into that, hearing aid technicians. And we’ve taken this approach that if we can learn what the training and requirements are of that business and they’re interested in apprenticeship, we can build that model to help that business get access to other funding to further bring leverage and support growth.

Sherrina Sewell (37:31):  I guess this question could be either with Jackie or Lauren. If you wanted to review this with another business and Lauren, if you continue to use this, utilize this partnership, do you feel that every person that’s going through a program like this going to have to start off with an apprenticeship or do they all have to go through the same training program, same amount of hours? I’m just wondering how individualized could this be as you start to bring in more people or is it just going to be the same across the board?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (38:13):

Yeah, for us, because we are hiring people with zero experience in what we do and we have to get them up to a pretty expert level and the stakes are very high with the work they’re doing, they all go through the same foundational training. In full transparency, that training we would’ve had regardless of the apprenticeship. The apprenticeship for us is kind of we were already doing it. It’s just they’re getting a certificate at the end. Most apprenticeships take about a year and have to do a lot of online classes to reach the required training hours because we were able to count the internship and bootcamp as pre-apprentice. And even for people that didn’t go through that program that started with us, the amount of training that we provide them, they are about to graduate their apprenticeship after about six, seven months. So it’s a lot of training and yeah, they all have to go through it.

Jackie Kanupp (39:24):  And I would just ad that it’s definitely something that we’re trying to replicate. I’ve done it with a couple other IT or cybersecurity businesses. All of them pretty much start the same way. It’s listening to that need and then figuring out what it is, but they’re all starting pretty slow. So this was kind of unique in that it did start slow just like this one did and then they had a mass contract so we were able to kickstart that, but they’re all starting the same way of that showing the skillset because just having that certification we’ve learned isn’t enough to get someone in the door. So we’re having to prove that they have the skillset and they have the knowledge base to do the job.

Dana Barone (40:08):  Hi, Dana Barone from Pennsylvania VR. So you had mentioned the embedded relationship that you had with VR being embedded in enabled technologies. What did that look like on a day-to-day basis? Because we have a similar position in our SWTSE grant called an inclusion liaison that we have embedded within designated employers. And that relationship has been really key to the success of our placements. I mean, they’re the single point contact for the VR counselors and they manage the OJTs. And so very similar, but I was just wondering what that looked like on a day-to-day basis in your project.

Laruen Bacon Smith  (41:00):  Yeah, I mean it sounds pretty similar where Jackie’s really my main point of contact out at different events. I’m always meeting different DARS counselors and we’ll ad people to our outreach list of when we are looking for referrals, but I mostly go through Jackie for everything and have been working with David as well. But day-to-day before the large contract we had, we were doing continuous recruitment, so we always had a role posted and Jackie would let me know. We have online applications just like anyone else, but if Jackie or somebody from her team refers somebody over, they normally email me and let me know that they’ve referred somebody. Like Jackie said, we provide feedback about how somebody has done on their assessment so they know exactly, especially if they didn’t pass why. And then when we were working on the high volume side, it was very frequent because we had to turn these people around really quickly.

(42:08): So I had to get the information to Jackie and her team about, especially people we were referring in that needed brand new cases opened to be able to get them registered and ready to go before their internship would be starting.

Jackie Kanupp (42:23):  And I think as a business model, enabled intelligence really pays a lot of attention to their team members. I think that’s what you guys call them versus employees. So if there was a problem or they needed to address something that you guys were very good about meeting with them one-on-one, figuring out accommodations, having conversations with them, which you don’t typically see in a business setting the way that they do. So we were able to communicate about those things even if the person wasn’t a client yet to assess how could we help as an agency to just provide accommodations and brainstorm sessions.

Betsy Civilette (42:57):  I just put up the picture of the team. Lauren, you could tell us what you guys are celebrating here or what this is?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (43:03):  Yeah, that was our first big team photo after we had brought on. We had onboarded over 80 people within two weeks. We went from a 30-person team to a 110-person team, and we’re about to bring on 22 more people next week and hopefully another 40 in Falls Church before the end of the year and about 30 in St. Louis. So if there’s anybody out in that area, we are opening a new office out there.

Dana Barone (43:35): Rick, we have a question back here.

Jessica Queener (43:38):  Hi, I’m Jessica Queener with the US Department of Labor. And I just had a quick clarifying question and you may have already answered it and I may have just not heard it. Are these positions for cleared jobs?

Laruen Bacon Smith  (43:52):  Thank you. We forgot to mention that. So we did not mention it. So when we were working on the first round of hiring for this contract, we needed a large portion of them to be cleared, which is one of the reasons we needed to start working so far in advance, even before we knew we had the contract, because we needed to make sure that we had enough cleared team members to support the work on day one if we won. So this next round of hiring that we’ll be doing outside of not the 22 next week, but the additional group at the end of the year, those positions are all going to be cleared positions as well. So we do put all of our team members even while they’re waiting in their contingent phase through the clearance process. Well,

Rick Sizemore (44:43):  It’s been a delightful conversation. Lauren, Jackie, David, thank you for walking us through how all this evolved and congratulations on the success.

Right. And you can learn more about our guests and the resources in the show notes at vrworkforcestudio.com. So please connect with us at our YouTube channel at VR WorkforceStudio on YouTube.

Rick Sizemore (45:09):

Well, thank you for joining us today. I’m Rick Zizemore.

Betsy Civilette (45:12):

And I’m Betsy Sivalte.

Rick Sizemore (45:14):

Join us as we podcast the Sparks at Ignite VR.

Betsy Civilette (45:17):

Thank you.

Sherrina Sewell (45:33):

VR Workforce Studio.