Junior Achievement Celebrates New Job Resource Tool
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews
WARSAW — Junior Achievement aims to help young people prepare for the workforce.
Its new resource, the Digital Career Book, aims to further help them do just that.
The Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce celebrated the resource and the work that the organization does locally to help students with jobs at a ribbon-cutting at Warsaw Area Career Center on Wednesday, Sept. 14.
“We are celebrating the partnership between Junior Achievement and the Warsaw Area Career Center specifically and the Warsaw school district in general,” explained local chapter of JA Board Vice President Mike O’Connor to media members before the event.
He explained more about the career book, which he said “links local students to local employers.”
“We are becoming the conduit between employers and the school system,” he said. “In previous times, the career center would have to pursue employers to find homes for students interested in specific careers and now that’ll be all automated with (the career book) that does that.”
The resource helps with “summer jobs that might led to internships and co-ops and then paid apprenticeships after that,” said O’Connor.
“And we are putting an emphasis on local employers that are willing to invest in our students, so we’re looking for those that also will have tuition reimbursement or may have corporate training that’s significant and our online tool allows students to sort by those employers who have current job openings, have openings in internships, apprenticeships and are willing to pay for their further education,” he said.
He said he thinks the tool will first be used to help teach kids about jobs when they are fourth or fifth graders.
“So by the time they get to be of working age, let’s say sophomores, they may have used this six, seven times throughout their career,” said O’Connor. “The emphasis with the career center is going to be on juniors and seniors.”
Teaching those at a young age about careers is part of JA’s focus, as they serve those in grades K-12, said JA Development Director Courtney Whetstone.
“Our mission is just overall to inspire youth. We teach three pillars: entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness,” she said.
O’Connor noted that the career book may be accessed by visiting JA’s regional headquarters Junior Achievement of Northern Indiana’s website juniorachievement.org/web/junior-achievement-of-northern-indiana.
There it may be found under the JA Here To Career tab.
“Anyone can go on and create a login and password, so if you’re looking for a career change, you could go in and research it,” said O’Connor. “It contains 16 clusters of careers, for instance, health care, manufacturing, construction trades and then over 700 individual careers are highlighted within those clusters.”
A questionnaire regarding likes and dislikes in the resource helps provide job suggestions.
“Let’s say it says you should be a nurse, you can go in and watch videos about what nurses do, you can get connected to various trade associations and then you can click a button and say, ‘Show me what schools near me provide nursing training,’ and it will bring up Grace (College), it will bring up Saint Mary’s (College), it will bring up Ivy Tech and show how much each of those cost, then you can connect directly to them,” added O’Connor.
“Then you click on employers and it will show you which employers employ nurses in our area, actually nationwide, but which ones are currently hiring, which ones will pay for your education and so forth, so it’s an automated way for kids and their parents to go through this process,” he said.
O’Connor mentioned that JA is working to add employers to the career book. It costs $600 annually for them to have their business as part of the resource.
“So this is completely free to our taxpayers to our school district because it’s the employers that are looking to build their workforce that are paying for it,” he said.
He said there’s around a dozen employers in the Warsaw area that have signed up so far, including Zimmer Biomet, Tecomet, Precision Medical Technologies, Warsaw Coil and Miller’s Merry Manor.
Employers who wish to be part of the resource may find an online form to fill out under the career book tab on JA of Northern Indiana’s website.
WCS Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education Dr. David Robertson was present at the ribbon-cutting and shared his thoughts on how the career book will help students.
“I think … there are so many more courses that are offered that are career-specific at younger ages and so any tool that helps students kind of know where do my natural giftedness and passions lie … we’re excited about it,” said Robertson.