Innovation

1. Review posts from your colleagues for the Innovative Challenge in Lesson #1. Answer the following:



- Which ideas did you like and why?

- Are there any ideas you could build on to help you stay ahead of the curve in your practice area?



I like Amanda’s idea of turning orientation in a type networking and her reasons as a great way to lay a foundation that emphasizes participation, presentation and the importance of relationships. This idea also reminded me of a participant activity that CWS holds for their participants. When I was in Boston a few months ago, CWS held a networking event with several employer partners and professionals looking to give back where participants were interview dresses and the employers and professionals met one on one with each participant, conducted a mock interview and at the end gave resume and interview feedback. I also remember the program staff mentioned they held another networking event in a different format – more traditional networking – where participants and employers were free to move around the room and freely approach each other to converse.



2. Thinking about innovation more broadly at Fedcap, post a response to one of the two following questions:



- How can Fedcap leverage its business relationships in more effective ways?

Fedcap can leverage business relationships in two main ways. I think for business relationships where Fedcap is purchasing services from a company or partnering with a company to subcontract a service, there is an opportunity to make the relationship more mutually beneficial for exploring what job opportunities the company might have that could be a fit Fedcap participants or can filled through a training or developing an employer based training.

For employer business relationships, I think that large scale opportunities can be better leveraged across programs, so that Fedcap as a whole is able to place more participants. However, before this can be done effectively and also with quality, I think it’s important to have a standard method for programs working together on such a project in place. I think this could also be a great opportunity to leverage best practices and implement across divisions. I think that we can also open up employers to a larger segment of our candidate pool if we elevate the way that we engage and recognize employers at Fedcap events as well develop more targeted employer offerings.