Colleges and universities can be a valuable resource in connecting students to high-earning careers and supporting businesses and other industry partners to address holes in the workforce.

Business Roundtable helped facilitate one such initiative, the EY–Alamo Colleges District Hiring Pilot, which matched Ernst & Young with the Alamo Colleges District in San Antonio to fill the accounting company’s job vacancies.

Since 2022, the partnership has successfully helped students land high-paying jobs in a reputable organization and demonstrated the value associate degree holders can bring to the company, as highlighted in a recent report from Business Roundtable. The pilot challenged the company and college’s assumptions and norms of recruitment and hiring, requiring a collaborative and creative workflow to make it a success.

The background: EY and Alamo Colleges formalized their partnership in 2022 as part of the Business Roundtable Workforce Partnership Initiative, which establishes industry–higher education partnerships across the U.S. focused on skill development and driving economic growth, as well as increasing workforce diversity.

“We [Business Roundtable and the Business–Higher Ed Forum] are trying to, through these case studies and convenings, create a model that is highly replicable and scalable regardless of what the workforce need is,” says Dane Linn, senior vice president of Corporate Initiatives at Business Roundtable. “CEOS are looking to expand opportunities for a range of individuals who have skills, who have experiences, and one way to do that is through colleges and universities that actually want to change their model for how they train and prepare individuals for the workforce.”

EY leaders were looking to fill accounting roles in a new San Antonio facility and typically hire students from four-year accounting programs, but the number of degrees awarded in the region had declined and workers in the area were also less likely to hold a bachelor’s than an associate degree.

After considering the role and responsibilities required for the positions in question, EY leadership opened more roles to community college graduates by eliminating the requirement of a bachelor’s degree for some roles, developing more specialized, narrow jobs based on different skill sets.

Alamo Colleges is made up of five colleges, making the district the best fit for the San Antonio metro area, as it produces the greatest share of associate degree grads in the region (90 percent). “A lot of community college students want to stay local, but they want to do more,” says Ellen Glazerman, executive director of the EY Foundation.

EY set an initial goal of hiring 230 Alamo students in entry-level roles within three years and, to date, has resulted in the successful hiring of 91 associate degree graduates. Both groups considered the pilot a success, however, because it paved the way for future collaboration and informing larger organizational strategies, according to the report.

The how to: Building this partnership required creative thinking from the company and the college district because it was a first-of-its-kind endeavor.

1. Building a strategic relationship. The Alamo Colleges have a high student-to-staff ratio, resulting in fewer resources to devote to planning and executing the partnership compared to the private, elite four-year institutions EY had worked with, requiring the company and institution to align expectations and goals to build trust and create a long-term partnership, Glazerman says.
2. Tweaking marketing. Students were mostly unfamiliar with EY as a company and the opportunities available, which required the organization to create a marketing campaign to appeal to community college students. “We had to learn something about, how do you completely rebrand a very sophisticated brand?” Glazerman says. Many students already hold jobs, which make the openings less desirable to them, but some of the company’s benefits— including location, corporate working environment and health insurance—are more attractive to them.
3. Engaging faculty. Because the roles didn’t require an accounting degree, outreach to students was more broad and spread across campus to identify those who had the appropriate skill sets. Some faculty at the college were hesitant to promote the opportunity to students because they worried it would reduce students’ desire to continue their education and complete a four-year degree, according to the report. In response, EY highlighted its career pathway options for graduates, including flexibility and accommodation of enrollment while employed. EY and Alamo also identified a faculty champion who kick-started efforts, inviting EY recruiters in the classroom and building courses around site visits to introduce students to the job opportunities, which in turn encouraged other faculty to participate.
4. Creating an inclusive hiring process. Understanding community college students’ needs and interests is critical in achieving equitable hiring, Glazerman says. Community college students are less likely to spend time on campus engaging in activities than their four-year residential peers due to their competing priorities or lack of on-campus housing. Student recruitment, therefore, was mostly led by faculty champions, career services staff and college advisers, who promoted the program through word of mouth, and EY staff, who held office hours to prepare students for interviews. Alamo also joined Handshake, which allowed for more targeted recruitment of students with the right skills.

Lessons learned: For higher education institutions looking to model this work, researchers identified some key areas of focus for the college:

• Use labor market data to identify opportunities. Career counselors at Alamo Colleges are increasingly using labor market analysis to match program offerings with employer as they partner with large corporate employers that could align with students’ skills and interests.
• Prepare students to transition to professional work. A central theme in the EY–Alamo Colleges pilot was meeting students where they are, but students also need to be equipped to be successful after landing their first job. Core job-searching skills and professional development can boost learners’ confidence as they take on a corporate environment.
• Educate recruiters about the community college system. Some demographic information around community college students, such as first-generation status, can influence a student’s experience with careers and with their college, which may be unfamiliar to the corporate partner. Career services staff can help inform recruiters about what makes their campus unique, and in turn they can tailor the experiences the employer offers students.

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