District Bridges Wants to Help You Hire (Sponsored)

Hey, Bridget Todd here. You're probably wondering why we're in your feed twice today. Well, that's because we have a great conversation for you between our CEO, David Plott's, and our sponsor, District Bridges, a nonprofit working to foster equitable, resilient, and connected communities in DC and beyond. Enjoy! Hi, I'm David Plott's CEO of CityCast. As the head of a company based here in DC, I know how tricky and time-consuming hiring can be, especially if you want to be mindful of diversity and inclusion along the way. So I'm excited to be talking to Brianne Dornbush and Madeline Odendal from our sponsor District Bridges about the work they're doing to help local companies hire more efficiently and thoughtfully. Today's Wednesday, September 13th, I'm David Plott's, and here's what DC's talking about. Brianne and Madeline welcome to CityCast. Thank you. Thanks for saying this. So, Brianne, you and your team at District Bridges have built an amazing online resource for DC small business owners called AccessPoint. It is amazing. I love it. It is a set of free digital tools and courses that help people establish businesses here, navigate City bureaucracy, and succeed. And now you've been working with the DC Workforce Investment Council to do something very cool to make AccessPoint even better. So, Brianne, what are you doing to make it even better? Yeah, thanks, David. So, over the last nine months, we've been working with the DC Workforce Investment Council, also known as the WIC, to develop a suite of trainings to help businesses adopt skills-based hiring practices. And so, on AccessPoint, we have five different courses that cover a variety of different topics from attracting the right talent to evaluating candidates, to helping develop candidates with a skills-based framework. And so, they are going to be launching publicly on September 14th. We have a cohort that went through the trainings earlier this summer to help us perfect them and make sure that they were the most relevant and applicable tools for businesses here in DC. Can you give us a specific example of how a DC business owner would use these new Workforce tools? What's a way they might use one of the tools to help them in hiring? Yeah, one of the best examples is developing a job description. That's it. So hard. So hard. Yes, it really is. And so, one of the practices within the skills-based framework is competencies over qualifications. So, a qualification being you have a bachelor's or master's degree. Obviously, there are some roles that require you want your doctors to have the right credentials. But if you have a receptionist, you don't necessarily need them to have a doctorate degree. So, the competencies or if they have the relevant experience, that can make them a really great candidate. And if your job description says that they need to have a certain credential that they don't actually need, you're already limiting your job pool. And we know, since the pandemic, hiring in every single sector has been a real challenge. That has been a challenge for us as an organization. And so, we are really trying to help businesses get the right candidates and help them eliminate the barriers. We also know, for instance, that women are less likely to apply for jobs if they don't have the right credential. Even if they are qualified for the role, if it says five years and they only have four, they're less likely to apply than a man. And so, with the skills-based framework, we're trying to eliminate some of those barriers to make sure that DC residents can get into jobs. And also, DC employers can get candidates that are going to be a great fit for their roles. That's great. So, Madeline, there are a lot of different training sources and modules out there. It is the internet, the worldly internet. What is it that makes access point special? And it is, it really is special. If you guys have built something great and people should check it out. But what is it that makes it so special? It's super special. So, right now, business owners have to go out and really research to get help to your comment. It's the internet. It's vast. It's overwhelming. And it's a lot to wade through. And you don't always know if the content that you're getting is valid and helpful. So, we really want access point to be a one-stop shop for a business owner where they can access vetted resources and support. So, district bridges were an organization that served small businesses. We have a unique understanding of those challenges that small businesses are facing. And unlike other platforms, access point was really created based on direct feedback from our business owners. And includes content and materials that we've piloted and tweaked to help make sure they are as helpful as they can be. We also try to make all of the content digestible. So, you know, the most of the videos are 15 minutes. You could watch them from anywhere, anytime. We're really trying to equitably serve business owners across DC and get them the content that they need when they want it. As a DC business owner who is wrestling with the DC bureaucracy over just a very stupid thing right now, I also appreciate that it's focused on problems you might have as a DC business owner. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's part of what makes access point special is really taking. There's a lot of noise and trying to figure out how can we entangle some of that with a DC lens to help our business owners make it as easy as possible for them. Brian, there's going to be an in-person summit on September 14th that is basically the public launch of your new hiring tools. How can people attend that? Why should they attend it? What are they going to learn? Where should they go? Yeah, we are super excited for September 14th, skills-based DC business summit at the Washington Convention Center. We are really excited for it. We're going to feed you at our breakfast opening plenary with a great breakfast. We're going to have lunch. We're going to have a lot of breakout sessions with experts in the skills-based hiring field. We'll have some DC agencies there that are working to really build out the workforce ecosystem here in the district where businesses can connect directly with them with programs that they may not even know exist. We're also going to be doing some deep dives of the content itself. We are going to be launching all of the five trainings that day. Everyone will have the ability to access that after September 14th through access point. We're going to have a booth at the event for access point where people will be able to log in and get a profile. Again, it's free. Access point is free. The event is free. So whether you're a DC resident and you're looking for employment and want to understand what might be out there for you, what programs you could connect to, or you're a DC employer, and you're wanting to figure out where are all these employees that are great candidates out there, and where are all these government resources that I hear about that I don't know how to connect to. Regardless of which position you're coming from, this event is for you, and again, it is our favorite price, which is free, and it's just going to be a really great day. A lot of excitement and energy from our business cohort that they just finished all of the content and have been raving about it. You never know if the content that you're developing is going to quite hit, and this one really has. And so come and see what the 60 businesses are already raving about. We're really excited to launch this publicly and really have it be a resource for DC. If I'm a small business owner, thinking of coming, what's a problem that I might be able to run by someone at the summit? Bring your job description. If you are struggling to figure out whether some of the parts of your job description are skills-based, do you have a qualification that is making your job description less appealing or limiting your candidate pool? We'll have experts there to help you kind of navigate that. We'll have all of our main street staff, district bridges, main street staff, and several of the other main streets throughout DC. There are 28 main streets here in the district, and they are small business technical assistance experts. And so we're going to have small business technical assistance experts there to help and support businesses on ask your burning questions. Yes, on ask your burning questions. And then we're also going to have government agencies there. So if you have been trying to connect with DOES and don't exactly know how, there will be representatives there who can help you connect with agencies like that, or DSLBD, the Department of Small and Local Business Development. Lots of really great partners who have resources that small businesses here in the district, any business here in the district can tap into. I have this problem. I am having this problem with the DC government. I'm going to be there. They are going to, they're not going to know what to hit them. We're ready. We're ready. We're going to solve those problems, David. We are. That'll end beyond the summit. How can other businesses access these resources if they can't make it on September 14th at the convention center? Yeah. Breanne mentioned access point is free. So in addition to these courses, which long on September 14th to the public, access point has over 15 other courses and modules available for small business owners. So accesspointdc.com, it's free to sign up. It's free to watch these videos and we've got content on small business leasing strategies. We've got content on marketing and social media, whether you already have social media and you're ready to jump into Facebook advertising or you're a small business owner who a couple years ago said, yeah, small social media is just a fad. I'll be fine. And now might have to change their tune. So we try to build the content on access point so that wherever the small business owner is, we're really meeting them where they are. So everybody can access this content on access point following the summit. So, Breanne, before we go, tell us a little bit more about what district bridges as a whole is, not just access point and how city cash listeners can engage with it. Yeah, absolutely. So district bridges, we describe ourselves as a community ecosystem development nonprofit. And so you might be wondering, what is a community ecosystem? And how are you developing it? But really, when we think about cities and communities, it's all the different parts that make communities strong. And so our mission is to help build thriving, equitable, resilient, and connected communities. And so whether that is through community events like our Columbia Heights Day Festival, upcoming event, Art All Night, or our salsa in the plaza in Columbia Heights that happens on Thursdays, those different events are opportunities for residents to come out and connect with other residents with local businesses and just build a deeper sense of community. And then of course, we're supporting our small businesses through direct technical assistance, providing grants and resources like access point so that businesses here in the district can thrive. And then we also work to provide connective services to our residents here in the district who are facing challenges like substance use disorder or homelessness. We don't provide those services directly, but we connect, we build relational bridges to other organizations that do that. And so really strengthening the ecosystem to make sure that our communities are thriving together. That's awesome. Randorn Bush and Madeline Oendahl, thank you so much for the work you're doing with District Bridges and for sharing it with us here on CityCast. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. That is all for today here on CityCast DC. If you are a business owner in the DMV, make sure to check out District Bridges access point tips and tools to make your hiring process and by extension your business even stronger. Just go to districtbridges.org. And if you don't own a company here, check out their other resources for building community in your neighborhood. Once again, you go to districtbridges.org and check our show notes for some ways to get involved with District Bridges. We will be back tomorrow morning with more news from around the city. Bye-bye. Access point is the most amazing tool in the entire world. Everyone should sign up for the free account. We can use that. Seriously, keep that as a kicker. We'd like a people laugh in the background,