The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is getting the next generation invested in computers and coding and understanding how they all work. The CIA is making it possible for five educators of Kindergarten through eighth-grade students to immerse their students in all things coding and application development, or 3D printing and design thanks to a new competition.
The CIA Mission Possible Operation Advance Technology competition will place $60,000 computer and coding laboratories in five schools across the country. Winning educators will be able to select from among several suites of coding or design equipment based on their needs and wishes for their classrooms.
The deadline to apply is March 24, 2023. Winners will be notified in April and the items delivered to their classrooms for the start of the 2023-24 school year. Sometimes, you have to build your talent pipeline earlier than everyone else.
Layoffs: GM
General Motors announced to their employees to be on the lookout for some performance-related cuts. Layoffs won’t be large in scale, like the tech industry. But some of their 81,000 salaried employees and executives will be impacted.
“The areas we’re focusing on include continuing to reduce complexity in all of our products, and reducing corporate overhead expenses across the board. I do want to be clear, though. We’re not planning layoffs. We are limiting our hiring to only the most strategically important roles and will use attrition to help manage overall head count,” GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra said during an earnings call in January. She noted that they are making plans for $2 billion in cost savings over the next two years.
Hiring: DCSA
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) recently tweeted that they are looking for motivated individuals with inquisitive minds to fill the position of Investigator. Specific hiring areas are concentrated in Washington, DC; Alexandria, Arlington, Leesburg, and Winchester, VA; Bethesda, Ft. Meade, Hagerstown, Frederick, and Silver Spring, MD. Resumes are due before midnight on March 10, and applicants must be able to obtain a Top Secret security clearance. You don’t need a clearance to apply, but you do need to be able to obtain one to get the job.
Cleared Employer at Work: Boeing
Opportunity to Watch
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is working on getting high school students real-world experiences. They are offering a $1.5 million grant from American Student Assistance® (ASA) – a national nonprofit changing the way kids learn about careers and navigate a path to postsecondary education and career success – to address the challenge of access to authentic work-based learning and soft or employability skill credentialing opportunities. Research shows that while 79% of high school students would be interested in a work-based learning experience, only 34% were aware of any opportunities for students their age — and just 2% of students had completed an internship during high school. The partnership is designed to prepare learners and workers for career advancement to address the worker shortage.
The grant will fund the launch of the pilot phase of the Employer Provided Innovation Challenges (EPIC) initiative, an online platform that brings high school and postsecondary learners and incumbent workers together to create solutions to real-world, employer-led work-based learning challenges. The challenges will be provided by regional and national partners, including large corporations, small and medium enterprises, governmental agencies and municipalities, and non-profit organizations. The pilot phase of the initiative will begin during the fall of 2023.
“EPIC will provide learners with opportunities to work as a team on real-world industry problems that not only promote career awareness, but also career preparation,” said Jason Tyszko, vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “We believe that EPIC will seed the infrastructure of the future to scale authentic project-based learning and will one day reach thousands of learners.”
Through 2025, the U.S. Chamber Foundation will organize up to 50 challenges reaching as many as 500 learners, utilizing project management tools and infrastructure, frameworks, and rubrics.
Challenge experiences will be based on the needs and interests of local partners that are designing and hosting the challenges, and will reflect industries such as healthcare, information technology, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, government administration, and civic and community-based challenges. Challenge participants will also be able to stack their experiences and credentials they receive, which will enable learners and workers to pursue a pathway of challenges that go from broad career awareness to more specific career preparation, where challenges increase in sophistication and are part of a talent pipeline. Employers will be able to design and host challenges in a remote, hybrid, or face-to-face environment.
