(Danielle) Hi everyone, thanks so much for joining us today, and I love listening to what everybody does. I think it's so brave. I wish I had the courage to open my own business, so kudos to all of you, and thanks to Jeanette for putting this on. For those of you who don't know, this is kind of like a spin-off series, to something, if you guys didn't come to the other one, called Train Local, Grow Global. And I'm gonna stand down here, because I'm really short, and I can't even see all of you, so that's okay. And that's kind of looking at, what are the 50 different services Dallas College offers? So that's something that our team focuses on. I like to say that our team doesn't really offer service, except for helping you navigate. There's over 5,000 employees at Dallas College, and most of the time, we don't even know what everybody else is doing. So we can't imagine what you guys feel like trying to get tapped into, all the different resources that we have.
Additionally, I think it's great that we have 50 different services, but if nobody knows about it, it's not gonna do any good. So being out there and telling the community what's going on and how we can help, is what our team is trying to focus on. Okay, so talent pipeline. So there's a few different things in here that are, I should say not specific to BJP. These are everywhere across the college, and so our team, business engagement, if you reach out to us, we're just gonna listen to what you're trying to do. That's it. What are your goals? Where do you see yourself going? Nothing specific. We're not gonna push anything for any specific service. Just understanding what you need.
One of the top things we get asked about is hiring students. We are on a platform called Handshake. Your business can register on Handshake, and it will give you access to all of the other schools as well that are on Handshake. And so this was a different, if you were previously on Purple Briefcase, that was very specific to just us. This is actually any Handshake school across DFW, you'll have access to hire their students. And you can make a profile. It's kind of like a miniature LinkedIn for students to be able to kind of see what's your profile. Students can review, you can put your internships, your coops, everything can go on there. And it is specific to trying to find, if you're looking for someone with zero to five years of experience specifically. So if you're looking for somebody for 15 years of experience, you don't wanna put them on Handshake, you're specifically to getting people up to put you from the door. The same team that does Handshake also will connect you to our work-based learning team. We do co-ops, we do apprenticeships, we do internships and work-study.
There's also a pilot going on for something that 10KSB had done previously to pay your intern $20 an hour for you to give them that work experience. And so if you're willing to be bumpy on that road and test that out with us, reach out to us and we'll get you connected with that team. One thing too is trying to expand the idea of apprenticeships, co-ops. It's not just for plumbers or trades. We're doing those for Google, for every other industry, finance, trying to get students into those positions as well. So the next one, talking about also hiring for your talent pipeline, there's another team that will help you find people who already experienced. So if you need help recruiting people, our SIN team will help with that and we can get you connected with them as well. And they'll help with reviewing applications, finding the right people, everything. And those are all nocost services, so.
Okay, so upskilling, this is a very popular topic with a lot of people already. So what I'm talking about in here is gonna cover a few different things. Our SIN team offers, we have a small skills for small business grant and a skills development fund. Both of those are training funds to upskill your employees. There's different caveats for both and the funds for skills for small business can be used for any custom training. Custom training can get confusing, so what does that mean? If you have a proprietary equipment like Dr. Pepper, I know it makes their own machine and only they have that machine, so we'll train their employees. If you need Excel, if you need people to learn Photoshop, if you want them to learn customer service skills. So it's soft skills and technical skills in any field. And so those funds will help pay for your company. Most companies qualify not to have to pay for anything, and so those grants will help upskill your employees if they're skills that they need to learn as well. Certification, Six Sigma, I know is popular, so those are just some of those ideas as well.
Another one too, they are available, it's not a BJP specific, we can do it at your location, we can do it at a campus, and so if it's something where you don't wanna send your people, you don't have the time, whatever, they can do those trainings at your location as well. So those are important. Oh, and the other one, if you ever wanna sponsor your employees, that's a very popular one, I know it at large corporations, but small businesses as well. If you wanted to say, hey, I'm gonna give my students, or my students, my employees tuition reimbursement. So if they wanna take courses, you can say they can take from this list of courses, or you can just say, just go better yourself and that's your option. That's another option we can set you up with with that team. So those are those. So growing your business, coaching.
Natasha's gonna talk more about that, so I'm not gonna go into 10KSB, but we do have another program as well that has launched with the Dallas College Venture Club, and so that is helping entrepreneurs to find capital, build on their business, grow their idea, put a business plan together, a whole slew of services. So if there's anything where you're trying to take your idea from an idea to actually launching it, they can help with that as well. Resources, these are all some of the ones that they have as well. This 10KSB, sorry, Venture Club also offers a co-working space and a membership. So if you need space for meetings, that is actually here at BJP, and it is upstairs, and I think you can go tour it. Do you know if they can tour it? Okay, yeah, so if you wanted to after the meeting, you can stop by up there upstairs to the Venture Club and check it out. And then data, we have a entire team called the Labor Market Intelligence Center, and they use ArcGIS, they have a platform called Lightcast. Anything like that that you're interested in about market, education, economic, or demographic data, you can get that, because I know a lot of people will go out and pay for it or pay a consultant, and that's usually a report they can run in a few minutes, and it's free.
Things that I've seen it used for, for example, there's a company who's like, hey, we've put this job posting out, and nobody is coming to apply for this job, what is going on? So we looked, and there's nobody with that skill set living within like 20 miles of them. So it wasn't even that they weren't paying enough, there just weren't any people. So then they decided, okay, we're gonna switch gears, we'll train somebody and bring somebody in from the bottom and get someone in that way. So being able to know what is your market, what am I actually looking at? If you wanna look at what are wages, who am I competing against, that's a team that can help you with that as well. And then vendor, we won't go into that, because Jeanette's gonna talk about that. And then corporate social responsibility. I always love to make sure people know how can they give back. I know you're talking about how your group gives back, and I think that's really awesome, and a lot of small businesses are the ones that are gonna get involved the most.
So we have a Dallas College Foundation. You can also sponsor Dallas College Events. The foundation gives a lot of money towards students, especially who are hitting barriers, if they can't pay rent, if they can't pay for their classes, whatever barrier they're needing, the foundation has a lot of work with helping students overcome those. Partnering, we've got a lot of stuff related to sustainability, inclusivity. We can get you connected with those teams as well. A B Corp certification. This is actually a new program that we are launching is a partnership with B Lab. Have you all heard of B Corp certification or B certifications before? Yes, okay, so we've got a few people.
Basically what it is is there's an organization called B Lab for US and Canada, and they help you get certified as an ESG for, it's your environmental, social, I'm saying, governance, and really being able to prove to the public you're a good business. And so a lot of people like to say, oh, millennials wanna buy from good businesses, they wanna buy from Ben & Jerry's or Patagonia, like companies that are doing good. B Corp certification is what gives you that tag. In Texas, we are way behind. Like for the number of organizations that we have here, especially in DFW, I think there's only seven companies in Dallas out of like 1,500 that are registered in the US.
So we're hoping to build that number up and help people get their B certification as well. And then volunteering, we have industry advisory committees, and they are, you can serve on them depending on what your area of expertise is, and it will help design the curriculum. I know when I was going to school for architecture, they were teaching us a program that was 20 years old that nobody's asking for, and that's not helpful. So having people here that know this is the platform we need now, these are the jobs we're asking for, this is the information students are gonna need. Having people serve on those industry advisory committees helps faculty know this is how we're gonna tailor our curriculum so our students come out ready for what people actually need. So those are some of the examples we have for volunteering.
So again, this is just a teeny tiny bit of what we have, like I said, it's 50 services, that's kind of the high level view. So if you ever just wanna have a conversation, a lot of times if we don't have the service, you know, we'll even ask around. And so our work is finding out who internally to get you to, to the right person, so you don't have to because we'd rather be the ones that have to send 50 emails and find the right people than you trying to navigate from the outside. So that's it, so I appreciate it again. My name is Danielle Stellrect, and it's edu. businessengagement@dallascollege. Anytime you guys wanna reach out. Thanks, Jeanette. (Upbeat music)