Across industries, attracting and retaining motivated early-career talent has become increasingly difficult. Labor shortages, shifting workforce expectations, and accelerating skill demands are forcing businesses to rethink how and when they engage future employees. For many organizations, the response has been to double down on internships, utilizing temporary employment agencies, and early-career recruitment. While important, this approach overlooks a powerful and underutilized opportunity: strategic partnerships with high schools.

High school students represent one of the most overlooked talent pipelines in local communities. Many businesses believe that high school students lack the professional preparation or social maturity needed to fill even the entry level positions that are challenges for their HR department to staff. However, businesses that proactively connect with school districts and high schools are not only expanding their future workforce, they are shaping it.

Rethinking Assumptions About “Workforce Readiness”

Many companies set an informal floor for internships or entry-level opportunities at the college freshman year, often based on assumptions that younger students lack focus, professionalism, or relevant skills. In today’s education landscape, those assumptions no longer hold.

Across the country, districts have significantly expanded career and technical education (CTE), career exploration, and work-based learning programs. As a result, many high school students graduate with industry certifications, technical skills, and hands-on experience aligned to real workforce needs. These students are not experimenting blindly--they are often intentionally building toward specific careers and seeking meaningful exposure to industry environments. These students are often graduating with the very skills that businesses are having to retrain or up-skill their own existing workforce in order to keep pace with operational and technological changes.

Why School Districts Are Strategic Partners for Business

Engaging with high schools allows businesses to:

• Build early talent pipelines by identifying motivated students before competitors enter the picture.
• Develop skills intentionally by shaping training around company-specific tools, processes, and expectations.
• Reduce hiring risk through low-stakes, early exposure to potential long-term employees.
• Infuse new perspectives from digital-native students fluent in emerging technologies and collaboration tools.
• Strengthen community presence by visibly investing in local youth and workforce development.

High school students often bring strong digital skills, adaptability, and flexibility--while schools themselves are frequently willing partners, able to adjust schedules or provide coordination to support internships, job shadowing, apprenticeships, or project-based experiences. Additionally, high schools offer student participants additional support that the business is not having to fund.

The Business Case for Early Engagement

When businesses involve students earlier in their career journeys, they gain more than short-term help. They create extended opportunities to assess fit, mentor talent, and cultivate loyalty. Students trained early often enter postsecondary education or the workforce with a clearer sense of direction--and a stronger connection to the companies that invested in them. From an operational standpoint, these partnerships can help address workforce gaps, support succession planning, and reduce long-term recruitment costs. From a strategic standpoint, they allow businesses to influence the future skills ecosystem in their region.

What Meaningful Partnerships Can Look Like

Industry partnerships with high schools do not need to be complex to be impactful. Effective models include:

• Paid internships or part-time employment aligned to coursework
• Job shadowing and career immersion days
• Mentorship programs with professionals across departments
• Project-based collaborations tied to real business challenges
• Guest speaking, advisory roles, or curriculum input for CTE programs

These opportunities benefit students by clarifying career pathways while giving businesses early access to emerging talent.

A Strategic Opportunity for Long-Term Talent Development

As businesses continue to reassess how they build, sustain, and future-proof their workforce, partnerships with high schools merit serious consideration. These relationships offer a way to engage talent earlier, shape relevant skills over time, and better align education pathways with real industry needs, often with far less friction and more support than traditional recruitment channels.

Proactively connecting with districts and schools allows businesses to move from reactive hiring to intentional talent development. Rather than waiting for students to enter the labor market, employers can play a formative role in helping young people understand industry expectations, craft the curriculum with the instructors, establish the workplace culture in the classroom, and quickly adapt to emerging opportunities. In doing so, businesses gain greater visibility into the next generation of workers while contributing to a stronger, more prepared local talent ecosystem.

For organizations navigating ongoing workforce challenges, high school partnerships are not simply a community goodwill effort. They represent a practical, forward-looking strategy for cultivating talent, strengthening regional economies, and building long-term capacity. Such partnerships bring value to the school district through relevancy and the quality of its CCR initiatives and for businesses through addressing both short term hiring needs and contributing to long term sustainability. Tapping this reservoir of value will bring significant on-going benefits to the entire community.