Untapped: Closing America's Opportunity Gap (2024)

[bunniefuu]

I'm navigating

through a dark tunnel,

and it just keeps going

and it keeps going.

That's what my life was at the time.

Just a dark tunnel, just keep going,

and I couldn't see the end of it.

I would stop sometimes

when there was some light,

but then I would just continue

down that dark tunnel.

The only time I would get to the end

is at the end of my day.

I would go home and sleep and eat,

and then get ready for the next day

of going through a dark tunnel.

It didn't feel good to wake up

to go to work.

I wasn't happy about going to work.

I wanted better for myself.

Financial freedom.

Generational wealth.

Freedom in general.

Happiness.

Those are the things that I'm looking for.

Clearly, the economy is slowing.

We felt that there are

significant supply shortages.

We're seeing a uniquely volatile market.

A slow dance into a recession.

It's not just

10,000 jobs being cut.

inflation, and one of the areas

that's been hit the hardest is food.

38% of people last year

did not get the medical care they needed

because it was too expensive.

Talking about the issue

of widespread homelessness.

The net worth

of the median household

is nothing, basically.

Does it get to

the root of the issue,

which is rising tuition costs?

43% of students

that go to school today don't graduate.

The entire system needs to be reinvented.

We are

in the middle of an AI arms race

that heats up more and more every day.

It does underscore

how tight the labor market is.

Okay, I can do this.

Hi, my name is Megan Sampson.

I'm a software development student at

Wait, wait, wait.

Hi, my name is Megan Sampson.

I'm an entrepreneur

and software development student

at Year Up.

Currently, I am learning UX design

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm assuming

you want me to sit right here.

All right.

My name is Brianna Dyer.

Where do you want me to actually look?

Pretty much down the barrel.

- Straight to camera?

Yes, straight to camera.

Scene alpha, take 1, soft sticks.

I see all these opportunities.

Just like this street, right?

As if this was an island.

This building that we are adjacent to

has so many companies in it.

So that means it looks like

all they have to do is cross the street.

But there's a divider here.

And for some folks, we don't see it.

They don't see how there's a divide.

For some of them, it's like,

"Just get it. It's here. It's out here."

But there's a barrier

that's stopping them from getting there.

Once we, as a coach,

understand what those barriers are,

we can understand

how there's an opportunity divide.

Imagine if we had an interview process

that measured people

for how long they traveled

just to get to the starting point.

A lot of people in this country

are not only born on the starting line,

but were born 50 yards down the road.

Imagine if we could assess people

on the journey they had to travel

just to get to the place

where they could be interviewed.

So, tell me

a little bit about yourself, Megan.

Well, I have been learning

front and back end,

as well as data engineering and UX design.

So, that's a little about me.

I'm interested in what you can offer

as a front-end developer.

Well, I'm very innovative

and I work well with others,

so I think that I can be

a great product to your team.

That's great. Any questions for me?

Um, also,

what are

Um, what is the day and day life

of, uh, rocket science?

Believe it or not,

a lot of the work is remote.

- Well, um, I'll be in touch.

- Thank you.

They'll be in touch

Great.

"I'll be in touch."

So, feedback for our interviewee.

Well, I feel like when he asked her,

"Tell me about yourself."

We are in New York,

the financial capital of the world.

Some of you will show up

to an internship site

and you will think to yourself,

"No one in this room

has had the same journey that I had.

"These people had it made already."

"They've got a degree

from Harvard, Yale, Princeton."

"They've been here for a very long time."

"Their dad or their mom

worked at this company."

They live in some very nice neighborhood

in Manhattan."

The reality of it is

they wake up every morning,

they've gotta say to themselves,

"I'm going to show up

and I'm going to be excellent."

And the only thing that separates them

from you, in most cases

is mindset.

We have a system that really focuses on

an extremely narrow set of pathways

into decent, well-paying jobs,

at a time when there are

more ways to learn how to do things

than there ever have been before.

I hear so often some version of

"I know what I can do,

but no one will give me a chance."

But why does it have to be that way?

We're now in a world where you've got

70 million people in this country

who do have high-school degrees,

they have all sorts of skills,

but they don't have college degrees.

And they're being excluded from about 70%

of the new jobs that are being created.

We have this situation where you have

the most opportunity that's ever existed,

but it's hard to figure out

which pathway gets you there.

Sometimes, the credential requirements

don't really capture

what is gonna make someone successful

in a job.

Right now, there's about

seven million jobs that go unfilled

because there aren't people that have

the actual credentials to do them,

but they may have the skills.

We see that number

beginning to grow exponentially.

Closing that gap is what's gonna allow us

to have a better economy going forward.

If American business doesn't figure out

how to solve this opportunity gap,

we're gonna suffer.

We won't grow as much,

we won't be as successful.

After all these years,

most of us should be raising hands saying,

"Something isn't working.

What can we do to fix it?"

- Mmm-mmm.

Let's get ready.

Aah!

- Wanna wear your Minnie Mouse sweater?

- Yes.

- You're gonna do it all by yourself?

- Maybe.

Maybe? Be careful.

We could do this one.

Go!

Keep holding your sleeve. Don't let it go.

I've been working since I was 13.

In high school, after school,

on the weekends.

That was one of my first-ever jobs,

um, cleaning.

A lot of clients was in Manhattan.

52nd Street, 42nd Street.

Big buildings with doormen.

And I was like, "Wow, Mom, I want this."

When we talked to the people

that owned these buildings,

they're CEOs,

senior advisors and tech people.

I want this. I want this lifestyle,

and I have to work hard for it.

Monday, business professional.

Black or blue, button-up or a blouse.

If you want to do a blazer

or a cardigan with it,

you're more than welcome to.

Button-up or blouse.

Yeah.

-

Oh, that's a blouse.

So we kind of talked about this segment.

What was that like?

I saw people nodding their heads

about if you're ever experienced this.

So how does it make you feel?

For a lot of us, we're going into

the corporate world for the first time,

so we don't know how to maneuver

this type of stuff,

so we feel like

you can be taken advantage of

if you don't know how to be

a part of that system,

how to, like, fit in,

how to succeed in that environment.

Mmm-hmm. Anyone else?

I got lucky at Nike,

at my first job.

I worked around people

who wanted me to succeed.

I trusted, so they'd help me.

They would really, really help me

to understand corporate jargon,

there was corporate hierarchy

that you have to understand.

Reporting structures,

you know, all these things, work charts,

that I had never even talked about

or heard anyone talk about in my house.

When you go into an environment like that,

you're like the new kid at school.

It goes way before who you know,

it's like where you're born.

Ask the kids who come from the intercities

what it's like to walk into this building,

it's a whole different world.

You know, the plush carpets

and the big desks and stuff like that.

I had never been in a corporate,

I had never met a CEO

until I finally met one

probably in my last year of college

or something like that.

So I think

I was still a little privileged.

I had great parents,

I went to a nice college and all that,

and that gives you a leg up on life.

In this country today,

I can predict whether you're going to go

to college and get a four-year degree

more by your bank balance

than your SAT score.

That's a fundamental challenge

in our country.

The friend

that told me about the program,

he was one of the first people I saw

that was in the corporate world,

and, you know,

he wore slacks and shoes to work.

Where he worked did not provide

a uniform for him, you know?

That's a difference, for sure.

My first suits, I bought 2 for $99.

They were polyester.

Literally, they're in

a landfill somewhere,

standing up on their own.

But beyond that, I bought everything used.

My first dress shirt, used.

First tie, used.

Belt, used.

Socks, I bought those new.

I didn't care if it was new or used, okay?

My interviewer didn't care

if it was new or used.

I just wanted the job.

Those first few years of working,

I realized, for me to prove myself,

and for me to move up the ranks,

everyone has to start at the bottom.

My philosophy was, whatever job I was in

at any given point in time,

I just focused on crushing that job.

And if you crush that job

and you do great work, you'll be noticed,

and your career trajectory

will take care of itself.

We have participants

who are coming out of a pandemic.

I have participants who spent

their last few years of high school

behind a computer screen.

People haven't even been

sitting next to each other,

let alone engaging physically

with one another.

Handshake is confidence.

That is truly

the embodiment of that moment

that lays the groundwork

for how you build.

I would say

a big part of being an entrepreneur,

but also just being a part of working,

like working in the world,

is you have to be user-friendly.

And that starts with

the very first time you meet someone.

Being a great listener is a thing

that will set you apart right away.

If you ask someone how they're doing

and actually listen to what they say,

looking them in the face, it all matters,

and that first impression

is what sets you up

for people to know

if you're gonna be user-friendly.

It's just from scratch again,

um, meeting new people.

I just am not confident in myself

that much right now in the tech world,

'cause it's not like a school environment

where you can just go up to people

and talk randomly.

You kind of have to prepare yourself

in a professional way.

Because of my English,

I did not think that

I was enough to go out and talk

or to present.

I kind of think in Turkish

and it comes out in English,

so it doesn't match every time,

what I want to say in my head.

Deep down, I just feel like I can do more,

so I think

that gives me pressure on myself.

Sometimes

we go into these environments

and we put so much pressure

overthinking what it is.

It is a conversation.

When I'm having a conversation with you,

what is one thing

that I need to make sure I'm doing?

- Interacting.

- Interacting. Thank you.

Do not create an atmosphere

where folks are just asking you

all the questions, right?

Because now

we are not having a conversation.

I sometimes do not like

making eye contact,

but I am fully engaged

in the conversation.

Looking someone directly in the eye,

it gives, like, a form

I don't want to say intimacy,

but it feels like it,

and I don't really do well with that.

With my mom, we talk,

and she hears me and I hear her,

and I think that

we communicate well that way.

Um, but in corporate America,

people do look you in your face

when they're speaking,

and they're expecting that back.

So it is something that I have

recently realized that I need to work on.

I feel like

that's part of being professional,

showing that you're attentive.

Wall Street.

Once I cross the bridge, right,

I have a sense of professionalism,

confidence, courage.

When you get off the train over here,

there's an energy of professional commute.

Everyone's on that hustle,

and so it almost propels you

into that mindset of, like,

"I'm hungry for it,

I'm ready, I'm energized."

The mindset of the students

has to shift when they get here.

They have to push past a fear,

they have to push past a doubt

or a question, and say like,

"I deserve to be in this mega space,

and the space also has room for me."

- How are you, mister?

- Well, you're being proactive.

Okay, so, I don't see any final project.

- Help me understand what's going on.

- Um

You have three final projects

due tomorrow.

Uh-huh. I haven't done it. Yeah, uh

- Is there a reason why?

- Uh

Well, my mom had to take a business trip,

so I had to take care of my sisters.

And she also has a business

that I had to take care of

- Okay.

- which, like, got in, you know,

cut into the time

that I should've been coding,

which is why, this week,

I wasn't really on top of my labs.

As you can see,

I also had two missing labs this week.

So, with that said, um,

do you understand the requirements

in the final project?

- Yeah, yeah, I do. I do.

- So I want to see

There's a young man

I was interviewing for our program.

And I looked at

his high school transcript

and I remember saying,

"Why are you going to come to Year Up

and be successful and to be on time?

You've been late 56 days!"

He said,

"You know, Gerald, let me tell you.

"I live on my own."

"Therefore, I have to pay

for my own food and my own rent."

"I got a job at Starbucks."

"It'd start at 5:00 a.m. and I could work

till 8:00 a.m. every morning."

"And I had to finish that job

and run to high school"

"to try to be on time,

but it was really, really hard."

"And therefore I was late a lot."

"It's not because

I'm not a capable person."

"It's not because

I don't want to be on time."

"I had to feed myself."

"And that job from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.

is what kept me alive."

"And, yes, it meant I couldn't

get to school on time every day,"

but that doesn't mean I'm not capable."

I was never a good student in high school.

And if you're not a good student

in high school,

then people are going to dictate

how you're going to do in college.

So, basically,

you have a life already ahead of you.

If you're bad in high school,

you'll suck at college.

If you suck at college,

you'll suck in life.

You know, not everybody in this world

has to go to college.

You know who didn't go to college?

Einstein.

Thomas Edison.

Frank.

Frank, who?

The dude who pumps my gas.

We've somehow got this idea in a lot of

elements of elite culture, in the media,

that you have to have a bachelor's degree.

Society has rules.

And the first rule is, you go to college.

You want to have a happy

and successful life, you go to college.

If you want to fit in, you go to college.

I've enrolled in Arlen Community College.

- College? Real college?

- Mmm-hmm.

Oh, Luanne,

you're dreaming with the big boys now.

We're talking six figures each.

- Well--

- That's a generous offer, Mr. Hampton,

- but no, Malcolm's going to college.

- Mom--

You're going to get

a college education first.

He knows what he wants to do

and he's in a good college.

- College.

- College.

And that's ridiculous.

When almost no one had bachelor's degrees

in this country,

we built the Empire State Building

in nine months.

In fact, 95% of the civilization around us

was built by people

without bachelor's degrees.

As early as 1909,

only 9% of Americans went to high school.

But by 1939, 79% of American teenagers

were going to high school.

The reason it happened

is because communities across the country

wanted to see their children

be able to get

what you would then call

the jobs of the future.

Secretaries, telegraph operators,

it might be to work in a car factory.

There were all these new jobs

that were better jobs

than the people wanted.

And high schools were a mass movement

that allowed people to get those

broad-based skills for those jobs.

World w*r II came, the GI Bill came,

now you started having

mass college education.

We needed more doctors, more nurses,

we needed more engineers.

But then sometime around the early '80s,

there was this report that came out.

This presidential commission

called A Nation at Risk.

We've taken a long, hard look

at America's educational system

and found that quality is lacking.

One of the things it said

is that our high schools are a disaster

because they weren't preparing students

to succeed in college.

Our high schools were never designed

to help students succeed at college,

they were designed

to help them succeed at life.

Throughout

the '80s and the '90s in our country,

we began a rhetoric that said

everyone must go to college.

That college-for-all mentality.

Some of the successes of people

isn't because they went to university,

it's because they already grew up well,

they were already educated,

they went to good high schools

and colleges.

That's good enough to get starting jobs.

We want college

to be a bridge to opportunity,

but what we don't want is for college

to become a draw bridge that you pull up,

and everybody who doesn't get across it

is on the outside looking in.

The latest economic snapshot

shows a staggering increase

in the number of people

who have lost their jobs.

The nation's unemployment rate

bolted to a 14-year high.

In 2008, with the recession,

we saw many people out of employment.

At that point, employers were

in a very powerful position.

They could be picky

about who they wanted to hire,

when they wanted to hire them,

and how they wanted them to work.

In 2008,

you also saw the rise of the Internet,

and applying on jobs en masse.

The good thing about that

is that it made accessing jobs

and applying for them widely available.

On the other hand,

it poses a problem for HR departments,

a real problem, which is,

before, maybe 35, 40 people

applied for your job.

Now you get, let's say,

400 applications, or 800 applications.

Well, you can't really go through

400 or 800 applications.

Well, how do you sort those out?

What filters do you use,

what switches to say,

"Yes, I'll speak with you, or look at you"

and "No, I won't"?

A very easy switch to pull

is "Do you have a four-year degree

or don't you?"

It became a sorting mechanism.

In fact,

a pretty inelegant sorting mechanism.

Now you have a computer

that's screening people out

versus screening them in.

Would I prefer my kids to go to college

or not go to college?

I say the same to them

as I say to anybody:

I really think

going to college is a good idea.

I think learning how to learn is

one of the greatest skills you could have.

But at the same time,

it's not for everybody.

It's not just about the education you get,

it's the experience you get.

I made a decision

to leave a four-year university

to go to a two-year technical school.

I don't know if I'd have

ever gotten into the technical industry

if I didn't make that decision

and that transition.

Education's a lifelong thing.

It's not something that

you go to four years of college,

and somehow you're fully prepared

for what the world will demand from you

in 20 years. You're not.

It's not about college,

it's really about skills.

When you're hiring someone,

presumably, you're hiring them

because you think

they can do certain things.

If I'm not choosing the person

based on the degree,

but based on an authentic assessment

of what skills they have,

you, as an employer,

are going to get exactly what you want.

In fact, it's been proven

that if you hire for skills,

that is five times more predictive

of your future success

than if you purely hire for degrees.

Step one is gonna be,

you're going to take this apart.

You have some tools in front of you,

and you're going to take apart

the chassis from the computer,

and you're going to remove hard drive,

remove motherboard,

power supply from the device.

If I'm your boss,

and I give you a month to do something,

and you don't do it,

you might not have a job next week.

I want you all

to be able to fly through it.

So, go ahead.

- You want to take the panel?

- Yeah, we could do that.

Okay, this one we can take off.

I could just take this one off.

Oh, I see we have a starting point.

Let me open this,

so we can see what else is underneath.

Okay, so now we can take this out.

We can, like, flip it,

exactly like the other things.

How do we assess people

in different ways

so that we can recognize and understand

the skills that they actually come with

beyond having a degree?

We have to take it upon ourselves

to widen the aperture of who we can hire

and then provide that training

as people join the company.

Now we're gonna do the reverse.

Put everything back together.

There we go.

Yeah, Larson, do you wanna just like

- It's the same thing. It flips.

- Yeah.

- Ha-ha!

- You did it!

Oh, yes, you're right.

- Also, this is gonna come out of here.

- Hard drive.

Here we go.

No, that's good.

I got it.

There we go.

- You guys got it?

- Yup.

There we go. All right.

All right.

All right.

There are different types of skills

that are needed

to thrive in a corporate environment

and to take on more responsibility.

There are the hard skills,

things that we think of

related to retail basics

or retail math, if you're at Walmart.

And then there are these things

that some people call soft skills.

Things like empathy,

things like the ability to listen,

and apply what you learn and grow.

Did you earn people's trust?

When you speak, do you speak with clarity?

Do you treat people respectfully?

Showing up on time is respectful.

At Workday, my co-founder Dave and I

interviewed the first 500 people.

What we really dug into

was whether they had

the personal characteristics

to be successful.

Characteristics like integrity,

teamwork, working hard,

knowing how to interact with folks

in a business setting.

Making sure that

you're constantly learning.

They sound like soft skills,

but I think they're essential.

If you're on the train

for 40 minutes every morning,

and 40 minutes every night,

that time to yourself

is incredibly valuable.

I always tried to listen

to something motivational or educational.

You know, back in the day,

I would listen to this guy, Zig Ziglar,

and I would drive around

looking at big houses,

trying to get all fired up.

I would listen to educational tapes.

I was trying to teach myself

different things,

because I knew I had a lot to learn.

If you're able to take that downtime

and be disciplined enough

to use that to teach yourself something,

you're gonna get ahead.

Very first day,

very first boot camp,

he said, "Pull out your laptop

and make a website using HTML, CSS."

Everyone else was coding their lives away,

and the first thing I said, I said,

"What is HTML and what is CSS?"

I didn't know what I was doing on day one.

With me, it's always, like,

the fear of not being enough for anything.

Yeah, honestly, I feel like it's always a

- What's that word?

- What?

- Impostor syndrome.

Yes, that's a good one.

Yeah, so, I don't know if any of you know,

but I wasn't born here.

I was born in South America.

Honestly, that felt very nerve-racking,

because I'm not really good

at meeting new people,

or interacting with people.

And I feel like when I joined the program,

it was like that.

Do you think you belong here right now?

Um

- Uh

- Spill the tea.

I don't know, I feel like

Coding is your thing.

Yeah, it is, it is, you know, so

You hear that phrase

"impostor syndrome" a lot.

Our company makes film and TV,

but I'm no filmmaker,

I'm no set designer.

We are going to do

a tower building activity.

So let's all stand.

I used to get it when I'd go,

"Oh, man, I'm gonna walk in this room

"and they're gonna start talking about

the set for this show or this movie,"

and they're gonna realize

I don't know what I'm doing."

But the key in that moment

is to lean back into myself and go,

"Okay, but if I think I need to know"

Hey, wait, what are we doing?

"ask the question."

The best person in the room is the person

who can admit what they don't know.

The tower must be three feet tall.

When I was a new engineer

joining General Motors,

I didn't know how to do everything.

We need a structure first.

Have you thought of that?

Like putting the markers inside.

I'd lean over

to the person next to me and say,

"Hey, I'm dealing with this situation.

Have you ever seen this before?

Do you have suggestions

on what's the best way to handle this?"

- That didn't work.

- It's just gonna flop.

It's important for people

to spend time together to collaborate.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

All right.

Oh, God.

I told you. Hold on, hold on.

- It didn't fall!

- It didn't fall!

This is the DNS server,

but this is the DHCP.

Stop, stop, stop.

You have to turn it on first.

- Oh, on.

- 172.

It's still not working.

Have you changed that?

By the time I was

in the Obama administration,

I had been working with high-level people

for 20 years,

and I felt a little more comfortable,

though, of course,

every new environment you go into,

there's a whole new vernacular,

a whole new set of assumptions.

I think a lot of times you think

the safest thing is not to speak up.

But I actually discovered that

that's not really the safest thing.

Trust your judgement,

because your judgement

is bringing something to the table.

Lamia is a participant who is

carrying quite a lot on her shoulders.

She's got a lot of responsibility at home,

she's got a lot of responsibility

to her family and to herself.

She also has big expectations of herself.

I think Lamia knows

that she can go really far.

She's not looking for a place

that's gonna see her as one in a hundred.

So when was the last time

we were here?

- Definitely several months ago.

- With our cousin, yeah.

So how has it been, like, so far?

How are you feeling about internships

and everything?

I don't know.

I'm a little nervous.

Us being both head of the household, like

You're head of the household,

but me helping you support the family

- Right, right.

It's been hard.

I'm tired of spreading myself thin

and working so many

Yesterday I worked from 4:00 to 9:00,

and in the morning, I had my other job.

- Oh, my God.

- So it's a lot. So I'm a little nervous.

I hope to be finally in a place

where I can be financially stable.

- Yeah.

- With one job,

- and have this career trajectory.

- Yeah.

I usually work from

5:00 to 10:00, or 4:00 to 9:00.

Then I come home

and have to finish my deliverables.

I'm not even sick, like, physically sick.

My body can't take this anymore.

I need to rest.

This is the final stretch.

I want to get somewhere

where I feel like I'm comfortable,

or like I have financial independence.

Aura. Aura, get your backpack.

This is your second time

around here.

What's two time's the charm been like?

Um, the first time,

I had a lot of family issues.

I had to leave so I can get a job.

It was a sales job.

But in the midst of it,

I realized that I can't continue.

I don't want to be 30

and not have a stable career for myself.

So, now it's a different ball game.

I have to finish it.

There's no option, there's no dropout.

I'll work through it

because there's no other option for me.

When your back's against the wall,

you've got only one direction to go.

And that power of broke propels people,

it motivates them.

It sends them to get out

and just do what you need to do

to get where you want to get.

Putting in the effort, that's grit.

And that grittiness

is incredibly important.

It's never a straight line.

There's no easy path.

My dad did upholstery on cars,

my mom did odd jobs.

Neither had gone to college,

didn't have a lot of money.

I started selling when I was 12 years old.

I was selling garbage bags door to door.

"Hi, my name is Mark.

Do you use garbage bags?"

I did whatever I had to do.

I didn't think I'd be in this situation.

I just wanted to get ahead.

I just wanted to be

where I could control my own destiny.

Everything is at stake.

This impacts generations.

Generations before, generations after.

These students now have the opportunity

to take their parents

and their families off of neighborhoods

and put them in homes.

This is past just a job for you.

This is past just opening the door.

If you are going down

in one direction,

and you have the opportunity

to make a hard turn,

to change the course of your life,

for you, it might just be a small turn,

but for the generations

that come behind you,

it's gonna be

a significantly different situation.

So continue to grow

through the process.

This is not mastery, again.

And what are interviews? A

- Conversation.

- Conversation. Just that.

You have meet-and-greet too.

Do not oversell yourself.

Don't look at your watch.

Be sure that

you're not restating your resume.

Don't brag. Remember humility.

Do not leave the interview without asking

for some form of communication from them.

Yeah? Coming through?

All right, let's practice.

Interviewing feels like

one of the most high-stakes environments

you can be in.

People make a decision in the first

30 seconds of the interview about you,

and then spend the rest of the interview

justifying the decision they've made.

- Hi. Lamia. It's nice to meet you.

- Hi.

Welcome to blah, blah, blah.

No, just say "Hey."

"Hey"? Very professional.

Do your homework. Be prepared.

Do some research on the company.

You need to be really thoughtful,

you need to prepare,

and then you need to present yourself

very professionally.

Hello, welcome to your interview.

- Hello. Zane Richards.

- Hi. Lamia. Nice to meet you.

At an interview, immediately

you're thinking about being judged.

Even before you get there, you're like,

"What do I wear? How does my hair look?

"What's on this resume that I have?"

"How am I gonna explain my experiences?"

"Will they like me?"

Will they think that it's enough?"

We psych ourselves out.

Hey, no need to be nervous.

I'll never forget the first time

I was with a career counselor,

and they had taped me in an interview.

And I thought I did a pretty good job,

and when they showed me the video back,

- you know, I kept saying, "Um."

- Um

- Um

- Um

When I was thinking,

my eyes would roll up.

I had no idea

that that was even happening.

Everyone has their strengths.

I may be stronger in a certain area,

I may be weaker in another one.

I suck at interviewing.

I mean,

I am the world's worst interviewer.

Yeah, I learned a long time ago

never let Mark interview.

Make sure that

the people that you're talking to,

they know that

you're really interested in that company.

One of the questions

I always ask people is, "Why GM?

Why are you interested in GM?"

And think about that,

because if he's just trying to get a job,

that's very different than

"I wanna work for this company

for these reasons."

And I've heard there's many opportunities

for growth in the company,

and that's what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for a company that's committed

to the development of their employees.

Most hiring managers,

what they really want to know

is they really want to know you.

They want to know you beyond the paper.

The technical part

is just a check in the box.

They're always going to get candidates

that have the skills already.

So you wanna think about

the things that make you different.

For example,

I've been playing the cello for 30 years.

And my first language is Spanish.

A lot of people wouldn't know that, right?

That's different.

Everything that you think is weird

about you is probably your superpower

and what you want to double down on.

Before I even start anything,

I first want to fully understand

what the program should do

and how it should run.

When I interview people,

I try to get to know them as people,

and understand what kind of leader

they're going to be,

how they're gonna inspire others,

if they're gonna help further our values

and culture of the company.

So I'm really focused on

"Who is this person?"

Thank you for your time.

Um, I really enjoyed

hearing about the company.

- I look forward to hearing back.

- Thank you.

Any questions for me?

Any questions for me?

No, thank you for having me.

- We'll keep in touch. Bye.

- Have a good day.

- It was really great to meet you, Zane.

- Thank you. You too.

- You'll be hearing from us soon.

- Thank you. Appreciate it.

Good morning, everyone.

Today, I'm going to be talking

a little bit about my developments.

I hope to show you

that I'm ready for internship and

My first role in our home office

after coming out of our stores

was as a buyer trainee,

and I was responsible for a big part

of our fishing tackle business.

I didn't know anything about fishing.

And my supervisor said,

"On Saturday, we've got a meeting,

and you need to show the company

that you've reduced the price on an item."

Good morning, everyone.

Well, that was Monday

and that was Saturday,

and I didn't have the first clue

of what to do.

Thank you so much for being here.

I'm very excited to learn,

um, continue to hone my skills

That Saturday morning, I got to stand up,

and with a shaky voice and a shaky hand,

tell Sam Walton about an item

that you spray on a hard lure

that's supposed to make the fish think

it's a live animal and strike the bait.

I'm assuming it'll probably be my journey,

um, post Year Up as well, so

After I described the lower price

and everything else,

Sam said, "That's all well and good, son,

but what makes you think fish can smell?"

To which I had no answer.

Everyone laughed,

and I just went and sat down.

- Can I ask a follow-up question?

- Yes.

You've got that anxiety inside

and you just have to overcome it.

Remembering to breathe,

remembering to listen.

Well, thank you for the question.

I think that's a very great question.

I still feel some of that today,

but I certainly felt it back then.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

That was a tough first week,

but we made it through.

I'm super stressed because, number one,

I don't know how I'm going to behave

on the first day.

By "behave," I mean, what do I wear?

What do I do? How do I talk?

How do I Who do I eat lunch with?

People?

- Yeah, I agree with you.

- Thank you, Andres.

Honestly, I was really scared at first,

and a bit sad because, you know,

we got so used to coming here

and meeting, you know, our friends,

and, you know, learning.

I actually had a really nice conversation

with Brianna.

She told me how

sometimes it's good to hold on to things,

but also you grow out of things.

And I feel like

this program has taught us a lot,

that it's time to grow out of it.

Okay, so,

interesting speech, right?

- Was his speech perfect?

- No.

It was pretty good.

It was good, but was it perfect?

If you notice,

he slightly stumbled over a word.

He caught himself, fixed it and moved on.

That's the art of public speaking.

After high school,

I couldn't go to college,

nor could I get a good-paying job.

So I started construction

that would pay me cash.

The very first day,

they had me carry up, like, 40 drywall.

It was so exhausting,

and at the end of the day,

I just felt like

I could do something more with this life.

I'm one of the lucky people

who finally found something

that they're good at and that they love.

And I just can't see myself doing

anything else besides programming.

It's all up to me.

It's not going to change

unless I want it to change.

So, that really drives me

to try and do the best that I can.

So now, to walk us through the full stack,

we have Bilal and Andres.

Public-speaking skills

are incredibly important skills.

And it's all about practice.

Say that speech ten times

in your basement, in your bathroom,

wherever you are.

Get comfortable with it.

People think public speakers were born.

Public speakers just practice.

Going into corporate America,

going into a job or a company,

you have to go into it

knowing that you can execute

and get what they want done,

because if you don't have that confidence,

the people within the company

who you need to work with

will see it quickly and make assumptions.

"He doesn't get it. Shouldn't work here,"

and then move on.

So we're gonna first start off with

what is full stack development.

It is basically

everything from front to the back end.

The front end consists of a webpage,

typically from HTML and CSS.

And then, you also have the back end

which would be

Think of it like

the machine of the application.

It's important to always have and

show and let people know you're confident

without being c*ck or overbearing.

It's very, very important to do that,

because you want, again,

the people at the company

to want to work with you.

Safety panels, fire safety panels,

I learnt how to wire up

surround sound systems.

I was like, "See, this is what

I'm going to use in my real life.

I'm gonna hook my living room up,"

you know?

I think you're a good conversationalist.

He goes into quiet spaces,

he makes people feel comfortable to speak.

- You think that about yourself?

- Yeah.

- I think very little of myself.

- No, you don't, Zane.

You have a lot of confidence.

No, I do

fake it.

No, I have confidence,

but there's some things

I'll still be like,

"Yeah, I could do better at this."

There's always room for improvement

for everything.

- Yeah.

- I think you are a good conversationalist.

He'll walk in, say,

"Good morning, everyone."

Who is this loud boy? Oh, it's Zane.

Like, you know? Who is this loud

Loud? I didn't know I was loud.

It's okay.

You have, I think, a commanding voice.

- Oh, thank you.

- Yeah. That's good.

- You bring people together.

- Really?

- There we go. Yeah, he does.

- I just have been able to do that here.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Well, good job.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

These softer skills,

also sometimes known as EQ,

I find to be just as important as IQ.

Being authentic,

being humble, being grounded.

Empathy is really important.

Caring for others.

You get this through experience.

You get this from engaging with others.

You get this from watching

what the best people do,

and you take the best of all that

and incorporate it

into your leadership style.

I'm in here most of

most of my time.

I needed to find something outside of MTA

that worked my brain,

that was challenging,

so that I can just, uh,

have something to do

instead of just waiting for

the next time I had to go into work.

What's good, y'all? It's your boy OneDay

back with another video.

I'm trying some new things out.

If this is your first time being here,

share, like

During the pandemic,

I was the only one working.

My wife was at home,

holding down the fort,

and I was the one

that was holding it down financially.

Now the roles have switched.

She goes like, "You did your time at MTA

and you were miserable.

"It's my turn now

to take care of things financially"

while you go out

and do what you need to do to be better."

I don't have children yet,

but I've been thinking about them

for years.

I did not want to have a baby

while working at MTA,

because of how tired I was all the time

and how I just was not happy.

Way happier now,

but the financial part

hasn't come back yet.

So, this is pretty much

phase one on our plan.

Be happy, get through this,

and then get the well-paying job

that, you know, children need.

Good morning.

- Zane.

- Nice to see you again. How are you doing?

Yeah, yeah, everybody's here.

- Good to see you.

- You too.

- Okay, we're ready when you are.

- All right.

Okay, good morning.

Um, my name is Zane Richards.

I'm a part of the IT track at Year Up.

The thought process used to be,

"I've never done this before.

"I don't think

I'm going to be able to do it,"

or I don't think

I'm going to be able to succeed."

With technical support,

troubleshooting skills

and communication skills go hand-in-hand.

My thought process now is,

"Okay, I'm going to try my best,

"and if I don't succeed,

I'm gonna learn from it,"

and then I'll be able to apply it later."

That's something that I understand

way more now.

Honestly, it was just

a whole bunch of numbers to me.

And it was like,

"I don't know how to make sense of this."

Giving yourself the space to fail,

that's a big deal.

And I remember hearing that from managers

as I was coming through the ranks.

And I didn't get it until later.

And I couldn't say that before,

five, six years ago.

I was still in a space where I felt like

if I felt a question was "stupid"

or "not smart," then I wouldn't ask it,

but now I'm a space where I don't care.

If I want the information,

I'm going to ask the question.

Unless you are willing to

take a bit of a risk,

it's hard for you

to get to the next level.

It's hard for you to learn anything.

You have to be able to risk

not being able to do it

to actually learn it.

I also have some feedback

I can share with you.

Okay. I love feedback.

To succeed in corporate America,

they're gonna have to be willing to fail,

to ask questions, to not know the answer,

and to be vulnerable.

I need to believe in myself first.

Like, I cannot expect anyone

to believe in me and my capabilities

and what I'm gonna do.

So if I do it first, and then

I did, so my family, everyone around me

was like, "Okay, you're doing this. Okay."

So, yeah.

Can I ask It's a little different

'cause I don't have kids yet,

so, when I'm planning my goals,

I'm just thinking about myself.

How is it different for you

that you do have a child?

That's a good question.

Literally everything that I do,

every decision that I make,

it is based on her future.

So, all of my goals is based on,

"When you get older,

you're gonna be good."

If I fail, I don't feel like

I'm just failing myself.

I'm failing everyone that believes in me.

And even though that's

a heavy burden to put on your shoulder,

but that's what keeps me motivated.

My mom and my daughter and my grandmother,

and that's who's in America.

But if you go into my family in Trinidad,

you have my cousins and my uncles

and my nieces and my nephews.

They're all rooting for us in America

to, like, try to be able to help them.

It helps me enunciate my words

a little better,

and loosen up my body,

or my mouth, if I'm too tight,

um, so that I'm ready to talk.

I feel like

the first five seconds someone sees you,

that's how they judge you,

and you need to present your best self.

- Good morning.

- Good morning.

We're ready when you are.

Hi, my name is Megan Sampson,

and this is one of my capstone projects

to end my Year Up session.

Um, mmm

Can I start over?

I got this.

I can do this. I got this. I can do this.

I can, I can, I can.

Hi, everyone.

- Good morning.

- Hi, good morning.

Focus is a big part of surviving.

There's focus on the task at hand,

there's focus on

what you're trying to accomplish,

and there's focus on where you wanna go.

And we have the output,

and we link it to the Java script

that has the data,

and that's how we output it

in the drop-down.

The more focused,

the more disciplined people

can actually sometimes go further than

the smart people or the talented

who lack that focus.

You have to focus on the task

every day.

What I got to do?

What's the job? How do I deliver?

But also, big picture:

Where do I wanna go?

What do I want this all to mean?

When you get that first job,

you're getting paid to learn.

And it doesn't matter

if you dropped out in tenth grade,

you graduated from high school,

you went to college,

you got a master's degree in whatever.

When you get that first job,

you get paid to learn.

And if you look at it that way,

as an opportunity

to educate yourself

about the business world,

about whatever it is you're doing,

then you'll start realizing that

that's the foundation to do other things.

At the end of a day,

companies need folks who can learn,

and who bring

a set of skills and competencies.

And the way work is structured today

is much more about teamwork.

It's about

the attitudes and behaviors you need,

it's about emotional intelligence,

it's about complex communications.

These are things you can actually assess.

You have to protect your dreams out here.

Not just from haters and negative energy

you gotta protect your dreams

from yourself.

When you're going on this journey,

there will be doubt.

As long as you are doing your best

every single day,

you will figure it out. Just don't quit.

American Express.

Morgan Stanley.

With $2.46 trillion

in assets under management

One of the oldest

financial firms in the world

Operating in

more than 130 countries

More than 60,000 employees.

Fortune 500 list

of the largest United States corporations

by total revenue.

American Express will be hosting

Jaiden Rodriguez!

Cadell Chapman.

Sumaiya Hossain.

JPMorganChase will be hosting

MD Miah.

Simge.

Sukaina Syed!

Tahara Begum.

Sophie Wu.

Congratulations.

From JPMC, there's one more.

Ruth Honore.

One very special intern

will be joining FINRA.

It is the largest independent regulator

of security firms in the United States.

FINRA will be hosting

Zane Richards.

I have the privilege of announcing

the interns

that will be going to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn will be hosting

eight interns.

Deysi De los Santos.

Monita Houssain.

Frank Bajana.

Karina Lopez.

Michael Lahens.

Cody Phelan.

Lamia Rahman.

And I have the pleasure

of announcing the interns

who will be going to Morgan Stanley.

First up, we have Charlie Riviera.

Anwar Alshohatee.

Andy Johnson.

Brianna Dyer.

Bilal Malik.

Pemba Sherpa.

Andres Paucar.

Okay! The interns

who will be joining Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson will be hosting

Abdul Warisa.

Aiyana Williams.

And Megan Sampson!

Congratulations.

On the train back home,

I actually shed out a tear, like a couple.

It was like, "Wow, I am really going

to Johnson & Johnson.

A company that I have been using

since I was a baby."

It's like a dream.

There was a time

where I was afraid of success or failure.

But now I'm more about the journey

and learning from it.

I wanna keep

the same willingness to learn,

that same curiosity,

enter into my internship with laser focus.

I'm excited for my daughter.

That's really why I was so emotional,

because to be able to look at her

and say like, "I'm really trying my best."

This is not just one or two people.

You're talking about

a significant percentage of your country

that can gain access to economic mobility

if we just change the way we think

and change the way we act.

The numbers

speak for themselves.

Skills-based hiring

and skills-based training

are an important part

of the country's economy,

and of the future.

And that takes work.

These are complex systems

and it didn't happen overnight.

We need to open horizons,

look at skills, train people.

You can have these strategic visions,

but at the end of the day,

jobs lead to dignity, lead to health,

lead to homes, lead to families.

It is a virtuous cycle.

In order for communities

to grow and thrive,

you have to be able to lift people up,

so that they can be participants.

That's the American dream, right?

We're all thriving.

We have to think about

people who live in rural communities.

We have to think about

people who live outside of urban centers.

We have talent

that is all over this country.

That results in us having

a more vibrant economy.

That results in

our country being more competitive.

And this is why skills are so important,

because when you reskill your workforce,

you're prepared

to take advantage of the good times,

but you're also prepared for any headwind

that may come at you as well.

Talent is what wins in the end.

Teams are what win in the end.

Skills are what deliver in the end.

In companies that find a way

to build diverse teams

with people who have the skills,

however they got them,

are companies who are going to win,

and are companies that should win.

When you actually allow people

to show what they can do,

they're gonna surprise you.

Then we've got a system that can work.

You know he asked me

if ham and pork were the same, right?

No, I didn't know ham was pork.

She said, um, "Guess how many photos

I have in my phone."

I said, "3,000."

She said, "No."

I said, "8,000." She said, "No."

I said, "12,000."

She said she has 25,000 photos.

They're not photos of me.

They're TikToks and things that I saved.

I don't wanna hear that.

Why do you have 25,000 items?

Let's see Do you wanna--

No, I don't wanna lose no more. No!

I can't do that one.

Most I can do is this. I'll be like

- You ready?

- I'm ready.

All right.

Now you better do that.

You better be like

- Hey, wait, what are we doing?

- We have to build a tower.

Wait, are you from Brooklyn?

- Are you from Brooklyn?

- Yeah.

I said it real Brooklyn-y?

Yeah.