Mankato Job Fair, Youth Development, Gamification, and Regional Planning

Greater Mankato Growth is again partnering with Radio Mankato on a Job Fair on April 22nd. I encourage your organization to sign up. I’ve also included some more opportunities to engage with middle and high schoolers as well as an interesting article about gamification from the Harvard Business Review . Finally, I invite your organizations to participate in the next iteration of Regional Planning, with planning work occurring throughout this year.

Mankato Job Fair – April 22

Greater Mankato Growth is partnering with Radio Mankato on another job fair. This spring fair will take place on April 22 from 9-1 at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center . This fair sees 50-70 employers participating and has seen 150-250+ attendees historically.

?With 1600 individuals entering the labor force according to preliminary January numbers, unemployment is the highest it’s been since the first job fair we hosted meaning we expect another strong turnout.

?Businesses seeking to participate can head to MankatoJobFair.com, or contact Brett Prescher .

Two Youth/Talent Development Opportunities with Mankato Area Public Schools

Mankato Area Public Schools is again looking for volunteers to conduct Mock Interviews with students. This is a great opportunity to help students understand what transferable skills they have and how they can best share those in an interview. There are opportunities on April 26th, May 16th, and May 19th at Mankato East, Central, and West respectively. The afternoon timeslots are two hours (hours available in the link below) but you may note if you are only available for a partial time block.

Mock Interview Volunteer Sign-Up Form (google.com)

MAPS is also hosting 8th grade career days where they are asking for presenters to share a 20-minute interactive presentation about their careers with 8th graders. Presenters will be paired in groups of two and will present to 4 different groups of students. The presentations are from 8:30-12:30 on Monday, May 22nd and Wednesday, May 31st. A flyer with more information and a link to sign up can be found here: 8th Grade Career Day Presenter FLYER 2023 - Google Docs

Exploring Gamification in 2023

Much of the buzz regarding gamification as a training tool appears to have died down since its burst of popularity in 2010. A recent Harvard Business Review article, “Does Gamified Training Get Results?”, highlighted a gamified training tool put in place by the professional services firm KPMG . The tool was designed as a way to ensure that students were engaged with the training topics rather than advancing through slides with the sole goal of finishing the training.

In participating offices, KPGM saw an increased fee collection of 25%, a 16% increase to the number of clients, and a 22% increase to new opportunities with existing clients. KPGM reported that only 1 in 10,000 users became compulsive users whose amount of time spent in the tool had to be addressed.

A couple recommendations the article provides regarding how to appropriately implement gamification are:

1. Make sure the experience is fun and collect data on people’s use.
2. Emphasize that this is a time efficient way of training and is an appropriate use of worktime. Despite this being a training tool, because it is gamified, employees may not feel permitted to do this training during work hours if it isn’t modeled by their leadership.

More information about the impact of this program can be found in this “Playing for Success” pdf published by KPMG.

Note, if a local business is using gamification for any processes now and would be interested in sharing the successes or challenges related to that, please contact me.

Regional Planning – Greater Mankato 2040 – Transforming Tomorrow Together

Many of the strategies I share are either short-term recruitment/retention initiatives or longer-term talent development initiatives. One of the most important elements to long-term talent availability is the overall regional plan. We are beginning the regional planning initiative and hope that your organizations can participate in creating that plan. The first way to get involved is to take the survey linked from the website and register for the Think Tank events taking place on April 14th and 28th. More information is available at the project website:

Greater Mankato 2040 - Future iQ Lab (future-iq.com)

We are thinking regional with this, so I encourage you to share this opportunity with your colleagues, clients, vendors, and partners within a 60 mile radius as we look at the positioning of this region in a national and global context.