Every summer, Ontario County Workforce Development (WFD) hires approximately 75 youth through their Summer Employment Program and we were thrilled to be a worksite for one of those youth this year! Ontario County WFD took into consideration our goal of hosting a youth to help us expand our social media outreach and recommended that we interview Ashleigh.
Ashleigh will be a senior at P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) this year and has been studying graphic and web design. She also runs her own YouTube page and was familiar with all the social media platforms we wanted to know more about. She spent her first weeks with us researching social media – which platforms to use, which demographics to target, what marketing strategies to use – and helped us implement best practices including launching a “Finger Lakes Youth” Twitter page! She also helped us create and update graphics we use for our annual career events, including the new logo she’s pictured with for our “Where Your Food Comes From” event, which focuses on careers in food production and technology. In addition to her technical skills, she showed great soft skills by arriving on time each day and focusing on her work. To help Ashleigh with career exploration, we visited FingerLakes1 and Finger Lakes Radio Group to learn more about careers in web/graphic design. It was a great experience for both of us as we learned how much local demand there is for these fields!
We hope Ashleigh enjoyed her time with us as much as we did and wish her the best with her senior year! We look forward to being a worksite again next summer and with any luck, have Ashleigh join us again to show us the new skills she’s learned!