Back To School. Back To Work.

When opportunity knocks, Raj Subramanian opens the door.

Subramanian, business development manager at Associated Credit Union ($2.1B, Norcross, GA), is always on the lookout for new growth ideas. At a recent meeting of community leaders, business owners, and local educators, a high school principal approached Subramanian and suggested students at Marietta High School could benefit from a career-pathing opportunity. Subramanian agreed, viewing it as a way to expose students to the world of financial services and to earn some much-needed income to support college or career.

“Our program, to my knowledge, is different from any other program in the country,” Subramanian says. “Many of the students at Marietta High School fall into the underprivileged category and do not have access to transportation. We call that ‘talent without transportation.’ So, we established a training branch in the school.”

The training branch is a real branch; however, it offers limited services and transaction amounts to mitigate both complexity and security risk. That means students can finish their classes at midday, go to the training room — a private workspace located in the College and Career Academy at Marietta High School — where they serve members for three hours as a teller or member services representative, and still get home in time to complete their homework assignments, with ACU covering the cost of transportation home at the end of the day.

To create an authentic work environment within the school, multiple departments from across the credit union collaborated to build training workstations that mirror those in Associated’s e-branch department.

“We use backdrops that face no windows,” says Heiwote Tadesse, executive vice president of member relations at ACU. “To the member, they have the same experience as if they came in-person to a physical location using an interactive teller machine (ITM).”

New Hire Training

To identify promising students, ACU representatives interview participants and also seek the advice of the high school’s career counselor. After selecting participants for the current year’s program, ACU brought them to the corporate branch during summer break to train the new hires.

Working in the corporate office acquainted the students with all the roles within a financial institution. That experience alone expanded their horizons, knowing they could go to college and study marketing, cybersecurity, PR, and human relations among other fields. And when they return from college, they’ll always have a place at ACU.

“One of the opportunities we offer students in the program is to return during their college breaks and continue their employment as interns with us,” Tadesse says.

Surprises And Advice

Both Subramanian and Tadesse were surprised to learn how many people they needed to pull into what they initially thought was a straightforward project. The duo also was surprised by the, at times, stop-and-go nature of the project.

“In the beginning, we sometimes had to stop what we were doing to accommodate the students,” Tadesse recalls.

The program offers a real wage to participants, making it a true career pathway. What’s more, when speaking with students graduating from the program, ACU learned many of them would have been working two jobs — neither in fields they cared to pursue as a career — without this opportunity.

During a panel discussion at a large conference, Tadesse recently shared with other banks and credit unions that this type of program is a great way to give back to the communities they support.

“These are our future leaders of the United States, not just of financial institutions,” she said. “When people think about credit unions, they typically think about savings and checking, but the entire industry is about helping people. The students who work for us learn there are many roles they can pursue in other industries.”

Tadesses’s advice is to give young people a chance to learn about the financial services business because — regardless of what they focus on in college — they’ll always have a potential career with a credit union.

Future Plans

ACU plans to continue the student workforce program and expand its reach beyond Marietta to other counties and cities, according to Tadesse.

That’s a big move, but Subramanian says the success of the initiative revolves around ACU’s love for community.

“Every time I’ve gone to my executive team for support for a community-based initiative, I’ve received it,” he says. “There’s been nothing but 100% support to help the kids be successful.”

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— This originally appeared on Aug. 29, 2023, on CreditUnions.com.