For employers
Defined turns your company's careers, projects and skills into standards-aligned lessons that teachers use in everyday math, science, English and social studies, not only in CTE. Students learn what your industry does and what it takes to work in it, years before they make career decisions.
Why start in school
Students can only aim for careers they know exist. For most of them, that list comes from family and TV, and it rarely includes the biggest employers in their own county. Showing them your work early is a long-term investment in the region's workforce.
<1%
of children said they heard about the job they wanted from someone from the world of work visiting their school.
Drawing the Future, Education and Employers (2018), 20,000+ children7 = 17
The jobs 7-year-olds say they want mirror the jobs 17-year-olds choose. Career aspirations form early.
Drawing the Future, Education and Employers (2018)86%
less likely to be out of work, education or training at 19–24 for young adults who recalled four employer activities at school, compared with none.
Contemporary Transitions, Education and Employers (2017)What you get
Defined's instructional designers build standards-aligned projects around problems your people actually solve. Teachers use them in the math, science, English and social studies classes students are already required to take.
Students learn about your company, your industry and your roles from elementary school on, while their sense of what they could do is still taking shape.
The technical and durable skills you name for each role become what the projects build and assess, so students practice against your standard rather than a generic one.
Students study your actual roles, then practice with simulated applications and interviews and build resumes aimed at the work you do. It's all practice, and nothing is sent to you.
What it asks of you
Most of your team's time goes into two interviews. Defined handles the instructional design, filming and classroom rollout, and nothing goes live until you've signed off.
The skills gap
In Ohio@Work, every project builds and assesses durable skills, including communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving and professionalism, alongside its academic standard, so students practice them for years instead of in a single workshop.
76%
of US job postings over two years asked for at least one durable skill, such as communication, collaboration or problem solving.
Lightcast & America Succeeds, Durable by Design (2025)8 of 10
of the most requested skills in US job postings are durable skills, not technical ones.
Lightcast & America Succeeds, Durable by Design (2025)Get started
We'll talk through which careers and projects to feature, which subjects and grade levels they fit, and whether there's already a chamber or workforce program in your region you can join.
Leading a chamber, workforce board or employer coalition? See the regional model.