Develop with us...

At CILI, we invest significant resources in each of the students we work with across our various programs. It is a 100% free program for students. Our objective is to DEVELOP a professional mindset and confidence in our students, who typically do not have professional role models.

We DO NOT pay students to participate in our programs, we take pride in knowing the students we work with are personally driven to improve themselves and has asked CILI to help them achieve their professional aspirations. Our students are freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors who recognize the need to prepare for the next phase of their lives.

Students receive extensive training through curricula from partners or developed by our team of human resource professionals, who have extensive years of experience developing emerging and future leaders. We partner with Louisiana Economic Development Campus 2 Career, IBM Skills Build, LinkedIn Learning, Predictive Index, Microsoft Office Suite, and work to develop our students based on NACE Career Competencies.

Beyond this training, we also support students with other resources such as travel stipends, support for professional attire, and ongoing professional development through coaching, mentoring and curating experiences with professional organizations.

In our experience, supporting each student in this way is expensive, but it is worth it according to recent article in Better Help. Our students have stated, our classroom and coaching investment in students helps them overcome extensive, real, and perceived systemic barriers.

We ask partners to join us to invest in this work long-term to engage with and recruit students. When we have a partner in mind, while on campus or in a classroom, we can begin sharing experiences students have had with the partner in the past to recruit future candidates.

Transform through meaningful experiences...

As a part of our professional development investment, we ask partner firms to hire summer interns and part-time co-op (when applicable). Our model recognizes the unique circumstances of diverse students from underprivileged backgrounds. Our objective is to TRANSFORM the students into highly engaged and high performing employees and future leaders, far beyond their understanding and belief.

We have learned how transformational it is for a college student to begin consistently earning money using their newly acquired professional developed skills.

We only engage with partners for PAID internships or part-time co-ops. First generation and Pell eligible students cannot afford to choose between a paid job vs. unpaid professional development experience.

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• CILI asks Partners to have a defined but fluid work plan of action for each student to ensure ample opportunities to expose and develop their to meaningful and high value work of a job within the organization. Fluid enough to take advantage of development opportunities, challenging enough to stretch the student and create working knowledge.
• Partners can reserve internship placements for CILI students, understanding that traditional recruitment processes often exclude diverse talent unintentionally.
• Partners can agree to have CILI students assigned to them in a placement model, trusting that the CILI staff will find ideal alignment between firms’ job descriptions and students’ skills.
• Partners may provide company assigned mentors for CILI students.
• CILI students may have an assigned coach and mentor. When a CILI Coach is assigned, the Coach will be named at the beginning of the internship partnership.
• Partners are to cover all travel and housing costs for CILI interns when applicable.
• CILI students will agree to terms of the Partner’s predetermined internship experience; minimum of 6-week up to 12-week. If the Partner does not have a specific internship program, CILI Staff and Coach will with a Partner designate to define the internship term.
• CILI asks Partners to allow our students to attend scheduled meetings with the CILI team to continue their professional development as needed. The CILI dates will be communicated in advance to allow for planning on both sides.
• Partners can take interns onto their payroll or another third party payroll service.
• We asked partners to pay a minimum $15/hour for any internship opportunity.
• CILI asks Partners to complete a feedback survey on each student hosted. The feedback survey is a part of our professional development process.

Through meaningful Paid work and professional development experiences we seek to TRANSFORM and build confidence.