Golden Path Newsletter – January 2025

by | Jan 2, 2025 | Blog, News | 0 comments

2024 in photos

Hello! We hope you had a fantastic holiday season and are ready to go for 2025! Our team members enjoyed some downtime with family and friends, but we are excited to keep things moving forward with Golden Path Solutions and the work that we do with all of you.

Before we highlight what’s to come, here’s a recap of what happened during our very busy and exciting 2024:

  • We now have more than 17,000 students across North Dakota and Minnesota using Compass to understand their skills, connect with employers, apply for work-based learning, and plan for the future.
  • We have more than 500 employers using Compass which is almost 40 percent growth from this time last year. We’re excited to keep onboarding employers and connecting them with students.
  • We launched new functionality to help communities like Watford City share their local opportunities through Compass. We also introduced colleges like NDSCS, NDSU, BSC, Mayville and Northland into Compass with the goal of highlighting their relationships with employers for post-secondary education and tuition reimbursement opportunities.
  • More than 300 school professionals received training in Compass in just the second half of 2024, with more than 500 trained throughout the year.
  • We released new functionality to help manage work-based learning, including managing electronic documents, time entry and approval, student reflection functionality, and a variety of other new features.
  • The Compass mobile app launched, giving students an easier way of keeping up with opportunities and receiving notifications.
  • We introduced new pricing for employers to allow for a lower point of entry and provide different options for employers who want to participate. Our variety of services includes helping students and schools understand what employers do,  connecting employers directly with students, and creating a personalized strategy to best reach students through Career Profiles, work-based learning, and more.
  • We received the endorsement from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction for Compass to be used as the Four-Year Rolling Plan. Compass will help drive consistency across the state in terms of how students indicate future plans. To support this plan, we released new features to allow schools to manage their own course list more effectively.
  • We presented at two national conferences with NDCTE and XAP: ACTE’s CareerTech VISION in San Antonio, TX, and ACTE’s Work-Based Learning Conference 2024 in Milwaukee, WI.

It’s been a wonderful year and would not have been possible without your partnership. We’re so grateful for the work you all do and for letting us be part of it.

Let’s look at what’s ahead in 2025:

New features released in Compass

We are always seeking ways for Compass to work better for all of our audiences and making improvements based on the feedback we receive. Our January release just deployed with numerous exciting features, including the following:

  • A new and improved home screen, replicating a dashboard experience, for our school administrators outside of North Dakota
  • New Compass and career lesson plans and activity maps available to school professionals that can drive usage and help incorporate employer career information directly into a school’s curriculum
  • Accommodating our new employer membership levels within Compass, with the ability to adjust membership level. Templates and other resources are also available now directly in Compass.
  • Sharing Career Profiles not only with students, but now with all school professionals, including teachers, counselors, work-based learning coordinators, and more
  • Allowing colleges to promote their programs in Compass, view their information, and see associated employer partners without requiring an individual to log into Compass

Watch for these features in upcoming releases:

  • Enhanced reporting for work-based learning coordinators and school administrators around student usage, profile completion, and Choice Ready reporting in North Dakota
  • Providing more visibility to our college administrators of Compass users who want to learn more about their programs
  • Improved home screens for the student, including highlighting suggested careers, activities they should complete, and also “surprise me!” functionality to help students understand careers they may not know about.
  • Enabling schools to publish events to employers and accept registrations for career fairs, guest speaking opportunities, and more
  • Sharing employer information with different school systems to expand employer reach and add value to schools that might have a system in place but would benefit from Compass employer data
  • Leveraging AI to create Career Profiles and drive matches between students and careers

We look forward to seeing Compass evolve as we add more value for our audiences throughout the year.

New pricing for both employers and schools

We recently launched new employer pricing to add value to employers and give them more options depending on what they want to do. We now have various membership levels:

  • Awareness Membership to support a company wanting to bring their company and careers to students
  • Connections Membership to help connect employers directly to students who have opted into a search process
  • Premium or Partnership Memberships for employers who want to create a future talent pipeline by building a regional or even statewide strategy to reach students and schools

Of course, we still have free options for employers, including the Employer Connections Database for connecting with school professionals and offering work-based learning experiences in Compass. Employer-written Career Profiles are also now free. Employers can share as many as they want using our templates and guidance or they can have Golden Path write them for a small fee.  If you are an existing Compass employer, we’ll be reaching out to you with more information. If you’re renewing soon, we’ll work with you on your best option.

For schools outside of North Dakota, we are now offering components of Compass at no cost. School professionals can access the Employer Connections Database and view employer work-based learning opportunities. For a small annual fee, schools can enable work-based management features to help track applications, evaluations, agreements, time entries, and reflections. The full version of Compass is still available for purchase for broad school rollouts. Reach out to us for more information!

Recent meeting with the North Dakota ESSA Implementation Committee

Golden Path presented our progress with the North Dakota Four-Year Rolling Plan at the Every Student Success Act (ESSA) Implementation Committee Q4 meeting. We highlighted student adoption, training, and feedback. We also discussed the course we are creating for school professionals on how to use Compass for the Four-Year Rolling Plan.

See the DPI newsletter for more information about the committee meeting. Read a recent blog post for school and student resources to manage the Four-Year Rolling Plan in Compass.

Upcoming events to connect with students

There are numerous upcoming events where employers can connect with high school and college students. Minnesota State Community and Technical College (MState) in Moorhead is hosting mock interviews on campus for current students on these dates: Jan. 23 for construction management, Jan. 29 for graphic design, Feb. 21 for dental assisting, and April 1 for practical nursing. College students will be building their career skills at the North Dakota DECA Collegiate State Career Development Conference Feb. 13-14 in Fargo. Later this year, the Herdina Construction Trades Camps June 2-6 and 9-13 at MState in Moorhead bring together employers in the trades with students ages 15-20 who are interested in construction careers. For more opportunities, see the list of important dates below.

Share your events with us

Be sure to add your events to our new events calendar. Please submit your events to events@goldenpath.net. Watch future communications for when and where the events calendar will be available.

Important dates

Connect with us

Keep up with the latest opportunities and information here:

More information

Contact Patrick for more information or to connect about opportunities with Golden Path Solutions.