Team NEO Brought the Evidence. Here's Where I'd Push Harder.

We keep calling it a talent shortage. I think that’s the wrong name for it.

Students are not short on interest. They’re short on access: a door they can actually walk through, an adult on the other side willing to teach them, and an employer who has figured out how to say yes without drowning in paperwork. That’s not a motivation problem. It’s an engagement problem, and most of it sits on our side of the counter.

Team NEO just released its 2026 Aligning Opportunities report, the 10th anniversary edition of a series that started in 2017. In their opening letter, CEO Matt Dolan and Michael Loeffler of Delta Dental of Ohio tie the region’s future to the strength of its talent pipeline and say the emphasis now has to move from insights to impact. I agree. So rather than summarize the report, I want to take a few of its biggest points and say where I land on each one.

Point 1: The talent challenge is structural, not cyclical

Team NEO’s read is that demographics, population trends, and labor force participation mean the talent problem sticks around even when the economy is strong. Their supply and demand analysis adds a hard detail: demand for entry level roles has dropped 84 percent since 2022.

Here’s where I agree, and where I’d push further.

If the problem is structural, then waiting for the cycle to fix it is a strategy for losing. No good quarter is coming to rescue your hiring plan.

That 84 percent number is the part that should bother every owner I talk to. We say we can’t find people with experience, and in the same breath we’ve cut the first jobs where experience used to come from. That’s a trap we built. You cannot starve the entry level path and then act surprised when nobody walks out of it qualified.

The only durable answer I know is to build people inside your business. Not poach them. Not wait for them. Build them, starting with someone who has never done the work before.

Point 2: Engagement has to start earlier

The report notes that career awareness and pathways are increasingly starting in middle and high school, not after graduation. The old system asked students to pick a career at the end of 12th grade, and that question is moving earlier.

Here’s what I’d add.

Earlier only helps if it’s real. A career fair is not engagement. A guest speaker is not engagement. A tour of the shop floor is a nice afternoon. Those things create awareness, and awareness is fine, but it’s not the same as knowing.

You cannot fall in love with a path you’ve never touched. Students figure out what they want by doing paid work, being trusted with something that matters, and having someone tell them honestly how they did. That’s when a student goes from “maybe” to “this is mine.” Or, just as valuable, from “maybe” to “definitely not,” before they spend two years and a lot of tuition finding out.

So yes, start earlier. But measure it by how many students got real work, not how many shook hands at a booth.

Point 3: Employers have to be directly engaged

Team NEO says workforce alignment works best when employers actively shape pathways, internships, and career exposure. The report backs that up with PNC’s PartnerUp program in Cleveland, which has celebrated more than 600 graduates since 2021, assigns a program manager who stays with each student through their first day on the job, and counts among its alumni a John Marshall graduate who went full time at PNC, earned two promotions, and bought her first home. As PNC’s Antonyea Ellis put it, that kind of shift “doesn’t happen by accident.”

Here’s the part that still gets missed.

PartnerUp is great. It’s also built by a bank with an early career recruiting team, program staff, and the HR depth to carry it. Most employers don’t have that.

Most employers I talk to already agree with every word of this report. They want to hire students. Then they look at what it takes, and the yes turns into a maybe, and the maybe turns into next year.

It’s rarely the student that stops them. It’s everything stapled to the student. Payroll for someone who might only be there a semester. HR setup and onboarding for a short engagement. Workers’ comp exposure. Rules for workers under 18 that vary by state and that nobody has time to research. A fear of liability that’s hard to name and very easy to feel.

For a big employer, those are line items. For a 40 person manufacturer, a dental practice, or a family owned shop, they’re the whole reason the door stays shut. Telling those employers to “engage” without removing that friction is asking them to build a PartnerUp on their own. Most can’t, and they shouldn’t have to.

Point 4: Intermediaries are essential

The report says organizations that connect employers with schools and training providers reduce friction and make partnerships scalable.

Here’s where I agree completely, because this is literally why InternCrew exists.

To be clear, we’re not Team NEO, and we’re not PartnerUp. The report names the problem and shows a model that works. InternCrew is the practical layer that lets employers without an early career team act on it.

We serve as the employer of record for students and young adults. We handle six things: sourcing, screening, onboarding, payroll, HR, and workers’ comp. Students are W-2 employees on our payroll doing real paid work at your business. Not shadowing. Not coffee runs. Real work.

Your job is the part only you can do: teach the craft. Show a student how the work actually gets done, why it matters, and what good looks like. We carry the risk and the administrative load so your people spend their time mentoring instead of filing.

That’s what “reduce friction” means in practice. And it’s what “scalable” means too, because the hard parts get handled the same way for the tenth employer as the first.

Point 5: The next decade has to be about action

Team NEO closes its 10 year reflection by saying the first decade built understanding and the next one has to bend the curve.

Here’s what I’d sharpen.

Action is a word that’s easy to agree with in a conference room. For a regional strategy, it means systems, funding, and partnerships. For an individual employer, it means something much smaller and much harder: a decision.

One student. This semester. One real job and one person on your team willing to teach. Not a pilot committee. Not a plan to revisit in the spring.

If every employer who nodded along to this report said yes to a single student, the entry level gap would look very different a year from now. The evidence is in. The pathways are being built. What’s missing is the employer yes.

That’s what InternCrew helps employers do. We handle the sourcing, screening, onboarding, payroll, HR, and workers’ comp so you can put a student to work this semester and start building the people your business will need next. Let’s talk.

Ready to say yes to your first student hire? Book time with Corey

Source: Team NEO, 2026 Aligning Opportunities, sponsored in part by Delta Dental of Ohio. Full report and appendix available at teamneo.org.