Enrollment at the nation’s public two-year colleges surged this fall by a healthy 4.4%, according to the latest report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That’s good news for employers who are scrambling to recruit new employees. The nation’s technical and community colleges are a tremendous – but too often overlooked – source of skilled talent.

Community colleges can drive local and regional prosperity because they often serve as the connective tissue of a region’s workforce development ecosystem that bind students, local governments, and nonprofits.

These two-year institutions are educating non-traditional students who are far more likely than those attending four-year institutions to be older, be the first in their families to attend college, and come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. All the while, these institutions typically receive significantly less funding than four-year universities.

Some of the savviest corporate leaders understand that community colleges sit at the intersection of education and workforce development, but they have not yet fully maximized the possibilities that this talent pool offers.

To produce the talent our country needs, community colleges need additional support, and large organizations and corporations are well positioned to help. By forming reciprocal relationships with community colleges and their students, companies can gain access to new, deeper and more diverse pools of corporate talent that can directly help their bottom line.

Employers should continue to value college credentials. What students learn in college still holds enormous value in the workforce and bestows a significant earnings premium.But by partnering with community colleges — which are accustomed to working with corporate partners to meet their employment and training needs — employers can help ensure that the skills and knowledge students are learning can lead to a credential valued in the job market.

Corporate support can start with mentorship. What community college students need to thrive is career and professional guidance. An outstanding source for both are mid-career professionals who have already started to climb the career and economic ladder.

Company employees know the professional and personal skills required to succeed in their organization, in their industry and in any corporate setting. As mentors, they can answer questions, provide encouragement and steer students in the right direction as they progress through college into a career. For corporate employees, mentoring students is a terrific volunteer opportunity and a great way for them and their employers to demonstrate their support for their local communities. 

Mentorship is a key component of professional development, which is a piece of the impactful and research-backed student success model that One Million Degrees has deployed to build a better future for community college students, their families and the places they call home. We know mentorship works: 86% of CEOs say mentoring has been critical to their career success.

Deloitte, like other large organizations, invests heavily in mentorship and other programs to enable equitable access to opportunities for advancement. Existing mentorship programs can be adapted easily to the needs of community college students.  

This type of support can generate what we call a student success dividend. When community college students receive professional guidance from mentors along with academic, financial, and personal support, they are more likely to persist in their studies and graduate. That pays dividends for institutions through larger enrollment, and for communities, which benefit from the economic prosperity that results from having more educated residents.

As a growing number of employers reconsider traditional degree requirements for potential hires, community colleges become a logical place to scout out talent. At least 16 states have removed four-year degree requirements for some government jobs. In the private sector, nearly 20% of all job postings at LinkedIn no longer require a four-year degree – up from 15% just two years earlier.

According to a recent Deloitte report, skills-based hiring is a low-cost, high-impact practice aligned with the future of work. In a recent survey, four out of five employers agreed that organizations should base their hiring and promotion decisions not on degrees but on skills – an approach that can expand their talent pools in some instances by a factor of 10.

Lastly, employers should create work-based learning opportunities that meet the needs of community college students. Whether it’s through apprenticeships, structured internships, learn-and-earn programs, job shadowing or some other initiative, work-based learning opportunities can help learners gain skills and first-hand experience while greatly expanding the idea of what’s possible for learners from under-resourced areas who have no easy access to corporate or professional employment. For employers, these programs help cultivate talent and economic opportunity in the communities and regions where they do business. 

Companies – and the communities where they are located – have much to gain if employers understand the routes that non-traditional learners must travel and can guide these students toward success in a corporate environment. Employers who align themselves with community colleges and their students can satisfy their own talent needs, increase economic opportunities in their region, and improve both the corporate and community bottom lines.

Roy Mathew is a Principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP and Aneesh Sohoni is CEO of One Million Degrees