Turn employer relationships into quality work-based learning opportunities
Deeper Levels helps colleges, workforce boards, and economic-development organizations build employer-led systems for engaging businesses, preparing learners, creating placements, and measuring workforce outcomes.
Our work-based learning (WBL) experiences are grounded in entrepreneurial skills: preparing learners to recognize opportunities, solve problems, create value, and act with initiative.
work-based learning starts with employer value
Many institutions are working to expand internships, projects, apprenticeships, and other career-connected experiences.
But a larger contact list does not automatically produce quality placements.
A quality work-based learning opportunity is connected to a real business need, has clear learner expectations and support, creates value for the employer, and generates outcomes the institution can measure.
Deeper Levels helps build that system.
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Build a repeatable employer-engagement and placement system that helps learners contribute in real workplace settings—and strengthens career outcomes.
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Translate workforce investments into employer-connected experiences that strengthen talent pipelines, participant outcomes, and regional workforce capacity.
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Help growing businesses access emerging talent while building the workforce infrastructure that supports business growth and economic mobility.
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Identify businesses with real talent or operational needs, assess their readiness to engage, and create a clear value proposition for participation.
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Translate business needs and learner capabilities into structured internships, projects, paid work experiences, and other WBL opportunities with clear expectations and support.
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Equip your team with the processes, tools, training, and measurement practices needed to operate, improve, and scale the model over time.
build the infrastructure behind better work-based learning
Strong WBL programs are not built by one office acting alone. They require an institutional system that connects employer engagement, learner preparation, placement operations, cross-functional coordination, and continuous improvement.
Deeper Levels helps institutions strengthen five critical capabilities:
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The Employer Partnership Toolkit establishes clear approach for identifying, understanding, and engaging employers around real workforce needs.
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The Student Work-Readiness Curriculum prepare learners to recognize opportunities, solve problems, communicate effectively, build productive relationships, and create value in the workplace.
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The Placement Operations Toolkit creates clear workflows for opportunity development, matching, onboarding, support, completion, and employer re-engagement.
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Cross-Functional Implementation Workshops clarify roles and strengthen coordination across workforce development, career services, academic programs, employer partnerships, student support, and institutional research.
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The WBL Measurement Dashboard makes it easy to track the outcomes that matter—from employer participation and student readiness to placement quality, employer satisfaction, hiring, and continued participation.
Built at the intersection of entrepreneurship, learning, and measurement.
Deeper Levels is led by Dr. Malcolm Muhammad, a researcher, educator, and practitioner focused on developing entrepreneurial thinkers and measuring how people and programs create value.
An Assistant Professor with Georgia State University’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Institute and former Vice President of Data & Research at the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, Dr. Muhammad brings experience across entrepreneurship education, program design, workforce development, research, and assessment.
His work has trained hundreds of students and entrepreneurs, involved research with thousands of entrepreneurs, and supported partnerships with universities, entrepreneur-support organizations, corporations, and community-based organizations.
At Deeper Levels, that experience is applied to helping institutions build employer-led work-based learning systems that prepare learners to contribute, create value for employers, and produce measurable workforce outcomes.
selected organizations and institutions
Build a stronger path from employers to opportunity
If your organization is working to expand work-based learning, strengthen employer participation, or generate more quality workforce placements, let's talk about what you are building.