Virginia Case Study: Practicing What We Preach
How Virginia Works + Virginia’s Department of Human Resource Management partnered to scale skills-based talent practices across state government.
Virginia did not start with apprenticeships or job fairs. It started by changing how state government thinks about talent. This case study shows how two agencies turned a policy mandate into hiring practices that agencies could actually adopt.
See how Virginia:
- Translated a governor's executive order into operational hiring practice across state agencies
- Used registered apprenticeship as a practical, scalable model agencies could replicate
- Modeled skills-based practices internally before asking other agencies to adopt them
- Reframed the message from social good to business value, which changed how leaders engaged
The results
- 15,100 active apprenticeships supported by the Commonwealth, a 42% increase in three years
- 82,000 STARs applications in FY 24-25
- 175,000 reach for the Career Connections monthly newsletter
- $6.8M in additional tax revenue from apprenticeship programs, a 3-to-1 return
Read the Case Study
If you lead hiring or workforce strategy in the public sector, this case study gives you a model you can adapt.