Executive Education for a Changing Workforce

• The ProPulse team at emlyon met with hundreds of organizations to uncover current workforce needs and skills shortages, and then it designed new programs for specific roles.
• Partner companies supplied job descriptions, specified available openings, co-created program content, acted as guest speakers, and provided mentors to students.
• ProPulse had close to 300 applicants for the first two programs. Thirty-two participants were selected, and all had jobs ready for them upon completion.

 
As public funding for higher education continues to decline and the sector faces increasing pressure to adapt, business schools are being challenged to rethink both their economic and educational models. Financial sustainability increasingly depends on developing new revenue streams through partnerships, innovative programs, new market segments, and alternative modes of delivery.

At the same time, employers are facing urgent and widening skills gaps, according to reports from the World Economic Forum and the OECD. These gaps are driven by rapid technological change—particularly in artificial intelligence, automation, and digital tools—as well as demographic shifts.

As these trends reshape labor markets, business schools must rethink not only what they teach, but also whom they serve. One approach is for schools to partner with companies so they can create programs that benefit both employers and new learner populations. More specifically, if schools offer nondegree extension programs that focus on practical education, they can reposition themselves as orchestrators of workforce transformation, operating at the intersection of education, employment, and economic ecosystems.

It is within this context that emlyon business school in France launched ProPulse, an extension programs platform focused on employability and lifelong learning. It was designed to address workforce shortages, particularly in emerging occupations, and to reach traditionally underserved learner populations, including job seekers, operational employees, and professionals undergoing career transitions.

ProPulse acts as a talent integration platform connecting companies, public employment services, training partners, and learners around shared workforce challenges. Individuals are recruited as learners, but also as future employees for jobs that already have been specified by collaborating organizations.

An Agile, Experimental Team

To develop ProPulse’s operating model and portfolio of programs, emlyon created a small, agile, autonomous, and multifunctional team that operated almost as an internal startup. During its first year, the team met with more than 250 organizations to learn more about recruitment tensions, emerging occupations, and skills shortages.

ProPulse also built on emlyon’s experience launching La Toile, a short certificate program that trains underrepresented learners in digital skills such as web design and artificial intelligence.

The ProPulse initiative gained strong institutional support because it responded to several of the school’s strategic priorities: strengthening employability outcomes, exploring new learner populations, reinforcing societal impact, developing closer relationships with companies, and experimenting with new models of executive and continuing education. It also aligned with the school’s goals regarding future roles in workforce transformation and lifelong learning. The team’s agile structure enabled it to experiment rapidly while remaining under the strategic oversight of the dean of programs and reporting to the executive committee.

ProPulse acts as a talent integration platform connecting companies, public employment services, training partners, and learners around shared workforce challenges.

The initiative involved entirely new audiences, new operational models, and a largely unfamiliar regulatory environment for the institution, yet it quickly produced results. Within less than a year, team members designed four extension programs for four specific job roles: augmented technician, AI champion, industrial cybersecurity technician, and omnichannel customer advisor.

In the academic year 2025–26, the school deployed the augmented technician and AI champion programs, established partnerships, and secured financing. The remaining programs are scheduled for launch during 2026–27. The school has committed to launching two per year, with similar cohort sizes, as the portfolio develops.

An Ecosystem of Stakeholders

A distinctive feature of ProPulse lies in its ecosystem-based model, in which emlyon coordinates the involvement of multiple stakeholders:

• The business school, which provides structure, pedagogy, academic coherence, and certification.
• Companies, which define skill needs, co-design programs, and commit to recruitment.
• Training and content partners, who contribute field expertise.
• Supporting organizations, which include the public employment agency France Travail, which provides job seekers with career guidance, funding, and employment programs. In addition, regional organizations provide candidate sourcing and financing mechanisms.

Unlike traditional executive education models, ProPulse does not serve solely as a training provider. Instead, it creates value by also acting as a talent integrator and ecosystem orchestrator. It operates through a dual-entry model: It sources companies upstream to identify recruitment needs while it simultaneously sources, selects, and prepares candidates before matching both sides through targeted training options.

By focusing on potential and employability rather than traditional academic pathways, the initiative connects underrepresented talent with emerging professions and strengthens the school’s societal impact.

An Employer-Led Design

To design ProPulse’s programs, the team members worked backward from identified workforce needs. They began by conducting more than 300 meetings with employers, professional associations, public employment services, industry clusters, training organizations, and regional ecosystem actors. Their goal was to identify operational skill gaps, recruitment challenges, emerging or transforming occupations, and jobs that required hybrid competencies—all of which would provide opportunities for new programs.

While this exploratory phase involved more than 250 organizations, only 25 became strategic partners. These companies expressed concrete recruitment needs, co-created program content, contributed authentic business use cases, participated in candidate selection, provided mentors and operational experts throughout the program, and committed to offering employment opportunities to participants who completed extension programs.

In the “recruit before training” model, employers met with the academic team to share job descriptions and specify how many jobs they had to fill.

Rather than creating customized programs for a single employer, ProPulse focused on shared workforce challenges across sectors. The objective was to design scalable programs capable of responding to converging needs expressed by multiple organizations.

For example, the augmented technician program emerged from growing industrial demand for technicians capable of operating in increasingly digitalized and data-driven environments. The AI champion program addressed the widespread need for employees who are not technical experts but who can support organizations as they adopt AI.

A Recruitment Campaign for Candidates

One of the defining characteristics of the ProPulse model became the “recruit before training” approach. Employers met with the academic team to share job descriptions and outline expected competencies; they also specified how many jobs they had to fill.

Companies initially identified 18 available positions for AI champions, a number that increased to 24 as more organizations joined the initiative and as companies met potential candidates.

Positions for graduates from the augmented technician program rose from 12 to 16. However, because multiple companies were interested in hiring the same candidates, ultimately only eight learners were selected to enroll in the program.

During the recruitment campaign for the first two programs, ProPulse received more than 280 applications for the 32 spots available across the two extension programs, indicating strong demand from both learners and employers. Participants ranged in age from 24 to 56 and came from diverse educational and professional backgrounds, reflecting ProPulse’s goal to reach new learner populations.

Twenty learners in the AI champion program and all eight of those in the augmented technician program received financing through a France Travail scheme. Four learners in the AI champion program paid for their own training.

A Comprehensive Selection Process

Because so many applicants expressed interest in so few spots, and actual jobs awaited, candidate selection was critical. Rather than relying primarily on academic qualifications or previous technical expertise, ProPulse designed a progressive recruitment process aimed at identifying candidates with the greatest potential to succeed in specific professional environments.

The majority of applicants were referred by France Travail through its network of employment advisors. The business school attracted additional candidates by promoting the programs through professional networks, ecosystem partners, and social media.

Interested candidates attended collective information sessions introducing the program, then answered questions during short qualification calls. Those who successfully completed this first stage underwent individual interviews designed to assess their motivation, their ability to articulate coherent professional ambitions, and their understanding of the roles created by employers. This initial assessment enabled the ProPulse team to identify candidates whose aspirations and behavioral profiles were most closely aligned with employer expectations.

Shortlisted candidates then participated in program-specific immersive professional simulations designed to reveal behavioral competencies that traditional interviews and curriculum vitae (CVs) rarely capture. Using competency assessment grids specifically developed for each program, evaluators observed how well applicants collaborated, communicated, adapted, displayed learning agility, and solved problems. Evaluators also assessed each candidate’s professional deportment and leadership potential.

For the AI champion program, candidates collaborated on a LEGO challenge designed to reveal their ability to organize collective work, communicate effectively, solve problems, and adapt to changing situations. For the augmented technician program, candidates completed practical exercises in a simulated industrial environment to demonstrate their safety awareness, operational behavior, and capacity to work within industrial constraints.

Rather than relying on academic qualifications or technical expertise, ProPulse identified candidates with the greatest potential to succeed in specific professional environments.

Candidates who demonstrated potential were then prepared for employer interviews. Preparation was tailored to the specific expectations of each partner company and included CV optimization, interview coaching, and personalized feedback based on observations collected throughout the selection process. Candidates also received interview preparation customized to each employer so they would gain a strong understanding of the organizational culture, expected competencies, and specific requirements of each position.

Finally, before the employer recruitment interviews, the ProPulse team met with each partner company to present a shortlist of candidates together with detailed competency profiles. This approach significantly reduced recruitment uncertainty for employers while providing candidates with the best possible conditions for success.

An Employer-Integrated Learning Model

Once they began attending ProPulse courses, candidates benefited from the ongoing participation of partner employers. Companies provided use cases drawn from their own operational challenges, enabling learners to work on authentic organizational issues as they completed individual assignments, collaborated on projects, and attended practical workshops. Further, company professionals participated as speakers, operational experts, and ecosystem contributors.

Learners also benefited from regular one-to-one coaching delivered by the pedagogical team. This personalized support helped participants strengthen their professional demeanors, overcome individual challenges, and prepare for recruitment interviews. In parallel, each learner was accompanied by a company mentor who facilitated immersion within the sponsoring organization, shared professional expectations, and supported future onboarding.

Because partner companies participated in the entire learning journey, the ProPulse team ensured that it remained focused on competencies aligned with evolving workforce needs.

Early Signs of Impact

Across both programs, each learner completed the program with an identified professional opportunity. All eight learners in the augmented technician program were recruited for positions before the program started. Among those in the AI champion program, nine signed fixed-term or permanent contracts, and 11 signed apprenticeship contracts. These apprenticeship opportunities were subsequently converted into fixed-term or permanent contracts after employers observed learners’ performance.

The four directly funded participants completed internships with partner organizations. Of these four, one got a job, one secured an internship, one built his own company, and one went on to pursue her studies.

Feedback from both sides indicated that ProPulse programs addressed an immediate and concrete need for both employers and candidates. Employers consistently highlighted learners’ professionalism, adaptability, and rapid integration into operational teams. Learners noted three particular aspects of the programs that boosted their confidence and eased their transitions into employment: continuous interaction with companies, peer learning, and personalized support.

A New Role for Business Schools

The next step for emlyon business school is to develop additional programs at the nexus of employment and education. Our goals will be to serve new populations, innovate business models and formats, and support the school’s ecosystems.

There is a desire to participate in the transformation of business education. In the future, employers increasingly will expect business schools to identify emerging skill gaps, orchestrate ecosystems, connect talent and opportunities, and contribute directly to workforce readiness. As labor markets evolve and the pace of technological change accelerates, the ability to continuously reskill and upskill the workforce will become a central economic and societal challenge.

From this perspective, extension programs are not simply marginal innovations. They represent an opportunity for business schools to move from being providers of education to managing platforms for employability and talent integration.