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Is your new employee career ready certified?
By ANDY CHAPMAN, News-Record Writer achapman@gillettenewsrecord.net
In many instances, hiring a new employee is a game of chance. An employer must trust that the applicant and their resume can accurately portray their qualifications and skills.Thanks to a new statewide initiative, some of that guesswork and uncertainty can be eliminated.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal announced Wednesday that Wyoming will adopt the Career Readiness Certificate Initiative, a measure to ensure quality workers are available in the state.
Employers can thank Neva Schwartz for easing their collective minds.
As a Gillette College WorkSkills instructor, Schwartz pioneered the state program two years ago when she began offering career readiness cards to students for local employment opportunities. Her goal was to alleviate the qualified worker shortage around Gillette.
“Importing workers hasn’t filled the gap,” she said. “We need to focus on upgrading the workforce around here.”
She believed in the program so much that she began speaking about its benefits at locations across the state. It caught on at other institutions, and eventually, state agencies saw the benefits and supported the program ” enough to enact the initiative.
It will be administered by the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. The agency will distribute qualification credentials to individuals who pass the WorkKeys assessment test, a program from ACT Inc.
Aimed at getting students tested for proficiency in certain areas that employers find useful, the criteria includes reading for information, locating information and applied mathematics. These skills have been recognized as fundamental to workplace success.
The program is a joint effort between Workforce Services and other state agencies, like the Department of Education and Wyoming Community Colleges, as an effort to ramp up the number of qualified workers in the state to meet the high demand of growing industries.
Wyoming’s seven community colleges and Workforce Services are partnering to make testing available for individuals at most campuses.
The initiative also has the potential to boost Wyoming’s economy. Amelia McLaughlin, a Career Readiness Initiative intern, said the agency is hopeful that the incentive of qualified workers could encourage businesses to come to the state.
“It’s designed to foster economic and workforce growth ... (so) Wyoming can offer a skilled workforce,” she said.
The governor presented nine Wyoming students last week with the state’s Career Readiness Certificate and the first certificate issued for Wyoming has local implications. Nathan Hale took his career readiness test at Gillette College, where he received a gold certification. Hale qualified for the certificate at the college’s Industry Training and Education Center, or I-TEC.
Students can receive one of three levels of certification: gold, silver or bronze. Gold is the highest certification received and bronze is the lowest on the scale.
A gold certification qualifies applicants for nearly 90 percent of the 14,000 profiles for jobs used as a baseline by the assessment.
The state isn’t alone in its quest for certified workers. Including Wyoming, 16 states have put the program in action, and another 19 are working to implement it.
But just how successful the program can be in the Cowboy State remains to be seen. Schwartz, however, believes the effort the state puts into it will determine its use.
“If they market aggressively, it will just take off,” she said.
Staying current with the trends is another goal of the program. The certificates can ensure workers can keep up with the times in a changing economic landscape, Schwartz said.
“Technology and business has changed so much over the last 50 years,” she said. “It’s important to keep up with that demand.”
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