Navigating Uncertain Career Paths

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Navigating Uncertain Career Paths

• Larry Good
• Corporation for a Skilled Workforce
• 2890 Carpenter Road, Suite 1600
• Ann Arbor, MI 48108
• [phone]
• lagood_at_skilledwork.org

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Context for this Session

• Career Navigation Missing Link in Public
  Workforce Services
• Ranks as one of great challenges for workers of
  all ages and incomes
• Me, Inc. Free Agents for Life no longer
  theory now reality

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Approaching from Public and Private Sector
Experiences

• Three segments to this session
• Ill look at the issues involved from a public
  sector services perspective
• Pam will do the same from the private sector
  vantage point
• Well put you to work developing actions

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Context for my comments

• Observations based on two sources of input
• CSWs experience in working with hundreds of
  one-stops during past several years
• What we learned in managing national one-stop
  benchmarking project for 4 Illinois WIBs.

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Career Navigation Assistance Only Provided to
Segments

• Typically only provided to people in targeted
  situations
• Students at community colleges universities
• Enrollees in targeted programs

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Where is career navigation help publicly provided
today?

• Some one-stops but very limited at most
• Community colleges usually for students only
• Universities placement offices for students,
  alumni
• Niche programs for participants

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Not readily available for workers in general

• Communities lack centers for career navigation
• Private marketplace small, mostly unorganized
• On-line tools are vastly insufficient most need
  some staff assistance

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One-Stops Not at the core

• At nearly all, limited to intensive service
  customers those enrolled in WIA services
• Despite rhetoric about universal services, career
  transition management isnt at the heart of
  business plan for most one-stops

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Why?

• States and local WIBs struggle to fund one-stop
  services adequately with limited funds and many
  competing demands
• Placement is seen at the core, not career
  transitions for those already in the workforce
• Even dislocated worker programs tend to emphasize
  fastest route to new job, not career planning

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A model for one-stop provision of career mgt

• Market Center as providing support for career
  planning
• Offer Staff-assisted assessment to all who want
  it support with modest fee for those not
  program-eligible
• Employ knowledgeable career advisers, rather than
  case managers

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Is anyone doing this?

• Limited number of sites experimenting
• Examples include
• Boston
• Pittsburgh

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What prevents One-Stops from Being Career
Navigation Sites?

• Traditional services compete for resources, staff
  focus placement, training
• Assumption that whats truly universal is a self
  service resource room
• Old models one-stops really about job matching,
  target group help only

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Taking advantage of new tools

• New LMI tools can help ONet carries great
  potential
• Lots of books, articles, web sites
• Most will need a navigator to help make sense of
  the tools
• Issue for one-stop staff skills, knowledge

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Why does career navigation matter?

• Amount of turbulence in labor markets is
  accelerating, not slowing
• Crucial element of ensuring low income workers
  can move from initial jobs to self-sustaining
  careers
• Economic costs as well as social of bad or
  slow transitions is very high

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Bottom line for public policy

• Placement as primary outcome for one-stops makes
  no sense in modern labor markets
• Challenge for states and communities are workers
  equipped to shift jobs and careers when change
  comes as it inevitably will?
• Whether services provided at one-stops, community
  colleges or libraries career navigation help is
  needed by many cost of not providing it
  dangerously high