hire education mike metzgar | raritan valley community college

Hire Education Mike Metzgar | Raritan Valley Community College

To students: Our programs lead to long-term economic self sufficiency

Two Promises…02

To employers: Our graduates are great employees

Promise to STUDENTS:

Our programs lead to long-term economic self-sufficiency

There Will Be JobsNow, and for the foreseeable future

The Jobs Pay Livable WageIf not immediately, then within 3-6 months

Job Upon GraduationStudents will be able to get the job upon graduation

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Promise to EMPLOYERS:

Our graduates are great employees

Great employees are more than “skilled individuals”…

Great employees possess both the hard skills and soft skills that jobs require

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In 2010, Hiring Retention and Training: Employer's Perspectives on Trade and Soft Skills was published by Dr. Richard Nagle at University of South Carolina on behalf of the South Carolina WIB.

Nagle’s Study03

Factors in Hiring1

2 Factors in Retention

Richard NagleFactors in HIRING

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Richard NagleFactors in RETENTION

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Promise to STUDENTS:

Our programs lead to long-term economic self-sufficiency

Are there any jobs?

Do those jobs pay a livable wage?

Can our graduates expect to get those jobs?

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Program SelectionA look at our process

We use Burning Glass’s Labor Insight tools for answering this question initially…

Are there any jobs?

We define our local area as the bi-county area we serve, and the

5 adjacent counties

Local jobs

Do those jobs pay a livable wage?Check out: http://livingwage.mit.edu to see living wage in your area

We then look at BLS for wage data in our State

If wage is excessively low, we often stop. If it is close, we make some calls.

Livable Wage

Can our graduates expect to get these

jobs?

$$

?

http://livingwage.mit.edu/



• Methods• Initial Discussion• Formalizing Partners

Industry Outreach

We leverage Burning Glass's data when conducting our outreach

It allows us to see which employers have been hiring over the past year

(we prefer to hear from companies that are hiring)

Methods


Industry Outreach

We leverage relationships with our local Chambers to help make introductions

We leverage relationships through our WIB to help make introductions

We shamelessly cold call, and try to set up in person meetings as much as possible

Leverage Relationships


Industry Outreach

• We generally start by explaining who we are and what we do

• The main thing we want to confirm is that the company is open to hiring people coming out of school

• We also touch base on their challenges in hiring, wage, desired certifications, etc.

Initial Discussion

NOTE:If we are unable to get a quality panel together, this is a red flag. Lack of support from the employer base is cause for grave concern, and may end the process.


Industry Outreach

We see good workforce education as a symbiosis between us and employer partners

Our employer partners work with us to help shape the future workforce

Formalizing Partners


Industry Outreach

To be a partner, an employer must do at least one of the following:

1. Participate in one of our panels (Manager or Expert Worker)

2. Participate in Task Analysis 3. Provide Job Shadowing

opportunities4. Provide Practicum

opportunities

Formalizing Partners

We have an informal goal that the minimum number of partners we can have must have enough annual jobs for our graduates

• Manager Panel• Expert Worker Panel• Task Analysis

Program Development Manager PanelSCID & DACUM:

Comprised of managers, owners, supervisors, HR Staff, or anyone else who hires, fires, supervises, or evaluates the worker



4-hour meeting during which:

1. We nail down which job we are talking about

2. We get a clear profile of what they are looking for when they choose to hire or retain (soft skills)

3. We get a commitment from them to support our Expert Worker Panel

4. We ask for access to their employees for baseline soft skills assessment



By the end of this panel, we have all of the information we need to build a soft skills profile for the job, and hopefully have picked up 8-12 exemplary workers for the next panel


Program Development Expert Worker PanelSCID & DACUM:

The Expert Worker panel is typically comprised of 8-12 people who do the job for which we are training and who have been identified as "model workers"


Program Development Expert Worker PanelSCID & DACUM:

This panel runs a full 8 hours during which time:

1. We confirm the job titles which we established from the first panel

2. We break the job down into duties, tasks, knowledge, skills, and abilities

By the end of this panel, we have the rest of the information needed to build a blueprint of a "great employee".


Program Development Task AnalysisSCID & DACUM:

Task Analysis is the final phase of the industry-driven portion of our program development.

It is conducted is several small group sessions with Expert Workers

During this process, we associate the performance metrics in excruciating detail


Program Development Task AnalysisSCID & DACUM:

At the conclusion of this process, we know what makes a good employee, and how to measure it.

These metrics become the basis for our assessments.


Program Development Programs are…SCID & DACUM:

…developed directly from the DACUM materials

Industry has told us very specifically what they want and how to measure that we have achieved it.


Program DevelopmentSCID & DACUM:

Our goal is to "right size" our curriculum. The guiding principles are "necessary and sufficient"

"Necessary" implies that we do not teach things that were not deemed important by industry. This entire point of our work is to help make people economically self-sufficient. We recognize that every day in a school is a day spending rather than a day earning.

"Sufficient" implies that if our students learn everything we teach, it will be sufficient for their success.

• Success Measures• Intake• Job shadowing• Practicum• Placement• Tracking and feedback

Program Delivery Success Measures

Our key measure of success is in-field placement at livable wage

Also, we try to set our output of graduates at a minimum of 10% of the annual openings per Burning Glass, and no more than 25%


Program Delivery Intake

As a community college, we are open enrollment.

However, once the number of students exceeds the number of spots, we give them to the students we believe most likely to be successful in the field



Our goal for recruitment is "good fit" and not "meat in the seat“

We assess all incoming students in the following ways:

1. Accuplacer 2. Soft Skill 3. Interview

Ultimately, it is a committee decision made from the factors above



Retention rate is the other key success measure.

That number, multiplied by in-field placement rate at livable wage gives the Program Quality Coefficient.

A perfect program would be a "1" meaning ever student who started the program, winds up working in-field making livable wage. We never hit it, but we keep trying just the same.


Program Delivery Job Shadowing

Early in the students' program, we get them out in the field to see the job

To the best of our ability, we try to give an honest showing of the actual job

For some programs, there may be multiple shadowing to better convey the breadth of what is available


Program Delivery Practicum

All of the programs require a "practicum" for graduation.

Students are required to go out and perform in industry for about 100 hours (varies by industry recommendation)

We ask a ton of feedback about their performance


Program Delivery Practicum

The only question I really care about is "If you were hiring today, would this student be a serious contender?"

Beginning next year, we plan to have the employer formally sign off on the Certificate.


Program Delivery Placement

We have a full-time Workplace Coordinator (thanks again DOL) who leverages the relationships established by our Outreach manager to set up job shadowing, practicum, placement, as well as tracking

As she works closely with our partners is setting up and monitoring all of the workplace learning, she comes to know their work environments


Program Delivery Placement

She also works closely with the students in both setting up their learning experiences, as well as through training them about interviewing, résumés, etc.

When it comes time to place graduates, she draws from her knowledge of both to provide a "best match"


Program Delivery Tracking & Feedback

We track our graduates for 2-5 years after graduation

It's great to know they got a job, it’s even better to know they are still employed 3 years later

We also work with their employers to get feedback about the graduates’ general preparedness


Program Delivery Tracking & Feedback

All of this information is analyzed by our workforce team and shared with the instructor.

Should we notice patterns of weakness, we take steps to improve.

Questions?

Thank You!

Place for stuff that might go in here?Put a relevant subtitle in this line

The people who write the paychecks, are the only voice that really matters in determining "what makes a good employee"

People who write checks

A recent Gallup poll highlighted only 14 percent of Americans and only 11 percent of business leaders strongly agree that graduates have the “necessary skills and competencies to succeed in the workplace.”

While another survey, coordinated with Gallup, emphasized that 96 percent of academic officers felt they were preparing students for employment.

The Gap

Where academic credit is the currency of higher education, we find competency to be the currency of industry

Currency

Probably should say something about the fact that flooding the market with 50 graduates once/year in May is lame

Better alignment through continuous stream of graduates which is achievable in a competency-based world

Calendar

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hire education mike metzgar | raritan valley community college

Documents

retention slide

livable wage

wage data

initial discussion note

richard nagle factors

graduation students

local area

soft skills