Approaches to worker recruitment in the 21st century are changing, but with the right information, an effective strategy, and expert execution, the opportunities for success are abundant. This is even true in the energy sector, which is expected to experience a wave of retirements and pressing worker shortages in coming years. By using detailed national and local data, one talent management consulting firm increased its client’s pool of qualified applicants by 400% in two weeks.

Read the full case study to find out how Brian Kelsey of Civic Analytics delivered a data-driven solution to a national talent management firm.

Strategic Advantage locates talent for the energy industry (PDF)

A recent study by EMSI has shown Baltimore City Community College to have a total net impact of more than $540 million on its service area. The study was completed in January and released by the college on April 15th.

Highlights from the study showed:

• BCCC pumps $45.5 million in labor and non-labor income into the economy from operations and capital spending;
• BCCC students contribute $24.9 million in taxable income to the Maryland economy annually;
• For every dollar students spend on courses at BCCC, they will earn $4.40 in future earnings;
• BCCC saves Maryland $2.1 million each year through improved health and reduced welfare, unemployment and crime; and,
• Associate degree graduates from Baltimore City Community College who work in the region can earn $50,400 per year, 40 percent more than an individual with a high school diploma or GED.

Read the article here (Baltimore Business Journal).

EMSI is the international leader in impact studies for community and technical colleges, with over 800 studies completed for more than 500 colleges in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom since 2001. Unlike many simple impact models which have been rightly criticized for inflating benefits and ignoring costs, EMSI uses a sophisticated proprietary model that requires detailed data and calculates the college’s true net impact of a college, along with a student and taxpayer investment analysis.

An EMSI gap analysis report is being used to inform a new Master Plan for Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, Arkansas. NWACC has reviewed input from multiple sources, including the EMSI report, and the consensus appears to be that the college needs to create a permanent presence in a neighboring county as well as establish a university center.

The task force got its first official look at all the compiled data, as well as information from the 2006 gap analysis, which was conducted by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. A gap analysis looks at a community and determines what needs are being met and what needs remain unfulfilled. This is accomplished using public data and demographics, NWACC consultant Patti Mocivnik explained.

Susan Holmes, co-facilitator for the task force, said the results make the priorities quite clear. Certain types of programs, such as programs for medical professions, are clearly needed, but so is a type of program called a university center. University centers are programs in which other colleges and universities can partner with NWACC to provide their four-year degrees using NWACC facilities.

Read the full article here.

EMSI’s gap analysis drew on an integrated database of over 70 public sources to organize key demographic, economic, and labor market information for the college. The report was prepared as part of a statewide initiative that included similar reports for all Arkansas community and technical colleges.

Timely data and analysis from EMSI were critical for a recent gap analysis report performed for Kingsborough Community College in New York. The final report was created by EMSI’s partner Workforce Strategy Center, a New York based nonprofit, in the summer of 2007 and was recently released on their web site.

The report focused on tourism and hospitality, non-nursing health care, retail, and maritime industry sectors. In particular, the report helped inform the college’s newly-launched Project Welcome, an initiative designed to train students for careers in New York’s fast-growing tourism and hospitality industries. In a recent local news article, representatives from the college and Workforce Strategy Center lauded the project’s success.

Indeed, a year after the launch of the program, Project Welcome, Kingsborough Community College (KCC) is reporting success above and beyond what was initially predicted, opening the door to potential success for those just beginning their work careers as well as those making mid-life career changes.

Stuart Schulman, the director of KCC’s Center for Economic and Workforce Development, said that Project Welcome – which had been established thanks to a $1.7 million grant from the United States Department of Labor – had exceeded the federal requirements as far as the number of people trained is concerned. In addition, Schulman said that the program — which centers on a 280-hour, 10 week course — had also exceeded its goals in terms of placement.

The framework used by Workforce Strategy Center, known as “Career Pathways,” is designed to help workers get training for jobs in high-demand fields with clear opportunities for future career advancement. It has been successfully paired with EMSI’s wealth of regional labor market data in several workforce development projects around the country.

For previously posted customer snapshots, click here.

People who are new to EMSI’s Strategic Advantage web-based analysis suite can sometimes get lost in its bewildering array of data sets, features, and terminology–and lose sight of its time-saving, productivity-boosting capabilities. That’s why we’ve collected real-world examples of how our clients use Strategic Advantage to become more efficient and more informed while saving their organizations money and leveraging additional resources. [Note: The following names and case studies are used by permission for informational purposes. They do not necessarily constitute an explicit or implicit endorsement of EMSI by the people or organizations listed.]

Workforce Investment & Development

David Blumenthal, Workforce Associate for Research and Development
Center of Workforce Innovations, Inc., Indiana
The need for accessible and accurate data is one constant in the ever-changing landscape of workforce development. To meet the Center of Workforce Innovations’ needs for occupation, industry, and demographic data, David Blumenthal uses Strategic Advantage. Its broad scope helps him perform multi-county research like the “State of the Workforce” report for Northwest Indiana, while the ability to drill down to ZIP code data helps him with detailed reports for individual companies. David says he likes to use Strategic Advantage because “its user-friendly layout provides me the capability to shift between occupations and industries, with the ability to sort, filter, or trim any report I choose.” For David and many more workforce developers like him, Strategic Advantage has become an integral part in the strategic planning process.

Higher Education

Tom Prendergast, Director of Institutional Research
North Central State College, Ohio
Tom Prendergast uses Strategic Advantage (SA) for successful grant writing. Recently, he and North Central State College used SA to support the application and subsequent gain of a Regional Innovation Grant (RIG) for his region. Armed with data on the aging workforce, dislocated workers, and the increasing demand for health care services, North Central State College and the other regional partners were able to prove their case for funding with conclusive data-driven findings on their region. Tom also used SA data to support his applications for two other recent grant successes, which brought 1 million dollars to the region for bioscience research and workforce training. Currently, Tom is focusing on the implementation phase of the RIG, and he is working closely with an EMSI consulting team to formulate a plan for transitioning laid-off workers into two focus industry sectors.

Nancy Benziger Brown, Dean of Workforce Development
Walter State Community College Center for Workforce Development, Morristown TN
Nancy Brown used EMSI data to help win a $1.95 Million Community-Based Job Training Grant. In order to do this, she used Strategic Advantage to provide data on: local emerging industries, demographics, and growth rates for several different occupations. This data helped establish need, as the per capita income was below poverty level compared to the state and nation. By identifying need and focusing on Advanced Manufacturing, especially Automotive Parts Manufacturing, Nancy and her team received the CBJTG to develop training, purchase state-of-the-art equipment and begin a career center on campus.

Nancy Ness, Tech Prep Coordinator, Selland College of Applied Technology
Boise State University, Idaho
Nancy is currently using Strategic Advantage to support a data-driven framework for program planning and program justification. With a new Southwest Idaho community college set to open in 2009, Nancy and the college program managers have been using occupation data from SA to guide program offerings. As the infrastructure for this community college is created, occupation data from SA will be used to evaluate the demand for the occupations that these programs train for. In the past, Nancy has used SA to help Southwest Idaho high schools meet Perkins IV accountability requirements and for grant writing for Boise State University Selland College of Applied Technology.

Terry Newman, Director, Contract and Community Education
Gavilian College, California
Terry Newman understands the power of detailed regional data. Gavilian College is a recent recipient of a Rural Opportunities Studies Grant, and the focus of the grant is on a rural county where detailed and up-to-date data is hard to come by. Terry is using Strategic Advantage ZIP code data to better understand this underserved region. In looking at workforce projections for this county, she has unearthed several growing occupations that went unnoticed previous to the detailed analysis. With this knowledge, Gavilian College can proactively address the competencies workers will need in order to remain in the region. This analysis will become the basis for new programs in the future. Terry’s example of data-driven regional analysis proves the importance for utilizing detailed data to address the workforce and education needs of rural communities.

This case study describes how EMSI (then CCbenefits) helped inform the Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative with regional labor market reports.

The Arkansas CPI is a groundbreaking program that helps high-risk, low-income adults gain entry into careers with opportunity for upward mobility. Graduates are filling in-demand jobs in regional growth industries while gaining independence from public assistance.

Read the case study (PDF): Informing Career Pathways in Arkansas (Case Study)

Read the full story here.

Burlington County College graduates can expect to make an additional $6 in earnings over 30 years for every dollar they invest in their education, according to a recent study released by the college.

The college graduates get jobs, pay taxes, and use their income to purchase things such as homes, college President Robert Messina said. In addition the college helps to reduce unemployment and crime rates, he said.

Because of that, the study found that the state and county get back $23.60 on every dollar they invest at the college.

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce recently released an extensive study of the area’s labor market written by the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (download report materials here; read the press release here). The report covers population, industry, and occupation trends and forecasts for the greater Nashville area, in addition to a labor market supply/demand analysis that compares area college graduates to high-demand occupations.

The report, titled “Labor Market Opportunities in the Nashville Economic Market Area: An Assessment of the Region’s Labor Force Demand and Supply,” states that of the approximately 1.25 million working-age people in the Nashville region, about 853,000 people are participating in the labor force and 34,000 are seeking work (4 percent unemployment rate). The report concludes that the region could face a shortage of about 2,300 or more workers per year during the next decade as job creation outpaces the number of people available to work.

“We are looking at workforce supply and demand from a long-term, regional perspective,” said Tennessee Labor and Workforce Development Commissioner James Neeley. “To effectively support our regional economic development priorities, it is imperative that we align our education and training resources with our workforce development needs.”

The authors of the study chose to use EMSI’s Strategic Advantage web-based regional analysis tool (paired with EMSI’s Complete Employment dataset) because of its ease of use, geographic flexibility, inclusion of all types of jobs (not just those covered by unemployment insurance), and estimation of data points “suppressed” by publicly available sources.

Read the full story here.

A new study shows Western Iowa Tech Community College annually contributes more than $308 million to the Siouxland economy, equal to about 5.5 percent of the region’s total income.

“The report confirms the indispensable role that WITCC plays in the regional economy,” WITCC President Dr. Robert Dunker said. “And, what is equally important, the report establishes the college’s major impact on regional vitality by providing hard facts and dollar values using the most reliable methods available.”

Idaho-based EMSI/CCbenefits Inc., a leading provider of socioeconomic impact and strategic planning tools to community and technical colleges in the United States and Canada, conducted the study for Western Iowa Tech and the state’s other 14 community colleges.

Grant County EDC in Moses Lake, Washington is an excellent example of a rural county that has excelled in recruiting a diverse mix of innovative high-tech and manufacturing firms.

Grant County EDC has met this challenge head-on with an approach that combines ambitious goals, commitment to infrastructure improvements, and detailed understanding of the region’s economy. That’s why the county is now the choice location for 19 ongoing projects, from innovative manufacturing firms to high-tech data centers for Yahoo, Ask.com, Intuit,and Microsoft. The county has dropped its unemployment rate from a 10.1% high in 2001 to a 6.6% low in 2006. And between 2006 and 2007 alone, the EDC recruited approximately 1,000 new jobs. These new jobs will be added over a five year period and will have an estimated ripple effect of 1,050 additional indirect jobs.

Click here to read the full story (PDF): “It’s All About Jobs” in Grant County