Defense and Homeland Security Goals - Skills Matching
A. Major Goal: Improve the private business environment, thereby increasing revenue, profitability and high-paying jobs:
A3. Sub Goal: Improve the process of identifying the capabilities and experience of the local workforce, including retiring and exiting military and civil service.
Short Title: Skills Matching
Statement of Goal:
Develop and implement improvements in the process of matching the capabilities and experience of employment candidates to the Hampton Roads’ defense and homeland security industry companies that can employ them.
Background and Objective of Goal:
A high percentage of this talent prefers to stay in this region but they are being recruited away because of deficiencies in the content and timing of our matching system.
The existing process of using resumes as the primary source of candidate capabilities and the timing of employer’s recruiting vs. candidate’s job-seeking efforts is not resulting on Hampton Roads defense and homeland security industry capturing the talent available from the pool of military and civil service exiting government service.
Candidates are encouraged to civilianize their resume so that non-military employers can better understand their skills. Our industry not only doesn’t need this conversion, it actually eliminates vital information. In addition, our industry usually is looking for far greater detail on specific skills and experience than is possible to include in a resume. Individuals writing their resume use different terms for the same thing, making automated searches less effective. The process fails to identify a potential match but, even where matches are made, requires screening out unqualified candidates through labor-intensive interviews.
Applicants start looking too early to match with currently available jobs while companies are generally not advertising jobs until they are ready to hire. The process does not effectively meet the needs of our industry’s need for contingency hires for bidding contracts that will not start work for many months.
Many companies do not retain resumes of prior applicants or may have them in a format that does not facilitate effective searching.
The capability now exists to utilize a web based data matrix, with pre-formatted data structure that facilitates advanced search routines, to capture this information and to provide far more efficient matching of employer needs and candidate skills.
Goal Leader:
Kynn Harned
Supporting Participants:
Jack Greenhalgh, Lew Mabie, Jerry Stewart, Missy Blankenship, Amy Cohen, David McFarland, Indy Freeman, Chris Sarandos, Bruce Cordelli, Bob Sharak, Becky Weil-White, Don Redinius, Joe Moore, Wes Latchford
Action Plan:
Investigate alternative automated solutions.
Develop approach to problem
Develop implementation plan
The next meeting of the Sub-Goal Committee:
Status and Comments:
8/22/08
Our Skills Matching Initiative for the DHSC is on a roll. We are also working with the Virginian Pilot to incorporate promotion to candidates to enter their profile into the data base.
The companies involved in this process are working on tailoring the data base to identify specific military skills, experiences and qualifications that may not be included in the typical resume, especially a civilianized one.
We have received confirmation from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs that the IdealHire solution is in full compliance with record keeping and reporting requirements.
7/21/08
Jack Greenhalgh and Don Redinius had meeting with Bob Sharak, Rick Seegers and Emil Thomas of Opp Inc. to discuss their participation in this program. The objective is to have both Opp Inc and the PCFWD following the same program so we would be uniform across all of Hampton Roads. We briefed them on PCFWD plans. They agreed to promote having job applicants and veterans leaving the service fill out a profile on IdealMilitaryHire.com. They will also advise companies that are looking for people about this potential source of applicants. They agreed to help coordinate meetings of area companies during which this program can be explained
Following this meeting, Mike McGinnis, Executive Director of VMASC, joined the meeting and we explained the program and the potential value to help the expansion of the M&S business in this area. He agreed to coordinate an effort to build the skills categories for the M&S community to be incorporated in the IdealMilitaryHire data base structure for Power Match.
Dave Edwards agreed to have WR Systems join the group of companies developing the skills matrix for Power Match.
Another initiative within this Sub-Goal will be to develop an approach to incorporate the Power Match process into Job Fairs. Job Fair attendance has been declining because attendees claim they are simply told by exhibitors to go to their respective websites. Numerous companies are skipping the Job Fair process because it isn't paying off for them. We believe the use of Power Match for attendees and exhibitors would significantly increase the value of the Job Fair and we are scheduled to meet with the Virginia Peninsula Chamber of Commerce to discuss using it for their October 08 Military Job Fair.
7/12/08
Jack Greenhalgh with Don Redinius had a meeting with Lisa Taylor
of PCFWD and Carl Preston of the Virginia Veterans Employment
Commission. Action will begin to promote the IdealMilitaryHire PowerMatch
system at the PCWFD facilities and all military bases on the peninsula. IdealHire will provide brochures and
marketing material to be used. IdealHire
will present a training session for all PCWFD staff within two weeks. Lisa and Carl will provide information on
federal contracting companies on the peninsula that would be good candidate
companies to subscribe to this system.
7/11/08
Kynn Harned advised that the initial Group of Ten companies to
review the Skills Data Matrix includes AMSEC, TechnoLogix, Valkyrie, Analytic
Solutions, Parrocco, PROSOFT, KIS, Naval Automation Group, E&E Solutions
and Colannas.
6/26/08
Jack Greenhalgh had a meeting with Don Redinius. Don agreed to make a number of changes to the PowerMatch data base structure that would highlight the unique capabilities of this system to our industry’s needs, including Military Specialty, Military Qualification and Technical Experience. Jack Greenhalgh will develop a set of specific data options for each of these for use in creating a number of sample applicant entries. These entries could then be used for demo purposes in promoting the system to both applicants and user companies.
6/24/08
Jack Greenhalgh had meeting with Al Sample, Chairman of the Task Force on Work Force Development for Veterans, supporting the Virginia Board of Veterans Affairs. He is also CEO of E&E Communication Solutions LLC. He will incorporate of approach in the Task Force Report being prepared for the Governor and wants to participate in the Group of Ten.
6/24/08
Sub-Goal Committee Meeting.
Decided to select the IdealMilitaryHire.com PowerMatch system as basis for going forward with DHSC initiative. Decide to explore potential to create a PowerMatch specialty for Modeling and Simulation (M&S). Bob Sharak agreed to solicit cooperation with ODU and VMASC to create the skills matrix that would support this effort. Kynn Harned will recruit ten companies (the Group of Ten) to assist in developing the skills matrix requirements for the D&HS community. Jerry Stewart and Jack Greenhalgh will coordinate with Adm Fred Metz regarding our decision to go with IdealMilitaryHire.com. Becky Weil-White will provide ideas on how the Virginian-Pilot can support the promotion of this approach. Don Redinius will develop material and demo procedures that will support promotion to potential user companies. He will also evaluate and report back on how to integrate this initiative with Job Fairs and professional organization meetings in the region. Don Redinius and Jack Greenhalgh will provide the initial briefing to the Group of Ten to initiate their efforts. See PPT and White Paper here.
6/12/07
Jack Greenhalgh had meeting with Ned Carr and Lisa Taylor of the Peninsula Council for Workforce Development (PCWFD0. The PCWFD will implement our solution and create a One Stop initiative directed at exiting military candidates on the peninsula.Opp Inc also has a One Stop Program and we will investigate bringing our solution to them as well.
6/9/08
Meeting of Sub Group Committee. Ideal Hire and TeknoLogix made presentation on their respective approaches. IdealHire has an arrangement with the Navy League to support exiting Navy personnel. They are expanding this across all armed services branches. Their technical approach, with modifications, is compatible with our goal objectives. Committee members were encouraged to look at www.idealhire.com and www.idealmilitaryhire.com and look at the demos available on those sites. We requested IdealHire and TeknoLogix to coordinate with each other and Kynn Harnad to seek synergistic approaches. If we are able to identify a basic capability to test, we will seek up to 20 companies to beta test our approach and to help us refine the solution.
The longer term action, with solution in hand, is to promote its use within our industry and to promote participation of the armed services in encouraging their personnel to participate.
4/15/08
The City of Virginia Beach has established a group of retired senior U.S. Navy officers to serve as a conduit between the city and the Navy, chaired by Adm Fred Metz. We encouraged Adm. Metz to coordinate with our effort. He is very interested in any efforts to help exiting sailors find employment. We will keep him informed of our progress, as we make it
4/25/08
Jack Greenhalgh explained to JobFox what were trying to do and how their approach would need to be modified to accommodate our needs. They did not respond. We are assuming they are not interested
4/14/08
This is not about trying to match a specific job with a particular person. The objective is to create greater visibility of all employers in our industry and more detailed capabilities of individuals potentially available to meet their needs.
For prospective employer listings, companies will be able to list themselves on a new HRTC Website to indicate the experience they are generally looking for and how to apply for employment with their company. Companies will be provided instructions on how to create their listing. There will be a small fee (free to HRTC members). We need to investigate how to optimize Web searches on this site?
For prospective employee listings, we are looking at two private companies, IdealHire and JobFox, as potential sites that individuals can use to enter their skills to create a skill set inventory. We need to define the data structure for each system and how their use can be promoted most efficiently.
In addition, the PCFWD is evaluating creating a defense and homeland security industry version of some of their existing Workforce Development programs.
3/10/08
Met with Matthew James to discuss opportunities to create a new initiative through PCFWD to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed program. Currently, gathering an inventory of other programs that already exists in the area.
2/11/08
Changed the wording of the goal.
1/14/08
Is there a better way to link the needs of employers with potential employees?
DHSC_Overview_IdealHire.ppt 2013.184 KB (2013184 bytes)
Next Generation Hiring Solution R1V2_IdealHire.doc 185.856 KB (185856 bytes)
