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
Action Plan:
Investigate alternative automated solutions.
Develop approach to problem
Develop implementation plan
Next Meeting of the Sub-Goal Committee: 24 JUN 2008
Status and Comments:
12 JUN 08 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.
09 JUN 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.
25 APR 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.
15 APR 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.
14 APR 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.
10 MAR 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.
11 FEB 08 Changed the wording of the goal.
14 JAN 08 Is there a better way to link the needs of employers with potential employees? Website could be a location to post jobs.
