Interview with Rachel Jungblut on the WorkKeys Tool and NCRC
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. WorkKeys is the foundation of the National Career Readiness Certificate, which gives job seekers and those who prepare for them and employers a way to connect and communicate.
Rachel Jungblut is the Program Manager for the WorkKeys Innovation of WIRED and she is here today to talk about this Part 3 in our series of WIRED.
Again, WIRED stands for the Workforce Innovation and Regional Economic Development.
Now, Rachel, it's a pleasure to have you here on our show.
Rachel Jungblut: Thanks Rob!
Rob Huisingh: I understand that in addition to the work that you do with WorkKeys Innovation, that you're involved with the Grand Rapids Community College, could you tell us a little bit more about what you do there?
Rachel Jungblut: Yes, I am a Program Manager for Grand Rapids Community College. Prior to this WIRED project coming on I worked in our Continuing Education and Professional Development Department, working with Manufacturing and Construction Trades. I have been assigned to this WIRED project for the last year-and-a-half and will continue until January 2009.
Rob Huisingh: As I was looking over the information, I was little unclear as to the relationship between WIRED, between ACT and WorkKeys. Can you help me understand what is this WIRED WorkKeys Innovation?
Rachel Jungblut: Well, what we're doing with WorkKeys is really linking employers to qualified skills candidates and let me just explain that. WorkKeys is simply a tool, it's a measurement tool. It measures foundational skills in actually nine different categories. Foundational skills as they relate to an occupation, it's a fantastic tool. It was developed by ACT, which is the National Testing Organization. They have two types of individuals that they serve. They serve the academic institutions and they also serve the workforce. So WIRED allowed us the opportunity to work with our schools, work with our community colleges and work with our Michigan Works! Service Centers, who service our transitional workers on creating a common language on what it means to be a qualified candidate and have a qualified set of skills.
It really was a way for us to create the common language and remove the boundaries of employers asking educators and suppliers of individuals to the workforce to have better prepared workers. Please give us workers with the skills we need and we said, "Well, how do we measure that?", and we thus came across the WorkKeys tool.
Now, when you take three of the WorkKeys, Applied Math, Reading for Information, and Locating Information, they create a product called the National Career Readiness Certificate and this was important to us because in April 2007, this was the first year that our graduating juniors, which would be our seniors this year in our K-12 system, took the new Michigan Merit Exam requirements and part of that is the State's platform of ready for college and ready for work. So the kids coming out of our school systems now take the five ACT College Readiness Exams and two WorkKeys exams, Applied Math and Reading for Information.
Now, in Kent Intermediate School District as well as in Ottawa Intermediate School District, they have funded the opportunity for the students to take the third exam, the Locating Information exam. So when you combine all that, our schools are producing students with Career Readiness Certificates, ready to go to work and ready to go to college. It's the new paradigm. The old process of graduating from high school and going straight onto college and not working, it doesn't exist anymore; it just, it doesn't.
So the beauty for employers is that they begin to recognize the skills that individual is bringing to the table not only for our 18-year-olds so to speak, but this certificate knows no generational boundaries. So when you bring this into our Michigan works system and you work with all of our transitional workers who maybe leaving or laid-off from one occupation and want to change to a new occupation, there is a standard way to measure those transferable skills that move from occupation to occupation. So they know where to start and then they can learn new technical skills so that they are available for the jobs that we have today.
Rob Huisingh: Now, there is a publication which I see here, it's the occupational opportunities for students, a listing of the most common occupations across the country. As I look at it I can see that it has beggars, barbers, heating, air-conditioning and looks like there are letters appear with 'CA', 'AM', 'LI', 'RI' and then it shows a US medium wage and annual opening. So this would seem to be a very interesting tool.
Rachel Jungblut: That is an absolute fantastic publication that ACT put together, and the title of it is 'Occupational Opportunities for Students'. I really think you could take off the word 'for students' and use it for really anyone.
I love charts and graphs and it is a fantastic indication of what you can do with the skills that you possess as it relates to an occupation and what you are seeing there throughout this guide are the results of analysis of 14,500 jobs that have been analyzed by ACT and to find what are the critical skill sets for these jobs and what level do you need to be performing in order to do that job successfully and when you link those levels with the WorkKeys scores and then you combine them up into your National Career Readiness Certificate as you earn from bronze, silver and gold, you clearly are raising your skill sets and you become qualified for higher level positions and/or become qualified to enter into higher level training programs as well. So it's a really neat roadmap for -- I really think, anyone who's seeking a position or changing positions or is really working on some of those very foundational things that are required in every job that we do.
Rob Huisingh: Probably one of the questions that I have is when I was going through high school a long back, we took the ACT test and we had a GPA out of 4.0 scale and with those two pieces of information we put together our applications to go to college or to go on and today -- so it's bigger than that now. There is more to be tested and more to be learned, that's what this initiative is about.
Rachel Jungblut: Well, I think that part of the innovation is really answering the question of; do we have a qualified workforce? and our schools produce workers; they produce students who go on to college to gain an employment and/or go on right to work and then work in combination with occupational training and job-specific training in order to work and how do we measure the skills of our workforce? How do we make Michigan better? How do we, make West Michigan better is part of the WIRED Innovation.
In these economic times, it's very important for us to try to grow, keep what we have, let's talk about that first, keep what we have and grow as we try to move forward and using a common metric between our schools or in our transitional workforce, then employers can understand is highly-valuable.
Our schools spend nine months out of the year teaching students to be prepared for life. It's not just about going onto college anymore. There's career choices; there's life choices that all help us, end up where we are today and this assessment is one indicator or one criteria in a set of criteria that you constantly assess throughout your life in order to remain on that, what we in the academy world call the Continuum of Learning, when you stop learning you stop growing.
Rob Huisingh: Sure.
Rachel Jungblut: It also helps to know what you have to work on. Many times individuals want to learn. They are excited about learning, but they don't know where to start. So measure a few things and say, "Hey! I am pretty good at that" or "I am going to work on that a little. I didn't realize I wasn't strong in that", and skills change as life progresses.
We may learn something in college or high school and never use it again until we are in our 30s and I don't know about you, but if you don't ride a bike for a while, you can fall off, okay. You need a little bit of instruction. So this is one tool that can help along the way. You combine it with career exploration that our schools are into; you apply with experiential learning and you also combine it with job-specific, even if you are 18-years-old or 16-years-old, kids work at 16 now. They are working in coffee shops and retail establishments and construction jobs in the summer. So all of those require a level of skill and this is one way for us to understand what their skills are and what they are bringing to that job.
I think the other thing that's really important is as we grow West Michigan we have to raise the skill levels of our workforce; how we can have the best and brightest because talent attracts business and we want to have the best talent here and that's been the goal of our schools all along, our K-12 systems and our Community College System and of course the University System.
So as we produce, as these education institutions produce students in some marketplace, are we supplying someone who is really ready to work not only conceptually, can they conceptually understand the type of work they are getting into, but can they actually apply it and that's the difference between the ACT College Readiness exam and the WorkKeys exam. One measures applied skills and the other measures academic skill.
Rob Huisingh: Interesting! As I am listening to you, I am gathering that part of this is focused at the workforce, but part of this is equally focused at the employers and what activities do you take with the employers on their side?
Rachel Jungblut: Well, part of what we're able to do under our WIRED funding is go through a -- we called it a Prototype Phase, but it was really like an experiential learning for employers. How do I use this tool? How do I know what a National Career Readiness Certificate means? How do I link it to my jobs, in my occupations? How do I know which one to ask for if I am hiring someone new into my organization?, and then if I think as an employer as they think about it, they say, "Hey! This would be really good for me to know about my current workforce, my incumbent workforce".
How do I set a bar there and help my workforce get better potentially. From an employer's perspective too, they are always trying to grow their business. Being able to go out into the marketplace and know exactly what your human capital can bring to the production of a product or service is instrumental in negotiating new contracts. So this tool works both ways. It really is a tool that sets this an initial standard for training and development. It gives you your starting point and then you know where to go from there.
Rob Huisingh: Now, I have heard you say that the Prototype Phase is the experiential phase is done. What are the next steps?
Rachel Jungblut: Well, we had approximately 70 employers that participated in that Prototype Phase in a number of different ways. Now, we are moving into our Phase 3, our last year of WIRED coming up here soon and what we are really working on is the foundation of Employer Demand. If the schools are producing a credential that the employers don't understand, it has no value for our kids and it has no value for our transitional workers. So how do we take that common language and make it a currency that people can exchange for value both the employer and the individual.
So when we talk about Employer Demand, we are working on educating the employers that this tool exist in the marketplace as well as educating them on how to use it and then going back to our schools and our Michigan Works! Association and saying, "Hey! These employers believe that this is a valuable tool and they have some openings and starting to begin those links of moving people through our system and showing that we have a qualified workforce". I think the other important piece about Employer Demand is still there's hundreds and thousands of employers in West Michigan and Michigan in general and people relate to something better when they have that experiential learning.
So we still will work with employers to allow them to experience how the tool works for them. In any circumstance when you are using a tool, you might use it a little bit differently than the person sitting next to you but you can get the same result and so you have to work with individuals on getting their arms around that and what it means to them because when you are dealing with human capital and employer's human capital and developing that human capital, it is a journey. It's not a destination and this is one criteria in a set of criteria, but foundational skills rule, and through WIRED we spent, before we got to the Prototype Phase and before we get to Phase 3, we have to start at Phase 1. We have to understand this concept; we had to validate this concept and we also had to research other tools in the marketplace that could measure things or measure human capital; but we really found that the WorkKeys tool taking the three combined of Applied Math, Reading for Information, and Locating Information in creating the National Career Readiness Certificate gave us a fabulous tool for foundational skills and foundational skills rule. They drive communication skills; they drive teamwork skills and interpersonal skills, those other really important things that employers talk to us about.
So, it's not just, hey, I can read and do math, are you going to show up for work on time and can you work with other people, and that's part of the things that the kids experience in school too with the career scoping, the talent match, all those other things, those work habits, all those work habits that we have.
Rob Huisingh: Rachel, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us and being on our show and for everything that you are doing with this innovation and I hope you'll come back and talk to us again maybe in another year and give us an update.
Rachel Jungblut: I'd love to, thanks Rob!
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Rachel, she can be reached by the telephone number, (616) 234-3623.
You can read more about the WorkKeys Innovation and what Rachel is doing at www.michigancrc.org. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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