Work Readiness Assessments and Tools
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•419 views
Learn about FREE Illinois workNet® Assessments and Tools developed to help your customers make smart, informed career choices. This includes completing assessments, exploring skills and interests, finding training and education information, learning about the skills future employers will want, preparing a resume, preparing for an interview, searching for jobs, finding work support services, and much more.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Work Readiness Assessments and Tools
Similar to Work Readiness Assessments and Tools (20)
More from Illinois workNet
More from Illinois workNet (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Work Readiness Assessments and Tools
- 1. Work Readiness Assessment Tools and Resources October 24, 2017 Lacey Pollock – Southern Illinois University, Carbondale/Illinois workNet
- 2. Ways to Connect Illinois workNet® is a portal to connect individuals, employers, and education, workforce and community partners to career planning, education and training, and employment resources and tools. The portal connects people to local and statewide in-person and online services. • Web Portal – http://www.illinoisworknet.com jobPrep Mobile App includes capabilities that assist job seekers with their employment needs, all from the convenience of a smartphone. The free app is available for downloading from iTunes, Google Play and Amazon. • jobPrep Mobile App – http://www.illinoisworknet.com/jobprep
- 3. Today you will get: Information + Free Tools To help your customers identify and reach their career, training, and employment goals.
- 4. Top 4 Tips for Customers: 1. Translate Skills & Interests 2. Research Careers & Complete Assessments 3. Research Training 4. Be Prepared for the Job Market
- 5. Tip 1: Translate Your Skills and Interests to Careers Take the Skill and Interest Surveys. Available from My Dashboard Source: Illinois Career Information System (CIS) brought to you by Illinois Department of Employment Security.
- 6. Tip 2: Research Careers & Complete Assessments Careers, Wages & Trends Demand Occupations Source: Illinois Career Information System (CIS) brought to you by Illinois Department of Employment Security.
- 7. Tip 2: Research Careers & Complete Assessments Pre- and Post-Assessment Employment 101 Guide
- 8. Tip 3: Research Training WIOA Approved Training Programs Public & Private Training Programs Source: Illinois Career Information System (CIS) brought to you by Illinois Department of Employment Security.
- 9. Tip 4: Be Prepared for the Job Market Job Skills Guide Resume Writing Guide
- 10. Tip 4: Be Prepared for the Job Market Resume Builder JobFinder Illinois JobLink Source: Illinois Department of Employment Security.
- 11. As an Illinois workNet Partner you will have access to FREE Assessments. An assessment is a process to assist customers in identifying: • Strengths • Employability and transferable skills • Interests • Work values • Personal priorities for employment You will have access to assessment overviews, customer guides, and partner guides for each assessment. Other Resources and Tools – Assessments
- 12. Other Resources and Tools – Service Finder Find work support services and referrals in Illinois
- 13. Other Resources and Tools – Online Guides Disability Employment Guide Money Management Guide
- 14. Other Resources and Tools – Online Guides Youth GuideVeteran Assistance Guide
- 15. Other Resources and Tools – Articles Find Articles on the Illinois workNet homepage and on the article pages within each menu of the site.
- 16. Other Resources and Tools – User Guides 1. Select A Scenario 2. Select a Resource 3. View/Print Resource
- 17. Thank You! Illinois workNet® Visit: www.illinoisworknet.com Email: info@illinoisworknet.com Monday – Friday 8:00 A.M. – 4:30 P.M. Emails are checked and responded to each business day. https://www.illinoisworknet.com/Pages/Contact-Us.aspx
Editor's Notes
- Laid this out like 4 tips for customers These are the main areas and top things that can be done on IwN They can complete these in order 1-4 or if maybe they are already in a field and just need to get their resume updated and apply for jobs or maybe practice interviewing. They can get started anywhere on our site. They can follow the menu and start exploring careers and then end up looking for jobs but the great thing is there is no wrong place to start with our tools and resources.
- Using the Skill and Interest Surveys are a great way for customers to determine which career clusters might be a good fit for them based on their likes and dislikes. This is good if like they are a youth and starting to think about the future – or if maybe someone is looking at changing careers. These surveys really help to hone and make sure that what they are thinking is really aligning to how things really are. I might thing yes I want to be a nurse. It seems great and there are a lot of opportunities. So I take these just to kind of confirm that and find out that oh wait Health Science isn’t really seeming to make sense based on what I am wanting or the things I like. The Career Cluster Inventory: Shows which career clusters may be a good fit based on your likes and dislikes. The Interest Profiler: Helps identify your interests and matches them with a wide variety of careers based on likes and dislikes. The SKILLS Profiler: Helps you identify occupations that use the skills you find satisfying. Also helps you recognize skills that transfer between occupations. The Work Importance Locator: Can help you learn more about your work values and help you decide wheat types of jobs and careers you might want to explore.
- Now that a customer has identified the careers or industries they are interested in its important to explore a bit further and learn about these areas. We offer a few ways to dive a little deeper and learn about these careers: Careers, Wages & Trends: This tools is great you can select the industry (Health Science, IT, etc) and then select a specific job within that field and see more about it. Wages, Annual Openings, working conditions, the skills and abilities needed, Licensing/Certification and much more. This tools is great to just kind of click around and explore areas you are interested in and what jobs are available and if those jobs can meet your needs. I want to be a nurse – well I don’t want to be in training as long as it requires but you can find other careers in healthcare that still meet your needs but don’t require as much training. Demand Occupations: Find occupations that are in demand in your area. You don’t want to pick a career that is only in demand in Chicago for example and you live in Jasper county. Unless you want to relocate. IT is important to know if you get training for a job are you going to be able to find an opening near you? Not only will you see what careers are in demand – but the Labor Market Information specific to your area. What the Average Annual Job opening, entry hour and yearly wages, and the education level required.
- More tools to help customers research careers and Complete Assessments include: The employment 101 Guide which includes the Pre and Post Assessments. The pre assessments will allow you to see your knowledge about topics such as career exploration, workplace skills, job search skills, goal setting, etc. This 25 questions multiple choice assessment will get your prepared for the employment 101 guide. The employment 101 guide is an alternative to just using resources on Illinois workNet. It is a guided tool. Resources and tools are available in one place and customers and see progress and build plans such as a career plan, job search plan and more. After they have completed the guide they will take the post assessment. This assessment has the same types of questions as the pre-assessment and will show progress and what they have learned from the process. If they score 70% or higher they receive a certificate of completion to show they have completed the IwN work readiness Assessments and Activities. This can be used with employers, a portfolios and more. This guide encompasses most of the items I am covering today, exploring careers, Training, job readiness, interviewing and more. This guide is good for youth, special program, or anyone who likes a more guided approach to reaching goals and getting information. The great thing about Employment 101 is that if your customers are in your customer group then you can see your pre and post assessment scores, as well as their guide plans at any time to easily see if they are completing and staying on track.
- Next is Training. Now Researching training is very important because you want to know what options you have and what are the specifics of the program. Illinois workNet has two options to search for training. 1. If the customer is receiving WIOA training funds then they should use the WIOA approved training program search. This will show them all of the approved training programs in their area. They can search by program or provider, and then search by job family, city or zip code, or training program type. The results show on a map and the details show the cost, time to complete, goal, and training program type. To get more specific details they can click on the program name. A cool feature about this search is that they can compare programs. Like if there are 3 Computer programs in their area they can compare all 3 to see the similarities and differences to help them select the right option for them. 2. If the customer is not receiving WIOA funds and is just looking for options then the Public and Private Training Program search is going to be where they want to start. This search works similar to the WIOA approved one. They can search by program or provider, and then search by job family, city or zip code, county and more. The results here will show on a map but will show some different info. Like Type of School, Provider Type, and Degrees Offered. To get specific details they again can click on the program name.
- Next now that you have explored career and training options you need to be prepared for the job market. We have more tools and resources to help customers get ready! Our Job Skills Guide – Now I know I showed you this before. This is where we are using the information from the Essential Skills Guide Casey covered. This is where you can find skills that are important to employers. Find a little about each, check out a short video and use short self-tests to help you work through some scenarios. Skills include Communication, initiative, positive attitude and more. 2. We also have the resume writing guide. This guide was just recently updated. The resume writing process is more than just slapping some information onto a word file and sending it out. We have created these articles to help guide people from getting prepared (what information do you need), to writing, customizing, and how to use your resume for interview prep. These articles provides tips and tools to navigate the resume process.
- Building off of our Resume Writing guide we have our Free Resume Builder. This tool offers templates, samples, keyword banks, as well as cover letters, portfolios, video resumes and more. Since customizing resumes is so important our resume builder allows users to save as many different resumes as they need. They don’t have to start from scratch they can select job and industry specific samples and it gives them the tools they need to build a perfect resume. Another great feature about the resume builder is again if your customer is in your customer group you can see their resumes they have created. You can then easily provide feedback and they can update. Plus you can see all they have done. Once they have created a great resume they are ready to start searching for jobs. They can use the Illinois workNet JobFinder powered by indeed to get started. Once they find a job they are interested in they can go back to the resume builder and customize their resume for the specific job. Including keywords from the posting and make it stand out. We also provide information about Illinois JobLink which is another great source for job searching. They can get connected to jobs and upload their new resume that employers can find. The job search process as you know can be like a job itself. Its important to utilize all of the tools available to give yourself the best chance at landing that great job.
- I wanted to quickly cover all of the assessments we have available. We already talked about the skills and interest survey and the Employment 101 (Pre and post assessments) but there are others that our partners have access too. The rest of them are initiated by you or your staff but are all free and great to take a step further with your customers. The NOCTI 21st century skills assessment which is nationally recognized is available. We also have an observational and worksite evaluation. These are great for if a customer is doing work based training or placement. This gives you a tools to evaluate them on and give them feedback and items to work on. Again if they are in your customer group you will be able to see their results and they will be able to see when you add an observational or worksite evaluation. If you are interested in all of the tools and options in our customer support center I encourage you to attend the Illinois workNet customer support center- customer-centered tools session. It is being hosted by my coworker Natasha Telger. It is available today during breakout session 2 and tomorrow during breakout session 4.
- Aside form the tips I’ve already covered we have many other resources and Tools on Illinois workNet that can help your customer. The Illinois workNet service finder is an interactive location search that allows individuals and employers find locations throughout the state to help them reach their goals. All of the Illinois workNet comprehensive and affiliate offices are in here as well as many other community based organizations, libraries, and more. You can find address, phone number, social media, services provided and more.
- We have created specialized guides on our site for both specific audiences and topics. These guides offer resources and walk customers through the work readiness steps geared specifically at their audience. We have a youth guide, Disability employment Guide, Veterans assistance guide, Money Management Guide and coming soon a re-entry employment guide. These can help bring the specific tools and resources to a customer and providing the guidance through the process.
- We have created a new way to display information about topics without having static content on our site. Our articles are blog like posts that are constantly growing. We can write new articles on topics and still have the other articles on the same topic without losing it on the site. These articles are relatively short and basic information to provide information or guidance on a multitude of topics. From the home page you can see a widget with all of the articles available to users. We also have an article page in all of our menus with articles specific to that topic – such as exploring careers, or taining. This page is always the 3rd page from the bottom of the menu and is always changing with new information.
- User guides provide step by step instructions to users on how to do something on Illinois workNet. Applying for a job for instance or finding training. All of the user guider guides are available from the side pop-out on most pages as well as from the home page. On the homepage at the top you will notice people with topics. If you find a topic that is what you want to do on our site. Simply click on them and then you will be taken to the user guides, articles, and tools relating to that topic. You can select to download a user guide or navigate to an article. But the important tools and resources on that topic are all right there to make sure you can find everything with ease.
- Illinois workNet provides many tools and resources to help your customers become work ready. We always are looking for suggestions so please email us if there is something that would help your customers that you don’t see on the site. Thank you for being here today and for using Illinois workNet to help your customers reach their career, training, and employment goals. Any questions?