Pennsylvania Launches Talent Hub Pilot Program
CANONSBURG, Pa. -- Pennsylvania has created a program, PATH, to take private industry recruitment programs and practices and translate them into public sector workforce development efforts, Gov. Tom Corbett announced Wednesday at the offices here of Consol Energy.
PA Talent Hub, or PATH, is a collaborative effort that involves the state Department of Labor & Industry, Consol Energy, UPMC, FedEx Ground and Acutronic.
"We are taking a simple concept -- watch, listen and learn -- and putting it to work when it comes to matching people to the job market," Corbett stated. "Learning the best practices used by business will make government more efficient, smarter, and at long last something that really is there to help. In particular, to help out-of-work Pennsylvanians find work."
Plans call for expanding the pilot across the commonwealth as processes and programs are established later this year.
PATH will help the state's PA CareerLink staff work more as recruiters in private sector do by applying what works in that sector and bringing those models, practices and processes into the state's face-to-face job placement locations. For example, if a private employer uses a particular process to screen job candidates that reveals a better match to a career or job, then PA CareerLink staff might find it to their benefit to adopt. The premise, the governor said, is to sit down with employers and talk, listen and learn what they do to recruit the skilled workers they need.
"Consol Energy is proud to participate in this collaborative PATH program as it serves a critical role in developing talent that can meet the unique and urgent needs of our region's growing energy sector," J. Brett Harvey, its chairman and CEO said in a prepared statment. "We are blessed with vast natural resource assets, but we must focus on developing those assets safely and compliantly, and one of the best assurances to achieving that goal is having a skilled and knowledgeable workforce."
The workforce development staff of the Department of Labor & Industry will meet this summer with the recruitment staffs of PATH partner companies determine which programs are transferable to PA CareerLink. PA CareerLink staff will then be trained and programs implemented in western Pennsylvania, Corbett said.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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