BusinessWest

Employment Is on the Upswing, but at a Decidedly Deliberate Rate

The economy is improving, and local businesses are beginning to hire again, rather than only filling positions critical to their operation. Some large firms are pursuing growth strategies, but small to mid-sized companies are likely to proceed with caution until they are
convinced the economy has,
indeed, stabilized.

Kevin Lynn says the employment picture in Western Mass. is percolating.
“We’re starting to see more hiring, and job seekers are telling us they are getting jobs in increasing numbers,” said the manager of business and youth services for the FutureWorks career center in Springfield.
Local statistics mirror a report issued in January by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that shows 257,000 people were hired by the private sector during the month, marking the largest gain since April 2011.
“A total of 317 FutureWorks members reported finding work in January; that was a 30% increase over the 244 who found jobs in January 2011,” Lynn said. “In addition, employers in the Greater Springfield area posted 410 openings, which is a 16% increase from 354 jobs that were posted a year ago. If this continues at a rate of 5% to 10% a month, I will be happy.”
But many business owners are still not ready to expand their payrolls. “An employer told me business is good, and he feels like he should be hiring, but he is not sure the recovery is real,” said Lynn. “Employers don’t want to hire and then have to lay people off. It’s a dilemma people are facing because many still don’t think we are quite over the hump. They are not seeing a blue sky — there are still clouds, so they are not going to hire unless they absolutely have to.”

The construction industry is leading the way in job creation, and 21% of the people who reported to FutureWorks in January found employment in that arena. December was also strong, but at that point, a large portion of the construction was related to tornado- recovery work. “But now, workers are being hired by regular contractors as opposed to being hired for temporary work, which is encouraging,” Lynn told BusinessWest. “People are opening up their wallets and renovating their homes, so construction is doing well, which has a trickle-down event on other areas of the economy, such as supplies, furniture, and related purchases.”
Bud Delphin, director of programs and services at CareerPoint in Holyoke, agrees that the employment picture is improving. “We are seeing a slow, steady increase in job offerings. It’s certainly not a swell, but it’s a definite improvement over the last few years,” he said.
Delphin has noticed a significant decrease in the number of people lined up in the morning to speak to the CareerPoint employment specialist, which is a sign of improvement. “The numbers have clearly declined in the last month or so,” he said.
But, like Lynn, he has talked to employers who are skittish about creating new jobs. “They’re hedging their bets. They want to be sure the economy is on the upswing. Once they become more confident, they will be more apt to hire.”
He added that many companies are not rushing to fill or create new positions because they don’t see a need to do so. “They managed to survive with a smaller workforce, so they won’t bring back the positions they eliminated,” Delphin said. “Companies want to grow, but they want to do so in a sensible way. It has to be financially feasible.”

Moving Forward
Several large firms say they have continued to grow throughout the recession. Kathleen McCormack-Batterson, vice president of executive recruiting at MassMutual, describes their hiring outlook as “very strong.”
“We are continuing to recruit skills and talents to fill needs for strategic areas, and right now we have 167 positions open,” she said, adding that the company filled 600 positions last year, and 60% of those were external hires. “We are constantly hiring in our three call centers to support our businesses; last year we had more than 200 entry-level positions.”
MassMutual is also expanding its information-technology department and seeking applicants skilled in innovative technology, as well as those with more typical backgrounds, such as software and application developers.
Two months ago, the company launched a new initiative to add lean-technology methodology. It plans to hire two assistant vice presidents as well as 11 change agents whose roles will depend on their credentials in this field.
“It gives us an opportunity to hire people from manufacturing and the consumer-goods area, and allows us to bring in people with diverse thinking and new industry experience,” said McCormack-Batterson. “It’s an exciting time for the company. We are also training staff who will take on some of these roles. We are fiscally sound and strong and are consistently hiring in order to support the growth of business across the board.”
Yankee Candle, another of the region’s largest employers, has also been hiring consistently.
“We are fortunate that we have a brand that resonates with the consumer,” said Jason Chateauneuf, director of Corporate Staffing and Administrative Services, as he discussed the company’s 43-year history in the Pioneer Valley. “We have a great brand which has helped us retain and attract qualified employees. We have added more than 100 new positions in the last year at our corporate facilities, as well as hiring people for seasonal positions. We are cautiously optimistic about 2012, will continue to pursue our growth strategy, and hope the economy will continue to rebound.”
Smith & Wesson in Springfield has also experienced a noteworthy increase in business. “We have been very busy in the last year and a half,” said Bill Lachenmeyer, vice president of Human Resources.
The company added 220 jobs in the past year, and he expects hiring will continue if the demand for its product remains at its current level, he said, adding that some hires received training through a Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership that provided the company with resources to train people in an on-site mobile facility.
“We are also doing a lot of preparation work to introduce a training program for our hourly workforce,” Lachenmeyer said, explaining that the education will focus on technical skills.
Lynn expects this may become a trend, especially in precision manufacturing. “You may see smaller employers banding together to provide training,” he noted. “They are looking at the labor market and saying they really need to grow their own pool of employees or they will be in peril, because there are waves of retirement coming.”

Skills Gap
Health care accounts for the largest number of jobs in the area, but Lynn said the  industry is in transition due to uncertainty related to reimbursement from the federal government.
Many facilities are laying people off, including UMass Medical Center, which will affect Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer. “Large [health care] organizations are struggling with cash flow and being forced to make decisions,” Lynn said.
There is also a skills gap that prevents many people from getting jobs.

Jean Jackson, vice president of Workforce Planning and Talent Acquisition for Baystate Health, said the system has jobs available, but most require advanced education and training. “We have been hiring, but not in the way we did prior to the recession.”
However, 250 people have been hired to staff Baystate’s Hospital of the Future expansion, scheduled to open March 2. “About one-third of these were entry-level positions, and we worked with the local one-stop career centers to recruit individuals who were unemployed,” Jackson said, adding that Baystate wants its workforce to reflect the communities its serves, and bilingual applicants have a decided advantage.
The majority of the 350 positions that Baystate has open at present are for nurse practitioners, surgical nurses, physical therapists, and related fields, in which experience is a key qualification. “We are not hiring a lot of new graduates,” said Jackson. “We have been thoughtful about our hiring and will continue to be, as health care reform is driving some significant change. Organizations are trying to figure out what the new health care reform and delivery model will involve.”
Still, the system anticipates a significant number of positions will open up within the next 10 years as Baby Boomers make the decision to retire. Thus, it has formed partnerships with local high schools and colleges to bridge the gap.
In addition to experience and education, there is another roadblock in the way of hiring: the number of job applicants who lack soft skills. In fact, the gap is so pronounced that Delphin said a large part of  his agency’s work-readiness program is devoted to understanding workplace expectations.
McCormack-Batterson said it’s always a challenge to find people with good soft skills for both senior and entry-level positions. “Young people haven’t had exposure to business, so we look for potential. Our goal is to train and educate people to work effectively in an organization.”
Lynn said larger companies like MassMutual have the resources to groom people, but small to mid-sized companies don’t have that luxury.
“They need someone who can get the job done now; his was a trend prior to the recession, but it may have been exacerbated by the changing nature of the employer-employee relationship,” he told BusinessWest, explaining that new employees often lack confidence that their positions will be permanent, and, as a result, are less inclined to give their all to a job.
“They feel if things change, they will be gone, so they have become more self-centered. They are no longer asking ‘what can I do for my employer?’” Lynn said. “And this is not just an issue for young people.”

Positive Outlook
Still, overall, the employment picture is becoming brighter.
“A year ago we were up and down,” Lynn said. “But we are moving in the right direction; job seekers report they are finding more work, and employers are posting more jobs. January was a really good month, and a 30% increase in the number of people who found jobs was phenomenal.”
So, although the economic forecast may still be cloudy, light is beginning to shine through.
“It’s not significant,” Delphin said, “but the trend is changing.”

Thing5, United Personnel Ramp Up Search for 500 Employees

The announcement that Thing5 would relocate to downtown Springfield and hire 500 new employees this year was met with suitable excitement by city officials hungry for more economic development downtown, as well as by career seekers even hungrier for well-paying jobs.
But the initial excitement has given way to a sobering, yet intriguing, question: how does a company hire that many qualified people that quickly?
“This is an exciting opportunity for our community, in the number of jobs being brought to downtown, but also the scope of the jobs,” Patricia Canavan said. “To a degree, there’s something for almost everyone.”
Canavan is president of United Personnel Services, whose offices are right across Main Street from One Financial Plaza, soon to be renamed the Thing5 Building when the company moves into about 20,000 square feet of prime real estate there — with plans to occupy more space down the line. And United — contracted by Thing5 to locate and, in many cases, train those hundreds of new employees — has wasted no time in getting started.
“We’ve geared up on our end,” Canavan said. “We’re working Saturdays and evenings, bringing on some new staff, and working with our experienced recruiters because of the volume of paperwork.
“This is an exciting opportunity, particularly in this current economic environment,” she added, noting that her firm has tackled large-scale hires before, for clients such as Smith & Wesson. “We love to be a human-resource partner to companies in growth mode. Helping to further a business is something our staff loves, and it’s exciting.”

Bigger Things
Thing5, which provides call-center services for the hospitality industry, has been in a growth mode that forced Managing Director David Thor to look outside his current headquarters at the Basketball Hall of Fame. He didn’t have to look far to find ideal class A space in the heart of Springfield’s downtown.
But filling up the building’s sixth floor is no overnight effort.
“The majority of the positions are fairly entry-level, contact-center service types of positions, taking e-mails and calls,” Canavan said. “There’s a need for bilingual candidates as well as English-only candidates.”
However, “there are also some high-level management positions available,” she added. “Because they’re growing so fast, they need to have a variety of management-level people to manage the growth and promote quality standards.”
Thor noted that, as an ‘inbound’ call center, these employees are not tasked with cold calls and selling people on a product. “These are more like modern-day travel agent positions — booking rooms, advising about reservations at certain hotels.”
Beyond those entry-level positions, however, is a support structure that includes training, quality assurance, information technology, and other roles. “For every 25 or so agents, there’s a leader agent, and then a supervisory position above that, and the management infrastructure that manages the whole team,” he explained.
The response to Thing5’s big news in January certainly reverberated around a region still struggling to recover from the Great Recession.
“After the press conference announcing Thing5’s presence downtown, we saw an unprecedented flood of applications, which is great,” Canavan said — and not just for those who will make the cut. News like this, she explained, tends to draw out job seekers who might have become frustrated and slowed their search, and who might be ideal fits for other clients of United Personnel.
“We work to identify those people who can meet needs in our community, and we help them access other great opportunities,” she told BusinessWest.
For Thing5, “people need to meet minimum requirements, certain work experience, and as a result of our interviews and the screening process we’re putting people through, some people are not meeting those requirements,” she explained. “The good news is, Thing5 is not the only company out there We are very, very busy. We are seeing a turnaround in the economy, and a multitude of jobs available.”
As a result, Canavan said, “the thing that’s kind of nice for folks applying at Thing5 is that, if it doesn’t work out, there are other opportunities being placed through us. We do have a pretty robust training program for people we think could benefit from training. If you have great data-entry skills but don’t know Excel, we can train you in Excel. That is a general philosophy of the company — there are opportunities available, and we help people see them.”

First Steps
For applicants who land jobs at Thing5, Canavan explained that United will have a significant role in training — “our piece of the orientation is pretty robust” — before Thing5 takes over for task-specific training.
‘Robust’ is also an apt word for what will happen downtown if more employment stories like this one emerge in the neighborhood; this one move alone reduces the amount of vacant space in One Financial Plaza by 25%, and will increase the number of people working in the high-rise by 60%, with more growth possible in the near future.
“We’re being careful” in keeping the initial growth to around 500, Thor said. “We think this business has great potential and can grow well beyond that. But we don’t know that for sure.”
Evan Plotkin, president of NAI Plotkin, which co-owns the building, recently told BusinessWest he hopes such developments create a critical mass of people downtown that could, in turn, spur additional retail, restaurants, entertainment, and even residential addresses.
But all that starts with finding those 500 workers.
“When we look at Thing5’s record, their growth has been fairly exponential, so it’s fantastic for our community,” Canavan said. “We are so thrilled to be a part of that. There are challenges of staffing this project — it’s a lot of people, and we have to interview and screen many multiples of 500, then train them. We’ve been working hard to get the word out, recruit, get a variety of ways to reach the widest audience possible.
Thor said the company has had reasonable success so far with the entry-level positions. “We’re more than satisfied with what they’ve been able to find. With some of the more skilled positions, like technology and some of the management positions, we’ve had a harder time.”
However, he noted that Thing5 has always professed a “no-barriers” philosophy of promoting from within and allowing employees to further their experience. “If you talk to the people in the company, most of them had some other position before that.”
And opportunities are what Canavan, and United Personnel, are all about.
“Something I’m always struck by is how many opportunities there are for people, even in this tough job market,” she said. “Right now, we’re seeing people we’ve placed getting into companies and creating their own opportunities. We can be a great resource for people, whether they’re going to Thing5 or somewhere else.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com

Understanding Reasonable Accommodations and the Interactive Process

Federal law pertaining to disability discrimination can be challenging to navigate for employers.
For example, an employee, Jill, does not say to her supervisor, “I need a reasonable accommodation for my disability.” Instead, she says, “I’m having a hard time getting to work on time because of the medical treatments I’m undergoing.” And an employee, Jack, does not say to his supervisor, “I am a qualified individual with a disability, and I’m exercising my rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.” Instead, he says, “my wheelchair doesn’t fit under my desk.”
These examples illustrate one challenge that employers face under the ADA: identifying requests for accommodation. The law does not require an employee to make any reference to the ADA or use any magic words, such as ‘disability’ or ‘reasonable accommodation,’ when requesting an accommodation.
Thus, supervisors and managers need to be able to recognize the variety of ways in which a request for an accommodation may be articulated. Jill did not explicitly request a change to her work schedule, and Jack did not explicitly ask that a modification be made to his workspace; however, in both scenarios there is either an expressed or obvious connection to a medical condition or impairment that might be a disability. Both Jack and Jill are making requests for a reasonable accommodation.
The ADA requires that an employer provide a reasonable accommodation to an applicant or employee with a disability, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship to the employer. A reasonable accommodation is a modification or change to the workplace that enables an individual with a disability to apply for a job, perform job duties, or enjoy the benefits and privileges of employment.
Reasonable accommodations are determined on a case-by-case basis and may include, for example, modifying work schedules, granting time off, making the workplace accessible by wheelchair, or providing an interpreter. An employer does not have to provide an accommodation if it would cause undue hardship to the employer. Whether an accommodation would cause undue hardship is evaluated in light of the difficulty of providing such accommodation, the disruption to the employer’s operations, and the cost in relation to the financial resources of the employer. The difficultly, disruption, or expense must be significant.
Another difficult area of the ADA that employers must tackle is engaging in the interactive process with an employee with a disability in need of accommodation. The interactive process is simply an informal, interactive dialogue between the employer and the employee to identify the limitations resulting from the disability and discuss reasonable accommodation options. There should be direct communication between the employer and the employee in which both parties explore possible accommodations. The employee may offer options for what he or she thinks would be the most effective and preferred accommodation, and the employer may offer alternative suggestions. The goal of the interactive process is that the employer and the employee work together in identifying reasonable and effective accommodations.
The interactive process does not require that an employer provide the employee’s preferred accommodation. If there is more than one effective accommodation, the employer has the discretion to choose the most-cost-effective, least-burdensome accommodation.
For example, an employee, Sarah, has a severe learning disability, and reading is extremely difficult. Her supervisor sends her detailed written memoranda that she has trouble understanding. However, she has no difficulty understanding oral communication. Sarah requests that her employer install a computer program with voice output, and that her supervisor send all written memoranda through e-mail, which the computer can then read to her. The supervisor asks whether a digital voice recorder would accomplish the same objective, and Sarah agrees that it would.
Since both accommodations are effective, the employer may choose to provide a digital voice recorder so that Sarah’s supervisor can record her memoranda and then Sarah can listen to them.
In recent years, federal law has greatly expanded the definition of disability, thus making it easier for disabled individuals to come within the ADA’s protection. As a result of this broadening of the scope of protection, there has been a shift in disability-discrimination cases from determining whether an employee is disabled under the law to whether an employer complied with its obligations under the ADA. This also means that, as more employees fall under the protection of the ADA, there are more occasions for employers to face the risk of non-compliance.
One way employers can reduce their risk is to ensure that they are prepared to navigate difficult issues that arise under the ADA. Toward this end, supervisors and managers should be trained to identify a request or need for an accommodation. In addition, once an issue is identified, the individual(s) responsible for handling such requests must be properly prepared to engage in an interactive dialogue with the employee.

Karina L. Schrengohst, Esq. specializes exclusively in management-side labor and employment law at Royal LLP, a woman-owned, boutique, management-side labor- and employment-law firm; (413) 586-2288; kschrengohst@royalllp.com

A chart of employment agencies in Western Masschusettts

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Job Prospects Are Bright for the Class of 2012

There are a number of indications that the employment outlook for college seniors is fairly bright — from the strong turnout of employers at recent job fairs to statistics showing an uptick in overall hiring. Recent and upcoming graduates have other things going for them as well, especially a proficiency with technology that gives them a decided edge over older individuals competing with them for job opportunities.

Nic Wegman calls it a “competitive edge.”
He was referring to technology, and, more specifically, the ability of recent and upcoming college graduates to understand it and take full advantage of it when it comes to both handling a job and applying for one.
“Their relationship with technology is seamless and almost intuitive,” said Wegman, executive director of the Career Center at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, citing just one of their strengths.
His colleague, Jeff Silver, touched on another. “Our graduates have a real edge,” concurred the director of Career Services at UMass Amherst, adding that more than 60% of its undergraduates complete internships that allow them to show off their skills and network with professionals in their field.
And although local experts say it’s a little early to project how the class of 2012 will fare after graduation, indicators are bright. “Employers booked every space we have for a job fair in February; in the past, it was more challenging to get them to sign up,” said Silver, adding that an employer networking event in New York City this month reached maximum capacity in terms of employers, as did an engineering fair last fall.
“We had employers in the hallway,” he recalled. “It’s a positive sign because in the past we had to call companies and go through our database to find people who were hiring. But this year employers are running to us.”
Deborah Pace, director of employer relations at Western New England University, said a job fair held in November for the class of 2012 attracted 45 employers who “had openings and were willing to hire graduates.”

In addition, employers who participated in the Job Outlook 2012 survey conducted by the National Assoc. of Colleges and Employers (NACE) said they plan to hire 9.5% more graduates in 2011-12 than they did in 2010-11. The majority of jobs are entry- level positions, but NACE reports the average salary offer for grads in the class of 2011 rose 6% over the previous year’s average, soaring from $48,288 to $51,171. However, career experts do say there is a wide variance in those numbers because students who major in accounting, engineering, or computer fields earn far more than those who study liberal arts.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with career experts about the prospects for the class of 2012, as well as the forces that will shape their job-search fortunes.

Progress in Degrees
Wegman works with people who are pursuing degrees in management, marketing, finance, accounting, operations management, hospitality management, and sports management.
“They’re faring better in this economy than students from higher-education backgrounds in other fields,” he said. “Companies that are hiring are looking for the skill sets they have mastered.”
He added that the buzzword, or phrase, often used by corporate recruiters is ‘transferable skills.’ Today’s business graduates have them, and Wegman said they include “the ability to solve problems using data. Our graduates are able to model and use analytics that can lead to potential solutions.”
Nearly half (47%) of students in the graduating class of 2011 who responded to a UMass survey said they had accepted a job related to their field of study before graduation, and an additional 15% had jobs three months later. “We feel very confident that, if anything, these numbers are understated,” Wegman added.
The poll’s results showed that 70% of these jobs were in Massachusetts, 11% were in New England, and 7% were in New York or New Jersey. “So the outlook for business students with a four-year degree is better than the press is portraying; they seem to be disproportionally sought after by companies in this difficult market,” Wegman said, adding the average salary for entry-level jobs his students accepted ranged from the 30s to the high 50s.
Pace agrees that students with degrees in accounting, finance, or telecommunications are in demand, and said graduates in these fields almost always have a job offer before graduation.
Their sophisticated knowledge of technology gives them an edge over older workers, said those we spoke with.
“There is no doubt that there is a generational difference,” Wegman explained. “Students can use multiple devices at the same time and process and solve so much through the efficient use of technology that it is almost mindboggling.”
Barbara Kautz, director of the Career Center at Springfield College, is also impressed by students’ advanced technological abilities. “Their comfort, savvy, and expertise can be better and more refined than those who didn’t grow up with the Internet. They may not have much work experience, but their personal involvement with technology surpasses that of many other people looking for employment,” she said.
Recent graduates in any field of study are also willing and able to research a company’s history and apply for jobs quickly online. “It’s as simple for them as ‘click, click, click,’” Pace said. “And new college graduates are adept at using Microsoft Office products.”
Kautz said the students’ ability to present information about a company works to their advantage. “If a candidate fails to demonstrate knowledge about an organization, he or she is unlikely to be hired,” she told BusinessWest.
Meawhile, many businesses use the Internet to research a candidate by viewing their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. “They are looking for a certain level of professionalism,” Kautz said, adding that, in some instances, job offers have been rescinded if inappropriate pictures or postings are discovered. “A candidate may be a finalist for a job, but the employer wants to check the way the person represents themselves,” she explained.
Students with degrees in health care, which include physical and occupational therapy, as well as accounting, marketing, and retail management, are also in high demand. “There is opportunity for growth in these fields, and these grads don’t have the dilemma of identifying jobs that students in other liberal-arts programs have,” Kautz  said.

Smart Choices
Many students take advantage of internships, which gives them with a clear picture of what is expected in the workplace as well as an inside track with what is going on within the company.
“It provides them with an edge because most employers are looking for candidates who can help move their organization forward,” Kautz said. “And because graduates are at the beginning of their careers, they throw themselves into their work with eagerness. That’s not to say people in their 40s and 50s don’t have as much energy, but they may have some reservations or ambivalence if they’ve been laid off, which can result in a morale issue.”
Sally Schirner-Smith, director of Career Services at Bay Path College, said that school requires students to perform an internship or have experience in their field before graduation. “We have found it is very beneficial for leveraging employment. If an employer has trained a student or put them through an orientation and they are a good fit for the company and have the right skill set, it can be a win-win situation. Some students have gotten jobs as a result, because employers don’t want to lose the person if he or she is doing quality work.”
Silver said UMass is one of a handful of schools in the country that allows students to earn up to 18 credits through internships or paid co-op positions. “U.S. News and World Report rated UMass among the top 10 universities in the country for producing internships,” he said. In fact, it recently started a program that allows students from other schools to sign up for internships through UMass and earn credits for their experience.
“An internship allows students to prove themselves in front of people who are doing the hiring,” Silver explained. “When they graduate, they have a leg up if their experience is linked with good grades.”
But even if a job offer isn’t forthcoming, the students gain valuable work experience, which enhances their résumé. Volunteer work is also beneficial, so many students pursue this avenue. “If a business sees that a graduate has given his or her time as a volunteer, it tells them a lot about the person’s interest and willingness to give back,” Schirner-Smith said.
Another decided advantage is that many young people are willing and able to relocate to distant states. “Today, people have to be open to mobility and the geographic regions that offer the greatest opportunity in their field,” said Schirner-Smith.
“There are jobs out there, but if a student wants to teach, he or she may have to work in North Carolina,” Pace agreed. “There are older people who are not getting jobs because they don’t want to move. They are established and have homes and young families.”
Recent graduates at Western New England University in Springfield have done well in the job market. “About 78% of the class of 2010 got jobs in their field,” said Pace, adding that statistics have not yet been compiled for 2011 graduates. The jobs spanned a wide range of fields, but the average starting salary was between $35,000 and $45,000.  “Employers are hiring the newbies because they can pay them less money,” Pace said.
Silver said students also haven’t developed bad habits and can be molded to fit within a corporate culture.

Alternative Measures
Many students who receive a bachelor’s degree continue their education, but Pace said most do so because their field requires a graduate degree. “If a student is a liberal-arts major and wants to become a social worker, he or she generally will be required to get a master’s degree.”
However, a fair number of the 44% of graduates in the class of 2010 at Springfield College who went to graduate school did so because they believe an advanced degree is a good investment. Because they realize work experience is important, competition can be fierce for fellowships and internships. “Students recognize that challenging themselves and seeking experiences of service to others can help them develop skills and competencies that are of value to employers,” Kautz said.
Colleges also do their best to offer programs that put grads at the top of the game, including a two-day career summit at Bay Path which offers workshops, classes, and opportunities to have résumés reviewed by professionals.
But some grads prefer to take the entrepreneurial path and have launched their own companies. Pace attributes this to two factors: they want to be in charge of their own destiny and want to help the country remain strong.
“They don’t like the trends they have seen in business and the fact that jobs are being sent overseas, so they decide to grow businesses that are American-owned,” Pace said, adding that recent grads have opened a variety of businesses which range from a bakery to a diagnostic car-repair company and a vodka company. “Ten years ago, graduates would have been more reluctant to do this. Back then, they were looking for jobs within companies, but today they want to be in charge of their own success and have control of their own legacy.”

Promising Futures
Experts concur that the outlook is positive for today’s graduates. “I think the prospects for the class of 2012 are good because there has been slight growth in some industries, and right now there are companies in the U.S. that are doing well,” Pace said.
Schirner-Smith acknowledged that graduates will face challenges.
“But things are slowly improving with the economy, and we are definitely seeing more students find jobs than we did in the past,” she said. “They are working very hard to strategize for employment in their respective fields by networking, using social media, joining organizations, and going to conferences, because many jobs are never posted. These things can streamline the time it takes to find a position, so we anticipate they will have success.”

That’s the Goal of an Initiative Involving the State’s Community Colleges

Jeff Hayden says it all comes down to one word: transformation.
That was his way of describing, in a succinct yet meaningful way, an initiative to assist the unemployed and underemployed that has a long name and a broad set of goals.
It’s called the Massachusetts Community College and Workforce Development Transformation Agenda (MCCWDTA), and it’s part of nearly $500 million in grants for community colleges in all 50 states that will help workers around the country. U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis called this the first step in preparing a workforce for “high-wage, high-skills fields.”
Hayden, vice president of Business and Community Services at Holyoke Community College, put it another way.
“The expectation sometimes in today’s world is that education is not meeting the needs of the workforce,” he explained, “because they’re not connected, or because there are bureaucratic systems in place that just don’t mesh with the business world. The grant will connect education to workforce in a way that transforms the systems that we have.”
Spearheaded by Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, the MCCWDTA is a three-year, $20 million package that will involve all 15 Massachusetts community colleges, and is intended to target several industries, including health care, information technology, manufacturing, life sciences and biotechnology, clean energy, and financial services and entrepreneurship. In conjunction with the state’s workforce-development system — the local career centers — the broad goal is to find and pursue what the unemployed and underemployed need to re-enter the workforce.
As he talked about the initiative, Stephen Keller, executive vice president & chief academic officer at Springfield Technical Community College, gestured out his office window across the street to the STCC Technology Park, which houses FutureWorks Career Center. “Instead of FutureWorks working with employers and us working with employers, it’s getting everyone together at the table to talk about these issues.
“With the assistance of this grant,” he continued, “we can we create a unified approach where the one-stop centers are talking to the providers of training, who are in turn talking to the employers who are talking to the unemployed and underemployed. It’s a unified effort to create a system where someone comes in, they need a job, they’ve just been laid off, or a company is in the process of expecting layoffs, so they can contact one of the centers and we can work with the company to create some kind of training package.”
It’s a big effort, and there are many more fine points. Both men agreed that the goal is to transform not just the lives of future workers, but in many ways the entire academic process for workforce development. The MCCWDTA has been in effect since October, but there is still a lot of work to be done both at the colleges and for the Commonwealth’s administration of the grant.
Deborah Koch is director of grants for STCC and one of the design team who framed this transformative measure. As a simple means to understand the sheer breadth of what is hoped for, she used that magic word once again. “This will help transform how the community colleges deliver education, so that they can meet the needs of these dislocated workers.”

Class Action
The final draft of the MCCWDTA proposal lays out the bad news and the good news.
“In the last decade, millions of jobs requiring only a high-school diploma or less have been permanently lost to automation and overseas completion,” the abstract states. “Analysts anticipate that two-thirds of new jobs emerging in the next decade will be middle-skills jobs demanding some post-secondary education … especially true in Massachusetts, which is expected to lead the nation in middle-skills job openings in the coming decades.”
The document goes on to state that the grant isn’t just throwing money at a problem. Rather, it is hoping to address a cause, “changing the way that community colleges in the Bay State interact with one each other, the workforce-development system, public agencies, leading industry groups, leaders of government, and private businesses to transform delivery of education and training programs for workers.”
Here’s how it works:
Initially, each college will address particular strengths within their own curriculum. Keller said that STCC is focused on IT, health care, and manufacturing, and at HCC, Hayden said that his school is looking to fund the development of programs in both health care and clean energy — solar and wind — and to augment their career-counseling component.
“So we will now be able to offer career counseling to the adult student, and that’s relatively new,” he said. “We have been doing some of it, but this will give us the capacity to actually do that type of assessment, with the goal of helping that individual find what they want to do, and to get motivated in increasing their potential success.”
Koch explained some key concepts that the MCCWDTA targets. The grant allows the colleges to explore possibilities, “which is the beauty of grant funding,” she said, “so that we can meet the needs of our clientele. Workers probably have never seen themselves as college-bound, but now can consider us as a very sensible and reasonable option.”
Stackable certification is something both colleges spoke of. Koch explained it as “moving up the academic ladder,” but while being employed.
“The idea of stackable certificates is that, rather than being focused on coming and getting a two-year degree as the only indicator of your ability to do a good job,” she said, “it may be that there are steps prior to the two-year degree that will enable you to have some form of employment. You can get a job, not a high-paying job, but a job in a system or industry where there is growth. While you’re working, you can take additional courses to get you to the next step, so you can eventually have your two-year degree, but in the meantime you’re working.”
Another transformative component for the academic process is what Hayden called “the institutionalization of credit for prior learning.”
He listed the UMass Amherst University Without Walls as a good example of how this concept works. As the phrase suggests, it involves academic credit for relevant work in the business sphere, Hayden explained, adding that it hasn’t happened yet throughout the community colleges.
“In the academic world, it’s difficult to put a system like that into place where it’s widely accepted,” he told BusinessWest. “Part of this grant is to help the community colleges have broadly accepted standards for workforce and workplace-related education. An individual works at an area business after they have achieved a certain level of skill in their academic program, and they receive credit.”

Working Model
There are some limitations to the grant funding, Keller and Koch admitted.
“Some of these people may have had jobs that didn’t require college-level work, and perhaps they didn’t have a high-school diploma,” Keller said. “We’ll have to solve that problem. A lot of these moneys from the government come with a timeline, and sometimes a worker might need to learn these skill sets within a year, or a matter of months. That’s a real problem because, if a student comes to us with a low reading level, it’s going to take time to get them over that.”
Hayden said that, for those who might wish to switch fields altogether — for instance, from manufacturing to health care — the process isn’t a quick and easy fix. But with the new models of academic delivery allowed by the grant funding, it is possible.
“We know that someone who wants to be a doctor or nurse, and who has kids at home and might be on public assistance, isn’t going to be able to jump into medical school tomorrow,” he said. “But how do we get them to the point where we create some stability, get them a job, and make them aware of the career steps, the academic pathways, which they need in order to get them to where they want to be?”
Ultimately, MCCWDTA funds will help the colleges blur the lines between the ivory tower and workforce readiness. Historically, Hayden said, there has been a notion that education and workforce training are two different things.
“What this grant is saying is that they’re not,” he continued. “They might have different steps, or different components, but education and training are part of the same thing. The grant is bringing together the ideas that we need skills training, workforce-development training, and we need academic pathways and careers. And we need them to be at community colleges in an accessible way for our students.
“One of the criticisms that community colleges always get is that we try to be all things to all people,” he added. “But the mission of the community college is to take an individual where they’re at and to meet their goals, but at the same time make them aware of the education and career pathways that exist.”
With the MCCWDTA funding to help that mission become more clear, the word ‘transformation’ that everyone uses sounds less like magic, and more like people getting back to work.