Chad Creager trained 45-year-old Marc Moorvitch how to safely use a Tennant auto scrubber for cleaning floors.

"He's a fast learner," said the manager of employment services at Opportunity Partners, a Minnetonka-based nonprofit organization that helps people with disabilities live, learn and work as independently as possible.

In the past, Moorvitch's training with the industrial machine wouldn't have gained him a formal job certification.

But in a collaboration between Opportunity Partners and Dunwoody College of Technology, participants like Moorvitch will be trained using Dunwoody curricula and gain certification for jobs at the same time, while ensuring that their skills training meets the specific needs of employers and industry standards.

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Tags: skills, skills gap, economy, careers, jobs, minnesota

Categories: News

Some companies are helping. In May, the Edelman public relations firm rolled out an interactive desktop system that trains employees in social networking online -- at their own pace.

"In our industry, it's quite critical today," said Laura Smith, managing director of U.S. human resources at Edelman in the District. Those who advance in hands-on use of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are elevated to another rank in the training system.

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Tags: technology, skills, social learning, web 2.0

Categories: News

(From AllAfrica.com) Accra — Mining giant AngloGold Ashanti has admitted first time since its operation in Ghana that it had not been good listeners with respect to its business culture, traditions and way of doing business in the country.

"We have previously made the mistake of underestimating local skills, while not looking to support our high level skills with the appropriate global operating and technical skills.

The net impact is we have too many expatriate working in areas where local Ghanaians should have the requisite skills and we are short where we see very specific global technical skill requirements," said Group Chief Executive of AngloGold, Mark Cutifani.

Cutifani was delivering the first in the series of annual AngloGold Ashanti Lectures on Business in Africa at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Cutifani noted that it was imperative for governments and its local partners to consider as a priority area, an investment in local needs and allocate capital to help support the infrastructural development in those areas of investments.

"When governments look to partnering us in investments we must first understand what the local needs are, and allocate capital to help support the infrastructural development within those areas and also do more for the development of new industries that can live beyond mining."

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Tags: ghana, africa, skills, development, public sector

Categories: International | News

CHICAGO, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Already reeling from its worst unemployment rate in a generation, Illinois is also leaving its workers ill-prepared to benefit from the biggest wave of job openings projected for the state over the next seven years, a new report released today has found.

More than one million "middle-skill" job openings -- those that require more than a high school diploma, but less than a four-year degree -- are projected for the state by 2016, representing the largest portion of jobs in the state's skilled labor market, according to a new study released today by The Workforce Alliance (TWA) and the Skills2Compete-Illinois campaign, an affiliate of the national Skills2Compete campaign. But drastic cuts in state-funded employment training programs threaten to impair efforts to fill future middle-skill jobs.

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Tags: skills, skills gap, economy, careers, jobs, illinois

Categories: The Economy

(From the New York Times) Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve board, said on Sunday that the latest job report showing the nation’s unemployment at 9.8 percent was “pretty awful” and said he expected the figure to climb even higher.

“My own suspicion is that we’re going to penetrate the 10 percent barrier and stay there for a while before we start down,” he said in an appearance on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on ABC.

He said he was particularly concerned about data in the employment report, released Friday, indicating that an increasing number of Americans have been unemployed for more than six months. That number increased in September by 450,000, reaching 5.4 million, according to the report from the Labor Department.

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Tags: economy, jobs, careers, unemployment, business news, skills

Categories: The Economy

(From triplepundit.com) If a new green jobs program unveiled by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Monday has its intended effect, lack of ability will no longer stand in the way of many Californians’ efforts to join the green work force. The $75 million plan would train more than 20,000 workers for jobs in the clean energy sector, thereby somewhat alleviating (in theory) the state’s history-making unemployment rate. Yet I’m unconvinced: will these effects be a mere drop in the bucket called “California’s job market”?

Schwarzenegger revealed the plan in Los Angeles’ Trade-Technical College, the Los Angeles Times reports. The program is intended to train both young workers and the unemployed in green building design and weatherization and solar installation. A $20 million injection from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and funds from the California Energy Commission, community groups, and educational institutions, will fund the program.

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Tags: green jobs, training, skills, government, california

Categories: News

Tags: skills, skills shortage, government, public sector

Categories: News

But if current trends continue, the researchers say, barely a third of adults will have college diplomas, a shortfall of about a million people. At the same time, the number of high school graduates will outnumber jobs for people with that level of education.

Worse yet, the report by the Public Policy Institute of California was completed before it was clear just how much was going to be cut from higher education in the state budget.

Sonoma State University President Ruben Armiñana put the cuts in stark terms.

“Next year, the system will have 40,000 students less than it has today,” he recently told Staff Writer Kerry Benefield. “Forty thousand is about six Sonoma States.”

Fees for the remaining students will be 30 percent higher than last year, and fewer classes will be available. That means fewer opportunities for people to develop the skills needed for good jobs and to start new companies.

The wage gap is at a record level, with those holding college diplomas earning on average twice as much as high school graduates. In the current recession, high school graduates are more than twice as likely as college graduates to be unemployed.

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Tags: skills, skills gap, colleges and universities, careers, jobs, california

Categories: News

OVER 1,000 rural businesswomen have been trained in entrepreneurial, management and leadership skills.

Twenty-one selected women groups from across the country also got business counselling and advisory services.

The training was conducted under Enterprise Uganda’s Strengthening Women Entrepreneurs Project (SWEP), a report indicated.

“The training has improved the operational efficiency of the women-owned enterprises and increased revenue collection,” the report said.

It added that household incomes of the rural women, purchasing power and jobs had increased because of the women’s involvement in economic activities.

“This has improved Uganda’s balance of payments because of increased export of locally-produced goods. This has also improved food security.”

Enterprise Uganda said as a result of the training, four women groups were engaged in agro-processing, while seven were involved in crop husbandry. “Seven others are involved animal husbandry, while three are engaged in making textiles, arts and crafts.

“We conducted business health checks on all the groups to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats,” reads the report, adding, “The common challenges we discovered included limited entrepreneurial skills, lack of capital, weak group management structures and leadership, lack of strategic planning and market access.”

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Tags: skills, leadership development, uganda, africa, global business, gender issues

Categories: News

(From The Times) Global research commissioned by KPMG reveals that the economic slowdown has cooled the overheated project market to some extent, especially for large physical projects.

But the research finds that there are still fundamental problems with undercapacity.

“The performance of many projects has not been good as a result,” said Jeff Shaw, director for major projects at KPMG. “There is a shortage of skilled project managers globally, which has been alleviated only temporarily during the recession.

“We cannot rely on importing skills and it’s still expensive to cherry- pick, so we have to develop home-grown project managers.

“There is considerable concern about the industry’s ability to deliver on infrastructure requirements around the world in the medium term,” Shaw added.

“Our advice is that if projects repeatedly form part of your core business you ought to build a core capacity to have internal skills to deliver. Then, outsource to supplement your capacity during peaks as a one-off.

“Government is a particularly significant problem area; our research shows that, globally, 70% of infrastructure providers (whoever feeds into major projects) cite a lack of government effectiveness as a major constraint on delivery.”

Shaw said this was not the case in South Africa alone — in the US the rate was 72%.

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Tags: skills, skills shortage, south africa, global business, africa

Categories: News