One-Stop Shopping
By Rachel Vilsack and Monte Hanson
September 2010
PDF of article
A new employment tool called JobSTAT is helping job seekers evaluate and plan the next step in their careers.
Whether we think so or not, each of us has hundreds of skills. Some are job-related, such as using a certain computer program or machine. Others are transferable skills that illustrate how we approach—and do—our work, such as time management, critical thinking and problem-solving. Both types of skills have value in the workplace, depending on the business and its needs.
A new online tool developed by the Labor Market Information Office (LMI) and ISEEK, a state career, education and job resource website, is helping job seekers find careers that are a good fit for their skills. The Job Skills Transfer Assessment Tool, or JobSTAT, was launched on April 1.
The tool, available at www.positivelyminnesota.com/JobSTAT, is actually an amalgam of databases that provide details on skill matches, salaries for particular careers, jobs that are in high and low demand, green jobs, job openings posted by employers around the state, and other pertinent information.
For instance, let’s say a job seeker has experience as a carpenter and is seeking work in a career that requires related skills. By using the JobSTAT tool, the job seeker will find that other careers that closely match the skills required of a carpenter include drywall and ceiling installer (81 percent skills match), manufactured building and mobile home installer (72 percent match), roofers (72 percent match), electrician’s helper (72 percent match), boilermakers (69 percent match) and stonemasons (69 percent match).
If the best career match listed above, drywall and ceiling installation, interests the job seeker, he or she will discover that the job on average pays $57,000 a year in the Twin Cities and $54,000 on average statewide. The tool offers an occupation description, including job duties; provides a link to MinnesotaWorks.net that lists job openings in that field in the state; shows the level of employer demand for jobs in the field; and explains whether more or less education and experience are needed to work in the job.
The job seeker can find out what colleges in the state offer programs in drywall and ceiling installation and how long it will take to complete training. For instance, the Mesabi Range Community and Technical College in Eveleth offers a certificate program that takes less than one year to complete.
Another JobSTAT feature is the skills gap, which lists the skill areas where carpenters might be underqualified and the areas where they might be overqualified to do the work of drywall and ceiling installation.
Think of JobSTAT as one-stop shopping for people trying to learn about career fields. Most of the information contained in the tool was already available in various databases, but JobSTAT brings all that information together into one package.
Steve Hine, DEED’s LMI director who spearheaded the development of JobSTAT, said the separate databases weren’t easily coordinated and required people to go from one to the next to find the information they needed.
To get the project going, Hine tapped federal stimulus funding last year and put together a team from Minnesota State Colleges and Universities to develop the tool. The effort, which began last fall, cost about $25,000 in staff time. That compares with the $100,000 a year that a private vendor would have charged for creating and operating a similar tool, only with fewer bells and whistles.
JobSTAT is especially helpful for workers whose careers are disappearing—autoworkers, for example—and want to research jobs in new fields that might require similar skills.
The tool is getting a lot of attention, including a series on Fox 9 News and recent articles in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and MinnPost. The U.S. Department of Labor liked JobSTAT so much that it asked CareerOneStop—a national career website funded by the federal agency and based in Minnesota—to build a similar tool that all states can use.
Top