The economy has hit many people really hard but among those hardest hit are people with disabilities.  Even in a good economy people with disabilities have fewer opportunities available.  ODEP points out, “In August 2010, the percentage of people with disabilities in the labor force was 22.0.  By comparison, the percentage of persons with no disability in the labor force was 70.2.”

There is a great national campaign, ThinkBeyondTheLabel.com it’s messaging that labels get in the way, but disabilities rarely do.   Providing keen awareness that we often allow our prejudices to get in our way.  Focusing on disabilities instead of abilities creates a huge gap in the numbers 22 employed rather than 70.2 employed.

Some facts they provide, ‘Workers with disabilities do not have higher rates of absenteeism than their peers.’  And, ‘Employees with disabilities don’t increase your workers compensation insurance rates.’

Education and awareness is invaluable in getting beyond our opinions to truly understanding the realities of a vast untaped labor pool that is dedicated, hard working and loyal to their employers.

There are many more people with disabilities proving to us on a daily basis that they can dream big and achieve even higher successes than the majority of the rest of us.  We are extremely excited to hear first hand from one such person, Marlee Matlin will be presenting at our Annual Meeting & Conference and I can’t wait to meet her and broaden my knowledge about her abilities.

Additional resources are available here:  http://www.dol.gov/odep/categories/research/bls.htm

The Directory of Veterans Service Organizations, provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs as a free service, can help you identify the VSOs in your area. They are always more than willing to help you get the word out to their veteran members, spouses and dependents about your company’s job opportunities. The VSO Directory also provides contact information for state and local veterans’ affairs representatives. Take time to search this directory and establish contact with these organizations. Educate them about your company and the jobs for which you most frequently hire. Provide information on how veterans can apply for your company’s job opportunities and share your company’s website information. Send the VSOs emails, postcards and frequent updates about your hiring needs.

As you begin to develop your network of VSOs, ask them to become part of your recruiting team. Also ask them if they have any employer recognition programs. One well-known VSO, The American Legion, is a congressionally chartered veterans’ organization that was founded in 1919. The American Legion has an award for employers called The Employer of Veterans Award. Check out the recent press release announcing that Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) recently won the award from the Connecticut American Legion. CSC is a member of DirectEmployers Association and we honor them for their commitment to veterans.

If you have any success stories about how your company’s recruiting outreach efforts with VSOs have garnered some great veteran hires, please share them!

So how do you begin to research and target the colleges that offer degree programs matching your company’s job opportunities? A great tool for this purpose is IPEDS, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. It is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs. More than 6,700 institutions complete IPEDS surveys each year. These include research universities, state colleges and universities, private religious and liberal arts colleges, for-profit institutions, community and technical colleges, non-degree-granting institutions such as beauty colleges, and others.

IPEDS offers the College Navigator, a free consumer information tool designed to help students, parents, high school counselors, and yes, even recruiters, get information about these educational institutions. Recruiters can search institutions for the degrees and certificates conferred, among other search criteria. Business and industry, the military, and other groups that need to recruit individuals with particular skills use these data extensively.

So let’s put IPEDS to the test. Imagine you are a recruiter and you wish to target community colleges to find some electronic technician candidates in California. To find the community colleges offering educational programs in electronics, go to the College Navigator and select California as the state to search. For Institution Type, select 2-year or less. Then select Programs & Majors and type in the keyword “electronics” and you will see five different certification/degree programs matching electronics. I added all five of them to the search criteria and a total of 66 2-year institutions offer some type of electronics education program in California. These results can be further narrowed by zip code and other factors. Once you’ve narrowed your results, you can export them into a spreadsheet or input them into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system where you can track these colleges as viable recruiting contacts and sources. Then visit their college career centers, send them emails when electronic technician job opportunities become available, and post your vacancies on these college career websites.

Further, to ensure diversity outreach, you have also been asked to include Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) as part of your college recruiting strategy for your company’s nationwide entry-level management development program. Specifically, you are looking for graduates from HBCUs who have finance backgrounds. At the College Navigator, I searched for all six finance programs/majors offering bachelor and/or advanced degrees at public, private and 4-year institutions. Click on More Search Options and under Specialized Mission, select Historically Black Colleges or Universities. There are 22 HBCUs in the United States that offer degree programs in finance.

With this helpful information, now you can continue to build-out your college recruiting strategy with confidence. Good luck!

You’ll find the Advisor tool a very helpful online resource. At the site, you’ll be asked a few simple questions about your organization, without being asked who you are or what company you represent. It takes just seconds to answer these questions, and then you’ll receive an instant customized list of federal disability nondiscrimination laws that may apply to your organization, as well as some helpful links to additional information that will help you understand your requirements under these laws. One of the most helpful links includes the Guide on Employing People with Disabilities. This Guide is rich with resources and will save you lots of time as you develop your strategy to hire and retain qualified job candidates with disabilities.

The Employer Assistance & Resource Network (EARN), also funded by ODEP, provides federal and private employers with free consulting services and resources to support the recruitment, hiring, and retention of people with disabilities, including disabled veterans. EARN connects employers with national networks of available job seekers through relationships with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation (CSAVR), and the Commission on the Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). You can contact an EARN Employment Specialist for more information on how EARN can support your company’s needs at earn@earnworks.com or toll–free at 1–866–327–6669 (M – F, 9 AM – 5 PM, EST).

Resources for ensuring that your company’s website and online application systems are accessible to the disabled are also available on the EARN website. For personalized guidance on making your recruitment activities accessible and for ideas on incorporating reasonable accommodations into the recruiting process, contact the Job Accommodation Network (JAN), which is also a free service offered by ODEP. Check out these resources from JAN: Making the Online Application Process Accessible under the ADA and Tips for Designing Accessible Websites.

I hope you find these resources useful. If you have additional resources to help employers hire the disabled, please share them!

by: David Hinchey | Staff Writer
The town’s Web site offers important information on town services and departments, and now it also offers help to those searching for jobs.

A physical therapist post in Colchester, nursing jobs at Windham Community Memorial and positions at Natchaug Hospital in Mansfield are just a handful of employment opportunities on the CT JobCentral job posting site that can be accessed via the town’s Web site.

“These are real jobs for real people,” Windham Town Manager Neal Beets said.

Beets said the job site is a particularly good one – the jobs are verified and are not scams.

To access the Town of Windham Web site go to www.windhamct.com and then scroll down under “quick links” and click on “Need a job? Check out JOBCENTRAL” to access the new employment site.

Users can input a job search term as well as a location, such as town or zip code, and begin searching for work.

There is also an option to input a mile radius to find jobs – for example, users can search within a 5-mile radius or as far as 300 miles.

Beets said he is impressed with the quality of jobs advertised and his hope is that people will take advantage of this resource.

Beets added the site is “teaching people to fish” – alluding to the adage, if you give a person a fish, you feed him/her for a day, but if you teach a person to fish, you feed him/her for a lifetime.

The JobCentral National Labor Exchange is a service of DirectEmployers Association, a nonprofit consortium of leading global corporations, in alliance with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA), according to the group’s Web site.

The association’s goal is to develop and manage the JobCentral National Labor Exchange, which will help employers increase labor market efficiency and reduce recruiting costs.

Posted August 18, 2010

And now, here I am, entering the blogosphere…hmmm. Are you ready? Consider this quote by George Bernard Shaw, “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” Well, I think you’re going to like my blog because here you will find lots of great resources and content you can actually use in your day-to-day work in the world of HR. From time to time, you’ll also get “my take” on the happenings affecting HR practitioners. But “my take” is only just that, so I encourage you to share “your take” on these topics as well, so we’ll all have more ideas to take away. I am thrilled to have this forum to share and exchange ideas and resources with you!

The State of New York launches JobCentral, a new job bank provided by DirectEmployers Association. The new job bank currently has 84,217 jobs posted with a continuous flow of new opportunities available each day.

The new site is free to job seekers and companies providing easy-to-use job search and job posting tools.

Job seekers will find opportunities from engineers to sales with companies like General Electric, Time Warner Cable, Siemens, Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, Inc. and many more.

Job seekers will benefit by:
• Saving job searches for repetitive use
• Posting resumes for employers to search
• Searching by Keyword and Location
• Filtering by Company, Location, Occupation, Industry or Time Range

“Providing job seekers with free, simple, easy access to more jobs is furthering the mission of Verizon Wireless, Staples, PepsiCo and the hundreds of other employer members of DirectEmployers Association,” stated Bill Warren, the Association’s Executive Director. “Employers participating in the New York State job bank will be able to automatically add their jobs, increase their company exposure via the National Labor Exchange, as well as gain access to a highly qualified talent pool.”

An August 10, 2010 New York State Department of Labor press release states, Job seekers already give the new site high praise. DOL Facebook fan, Karen E. of Rego Park, says, “I found the new site very easy to navigate. It was easy to set up my account and post my resume.” Another fan says, “Thanks, just applied for a new posting I hadn’t seen on other boards.”

New York State Department of Labor is the fourth state to launch the free JobCentral solution, joining Connecticut, Mississippi and New Jersey. DirectEmployers Association also provides a data transfer of jobs to many other state job banks via the JobCentral National Labor Exchange.

Randy Goldberg, Vice President of Recruiting for North American operations of Hyatt states, “Through the JobCentral National Labor Exchange, Hyatt is excited to share many more opportunities to job seekers from NY, CT, NJ, TX, to CA because working together we can make a difference in getting America back to work.”

About DirectEmployers Association and JobCentral National Labor Exchange
DirectEmployers Association, is a not-for-profit consortium of over 500 leading global employers owned and managed by its member companies, formed to improve labor market efficiency through the sharing of best practices, research and the development of technology. Through the strength of its broad-based employer membership and custom-built web-based technology tools, DirectEmployers Association drives millions of jobs into the JobCentral National Labor Exchange.

Find the New York State Department of Labor press release here.

Media Inquiries:

DirectEmployers Association
Nancy Holland, Vice President – Marketing

DirectEmployers Association

nancy@directemployers.org

317.874.9022 phone

317.874.9100 fax

The New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) announces the launch of a new, improved New York State Job Bank website – JOBcentral.

For those of you who are looking for jobs – you’ll love the new search features – the fact the available jobs are uploaded every evening as the system indexes businesses on-line job postings across the state – and the fact that it’s FREE.

For those of you looking for workers – you’ll love more exposure for your jobs – quicker posting to the National Labor Exchange and partner sites – and the fact that it’s FREE.

Try it …you’ll like it!

It’s the new, New York State Job Bank at JOBcentral.

FINRA will deliver up to 300,000 copies of this brochure to state unemployment agencies free of charge. In addition to helping workers avoid pitfalls when handling their retirement funds and other severance pay during periods of unemployment, Job Dislocation also provides unemployed workers with information on claiming unemployment insurance and the procedures they should follow to notify state unemployment agencies once they start a new job.

“This is a great resource for workers who have lost their jobs and want to claim unemployment insurance,” said Richard A. Hobbie, NASWA’s Executive Director. “By connecting with state unemployment insurance agencies, workers also will be connecting with state and local workforce agencies that can help them with their job search and career decisions. And, as they search for work, they will be guided to jobs by the JobCentral National Labor Exchange, operated by DirectEmployers Association in alliance with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies and its member states.”

“Unemployment is affecting millions of workers across the country,” said John Gannon, FINRA Senior Vice President for Investor Education. “This information may be able to help ease the financial impact of job loss on unemployed workers and their families. FINRA is proud to work with NASWA to deliver this important information to workers throughout the United States.”

FINRA is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. FINRA is dedicated to investor protection and market integrity through effective and efficient regulation and complementary compliance and technology-based services. FINRA touches virtually every aspect of the securities business – from registering and educating all industry participants to examining securities firms, writing and enforcing rules and the federal securities laws, informing and educating the investing public, providing trade reporting and other industry utilities, and administering the largest dispute resolution forum for investors and registered firms. For more information, please visit www.finra.org.

NASWA, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, is an organization of state administrators of unemployment insurance laws, employment services, training programs, employment statistics and labor market information and other programs and services provided through the publicly-funded state workforce system. For more information, please visit, www.workforceatm.org.

Richard A. Hobbie, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Association of State Workforce Agencies Suite 142
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202.434.8022
Fax: 202.434.8033

Job seekers accessing the JobCentral National Labor Exchange (NLX) job bank can rest assured that they aren’t missing good job postings and can be confident that companies are posting ALL of their job openings.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN (PRWEB) July 30, 2010 Corporate America along with main street employers have partnered with State Workforce Agencies, Military Installations, Disability Organizations, universities, colleges and community colleges in creating a true National Labor Exchange (NLX) focused on providing hundreds of thousands of jobs to job seekers and helping get America back to work.

DirectEmployers Association, a prestigious not-for-profit consortium of over 500 leading U.S. employers is integrally involved in this endeavor.  The Association, which is owned and managed by its member companies, has formed and continues to grow partnerships to provide maximum benefit to job seekers across the nation.  The newest partner in this endeavor is the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (MSCCN).  “Focusing on providing support, counseling and careers to the spouses of our military as well as the transitioning veterans, the MSCCN is a terrific addition to the National Labor Exchange,” states Deb Kloeppel, Navy (Retired) Spouse, President and CEO, MSCCN and Vet Connect Jobs.

“We are bringing all of the important parties to the table to pool our resources and create tools, connecting the employer directly to the candidate,” says Pam Webster, Assistant VP of Recruiting, Enterprise Rent-A-Car.  Webster stated, “This is an invaluable opportunity; to sit at the same table with all of the people who can truly get the job done, the decision makers from state government, corporations, military, universities and colleges.”

What is the NLX?

The JobCentral National Labor Exchange (NLX) is a sophisticated electronic labor exchange solution.  This, one-of-a-kind, online network connects businesses, state workforce agencies, veterans, people with disabilities, as well as colleges, universities and others providing one central job bank.

The NLX network connects hundreds of thousands of employers and their job opportunities with the publicly operated state job banks – vastly expanding the number of searchable job opportunities.  Jobs within the NLX network are refreshed nightly through an automated process so that job seekers have access to up-to-date postings with a daily average of over 750,000 jobs.  Furthermore, the NLX is free to job seekers and all employers large or small.  Job seekers accessing the NLX job bank can rest assured that they aren’t missing good job postings and can also be confident that companies are posting ALL of their job openings.

Rhonda Stickley, Sr. Director Talent Acquisition with Providence Health & Services states, “Job seekers have free access to a quick and easy platform to more, currently available jobs, from vetted and verified employers.”

Who are the NLX Partners?

The NLX is an exclusive partnership between, DirectEmployers Association, the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA), the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), as well as military partners including Recruit Military, United States Army Reserve and Army National Guard, the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (MSCCN), diversity partners including IMDiversity and Women For Hire as well as organizations representing people with disabilities like Disaboom.com.

Rich Hobbie, Executive Director, National Association of State Workforce Agencies states, “NASWA is proud to support such a noble initiative, providing hundreds of thousands of valuable job opportunities from hourly, administrative and clerical to professional, engineering, medical and everything in between.”

NLX Accomplishments

Created in March 2007, the NLX has brought substantial value to job seekers, employers and participating partners.  The NLX’s many accomplishments include:

1. Partnering with the U.S. Army Reserve and Army National Guard.
2. Building and Administering VetCentral Services.
3. Delivering 8 million job openings into state job banks.
4. Providing an electronic bridge for state job banks to share job orders with one another.

Randy Goldberg, Vice President of Recruiting for North American operations of Hyatt states, “Through The National Labor Exchange, Hyatt is excited to share many more opportunities to job seekers from CT, NJ, TX, NY to CA because working together we can make a difference in getting America back to work.”

About DirectEmployers Association and the NLX

DirectEmployers Association, through the strength of its broad-based employer membership and custom-built web-based technology tools, drives millions of jobs into the JobCentral National Labor Exchange.

“After over three years of operation The National Labor Exchange has proven a tremendous and widely held success throughout the nation,” states Bill Warren, Executive Director for DirectEmployers Association.  “Improved labor market efficiencies, advocacy, shared information and simply providing more real jobs to job seekers and getting America back to work, are merely a few important measures of success.”

Media Inquiries:
DirectEmployers Association
Nancy Holland, Vice President – Marketing
DirectEmployers Association
9002 N. Purdue Road, Suite 100
Indianapolis, IN 46268
nancy@directemployers.org
317.874.9022 phone