Hope Clark
Director of Research & Market Development
To open his first press conference, President Obama told the story of workers in Northern Indiana, laid off and needing to retool to be re-employed. But he didn’t tell “the rest of the story,” of how Hope Clark’s work using O*NET® data is enabling workers in the region to reinvent themselves for new occupations. Hope is Director of Research & Market Development, at Indiana Workforce Development.
Due to the dramatic shifts in the economy, the process of helping employees transfer their skills from a declining occupation to one that is in demand is critical to ensure economic stability. Skill transferability initiatives are complex projects, requiring willing employers and community colleges, positive workers, passionate economists and computer wizards—and solid economic and workforce data, including the data in the O*NET database.
“My use of O*NET has evolved over the years,” explains Hope. “When I started my career, I used O*NET with individual customers. I first heard of O*NET in graduate school, when I was studying for my Masters in Rehabilitation Counseling. I did my internship at Goodwill Industries of Chicago. We used O*NET as a job analysis tool, helping people to develop career plans by assessing their knowledge, skills and abilities required for various occupations. It is a very useful tool in this application. ”
Following her experiences working directly with job seekers, Hope pursued a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. “We learned all the tools of job analysis. So, I heard about O*NET again. Soon, I became familiar with new technology and more data in the world of economic and workforce analysis. Systems like TORQ™ (Transferable Occupation Relationship Quotient) are new tools that leverage the data in O*NET. My early application of O*NET data was labor intensive. Users had to manually target an occupation to investigate. This new application allows the user to rapidly manipulate the entire database and allows one to quickly compare skills gaps between any two occupations.
“Today we do multiple comparisons of occupational data to determine overlap of skills,” Hope illustrates. “High-level strategies using the entire O*NET database of occupational KSAs allow us to determine the degree of skills overlap or gaps that exist across occupations.” Thus, when Northern Indiana RV industry workers lost their jobs, Hope and her colleagues determined the skills those workers used, and saw which skills are required to perform growth occupation jobs in the region. Then community colleges in the area could develop curriculum that trains displaced workers in the “gap skills”—skills that the up-and-coming occupations require and that are currently lacking in the regional workforce. Skills that workers can transfer from their former jobs, paired with “gap skills” developed through new training, enable workers to successfully move into the new, in-demand occupations.
Examples of in-demand occupation jobs that the RV workers can perform, armed with their transferred skills and a few “new” skills, include orthopedic products and medical devices manufacturing and healthcare occupations, including dental hygienists.
Transferability of skills tools help displaced workers as a whole. Input regional economic data, such as workforce projections, industry outlooks, and wage data into the tool. Manipulate those data elements with the occupational information of the O*NET database (the skills needed in regional occupations, both the declining and the growing). Study results point out which skills transfer to likely new occupations and pinpoint where skill gaps exist.
Hope enthusiastically describes how transferability of skills studies work: “We tune the TORQ analysis system to get the most leverage from the data. We can put our own labor market information in the system. The system allows us to build a bridge from O*NET to all these other data sources such as occupational and industry projections. And we can be very localized in our analysis. We apply filters to study the occupations and geography we want to target. We can specify how we want reports to look. The result is very useful information that allows us to determine appropriate training investments for an area.”
Indiana Workforce Development can respond to alarming situations quickly. As soon as they identified skill gaps, they determined appropriate training investments. They were able to guide the community college system to create the correct curriculum. Ivy Tech developed customized training programs for those displaced workers, with re-employment as the immediate goal. “We submitted a National Emergency Grant Application for $10.4 million, with a major investment for training,” details Hope. “We are meeting this challenge head-on, right here and now, with specific, needed training.”
Hope Clark sees partnerships of state labor market information entities with community colleges as a new market for O*NET information. “Our strategy for using O*NET data has grown. I think we will see increasing efforts to make targeted, condensed, short-term training in partnership with the community colleges.”
By using O*NET data at a macro level, workforce development professionals are learning how to impact thousands of micro situations. While career counselors continue to aid displaced workers on an individual basis, people like Hope Clark can take great satisfaction in being significant contributors to large-scale solutions. “The work I’m doing is very worthwhile, enabling me to help a lot of people,” she concludes.
When Hope Clark is not creating re-employment solutions for thousands of displaced workers, she is totally focused on being a Mom. She spends all the time she can with nearly-three-year-old son, Mark. “I do educational things with him, like reading books and playing games. It’s very important to me to balance my career with my responsibilities as a parent. And I want to tell you--the State of Indiana offers on-site child care. I really appreciate how the State of Indiana encourages and supports working parents,” she adds. |
