What you did over your summer vacation probably wasn’t anything like what Mike Tillotson did over his—unless you did the Hot Rod Power Tour from Cleveland to Little Rock with your son! That’s right; the soon-to-retire-again Tulsa Area Program Manager, with the Oklahoma Employment Services Commission, is anything but retiring. Mike, a Navy veteran who worked with DOT titles for decades, is an inveterate O*NET champion. When Mike was a Navy instructor, the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) was large in his life. The old Dictionary of Occupational Titles meant a lot to Mike. “I was very skeptical when O*NET came along. Once I took a deep look at it, I began to realize its beauty and potential. Now, for years, I’ve pushed it and taught it.”
Upon retiring from the Navy in 1985, Mike appeared at the Employment Security Office, looking for work. When they offered him a job, he said no thank you. But then when “they called and asked me to do a temporary project, as a 999 hours worker, I thought why not.” You can imagine the rest of the story; this year Mike retires again after 22 years.
Perhaps no one has used O*NET more ways than Mike has. “I lead employer seminars, giving businesses the O*NET basics in a couple of hours. I present O*NET overviews to business people through our Business Councils, work job fairs where there are many employers, show people how they can use O*NET in our Oklahoma Job Link system, coding their openings with a universal occupational code. I used O*NET when I wrote our Job Skills Workshop. I take folks looking for work into O*NET, the skills portion, and into the Detail Reports. I tell them this is what you want to make a copy of, to help yourself build your resume. I make sure that people feel comfortable exploring in O*NET.” It hasn’t become stale for Mike. “It’s always getting better. Now there is the new Tools and Technology area. People ask, ‘Where do I get that information?’ And I can show them—‘Here’s where you go.’”
Mike’s responsibility is system coordinating for all the offices in the Tulsa area, covering four counties, so he has large training responsibilities. He also works with the Governor’s Council of Economic Development, giving him more opportunity to use O*NET.
“We work with the new employers coming to town. We look at the occupations they will have jobs in, and then the requirements of those occupations. We go through it all, with them, searching in O*NET. They are amazed. So, I am using O*NET as a sales tool and marketing tool. Using O*NET shows that we have our act together, makes us look good. Then, establishing a business in Tulsa is appealing. People see that we have tools, that I will help people one-on-one. Yes, it contributes to a compelling case for coming here.”
You can imagine that Mike is not going to sit back, watch TV, and snooze when he retires again this year. “I’ll do some consulting. I have agreed to help a chamber of commerce with economic development work.” And there will be more Hot Rod Power Tours with his aerospace engineer son. He enjoys time out at the family place on Grand Lake, about an hour out of town. No phone; just the deer and ducks—and the cigarette boat, out on the 60-miles long lake.
Mike Tillotson is one O*NET user who is moving as fast as O*NET is growing and improving.
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