Spotlight On O*NET Users! Each month we'll feature a member of the O*NET user community, with a brief description of how they are applying O*NET in their daily work. This month’s spotlight: Phyllis Dayao Supervisor and Imagineer

The Hawaii Career Information Delivery System uses O*NET with boundless success.  Led by supervisor and imagineer Phyllis Dayao.  HCIDS has integrated O*NET information into countless tools and services, since about 2000.  “It was about that time we gained funding to develop our Website, as part of launching America’s Career Resource Network,” Phyllis recalls.  “First we made a crosswalk from Hawaii job titles and occupations to the new O*NET database.”

Yes, they made their own crosswalk!  HCIDS, part of Hawaii’s Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, frequently develops highly-effective, customized Hawaii-appropriate programs and services incorporating O*NET. Click to Career Kokua, http://www.careerkokua.org/ , Hawaii’s attractive, robust Website for counselors, teachers, workers, students, and others engaged in career exploration.  You will see O*NET evident throughout Career Kokua’s clean and user friendly pages:

• An enticing option is the colorful “cover” of Career of the Week, an engaging kick-off feature that users can link to directly.  Immediately below the “cover story” are links to several O*NET related occupations.  Compelling design forces explorers to click into the treasure trove of O*NET information.
  
  “Oh no, we don’t write those Career of the Week pieces,” laughs Phyllis.  “We don’t have the staff or time to do that!  I approach publishers in our community, business leaders, newspapers, entrepreneurs.  They write the stories that highlight a real individual really working a job.  We post the “cover picture” and the story to attract our site visitors.  We use the O*NET Code Connector to find the occupation closest to the job our featured worker does; we then search in the background for related occupations within the O*NET database.  Our system posts the links to several of them that also are Hawaii occupations—up with the attractive story about the featured professional.”


• Just below Career of the Week and its links to related occupations information is Today’s Occupational Highlight, a rapidly changing occupational spotlight.  The HCIDS IT specialist has programmed this feature to automatically turn over frequently, with a link to a random occupation and its information in the O*NET database.


• The last feature down the right side of Career Kokua’s page is Most Viewed Occupations, a section listing the top ten most-popular-for-viewing occupations in the O*NET database—most viewed in Hawaii, that is.  This listing seems to change each time you visit!
  
  “Oh, it does change continually,” Phyllis confirms.  “But no, changing out the occupations that appear there doesn’t require intervention on our part.  Again, our IT specialist custom made the tracking system that captures user clicks, automatically ranks the occupational titles by popular interest, and inserts them in the page.”


• O*NET is ubiquitous in Career Kokua, not only from the navigation bar down the right side of the page.  It is evident in the dropdown menu at Career Assessment, where the user can select Skills (and perform an O*NET skills analysis), O*NET Interest Profiler, or O*NET Work Importance Locator.  O*NET information is present also in the dropdown menu at Career Exploration, where selecting Occupations leads the user to the wealth of information about O*NET occupations available in Hawaii. Throughout the site occupational titles appear in green typeface, with a green leaf icon indicating “green” occupations. 

“We have talented and creative people,” Phyllis quietly understates.  HCIDS accomplishes very much with very few.  “There are seven of us—one IT specialist, two career information analysts, one user services specialist who does all of our training in the field, two administrative professionals, and myself.”

While HCIDS developed its programs, tools and services largely for youth career exploration, Phyllis reports that “recently we are focusing more on incumbent workers.”  A quick glance at the agency’s newsletter list of “new members” confirms Phyllis’s observation; names of groups and agencies that assist adults appear.  “We participate in some of our Department’s Rapid Response activities that serve displaced workers.  We go out and do skills assessment, gap analysis, and administer O*NET Career Exploration tools.  We are currently developing another guide, Strategies on How to Stay Employed, which incorporates using O*NET information.”

There is no end to the ways that Phyllis and her band of overachievers leverage O*NET information.  She is quick to credit intoCareers, at the University of Oregon, a consortium of 19 states, with providing significant help.  “The intoCareers content manager keeps us up-to-date, informing us each spring about new O*NET information and suggesting what is most relevant.  We take that and run with it, making custom Hawaii programs, tools and services.”

When not channeling all of her energy into workforce development programs and services, Phyllis relishes travel.  She recently returned from a two-and-a-half week adventure to Manila, Hong Kong, Macau, and even Mainland China for a day.  “The entire trip awed me.  The good manners and professionalism of every single person we encountered in Manila stood out, especially,” Phyllis recalls.  That’s saying a lot, since Phyllis, and most Hawaiians it seems, wrap visitors in hospitality and good manners.  With a lovely “aloha,” Phyllis signs off.

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