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The St. Joseph Metro Chamber 2013 Winter Chairmans Breakfast, held Tuesday at Holiday Inn, served as the venue for kicking off the Certified Work Ready program. More than 170 people attended the event.

Utah is well known for its young, educated, bilingual, skilled workforce, but a new initiative underway will make that workforce stand out even more by earning the National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC).

Perhaps no program in the region has been more beneficial to employers than the WorkKeys Profiling and Career Readiness Certificate (CRC). Based on ACTs WorkKeys system, the CRC assesses job seekers foundational skills to ensure they are ready to work in todays technology-driven environment.

Achieving the Utah Certified Work Ready Community (CWRC) designation is an important milestone for economic and workforce development in any community. It means the community is integrated into a new eco-system that links education and workforce, aligns to economic development and matches employers to jobs.

If a large number of people earn the certificate and Southside receives the Certified Work Ready Community designation, it will show that the regions workers have skills needed to do modern jobs “in a measurable way, which should help in recruiting companies, said Martinsville Mayor Kim Adkins.

The research partnership examined the average earnings, entered employment, and retention rates by NCRC and education levels of Adult enrolled clients over three years. The results quantifiably demonstrate the benefits to jobseekers that choose to demonstrate their skills via the completion of such assessments.

ACT is in the midst of a national effort to encourage states to gather and report data that will help them better address skills gaps that may exist — and that will better reflect to site selectors states' true work-force pros and cons.

Today, more than 500 of the businesses directly impacted by the storm have reopened, retaining more than 4,500 jobs in Joplin that had been considered “at risk. Jasper County, which includes Joplin, has been named Missouri’s first national ACT “Career Ready Certified community...

The Linn, Benton, Lincoln Workforce Investment Board (WIB), a business-led organization dedicated to developing work force skills to meet the needs of employers, has engaged in a significant effort this past year to align public work force development efforts in the region to meet these challenges.

The certification means that Jasper County (and Newton is not far behind) has reached key thresholds in the number of existing workers, graduating students and businesses that participate in ACT™s Career-Ready Certification process. It™s a great start, but we need to keep up the effort and the interest.