On Wednesday, April 25, Cooper-Siegel Community Library hosted EREC’s training on job and career resources. The two presenters, Betsy Neidle from CareerLink, and Wes Roberts, Senior Librarian at CLP’s Job and Career Education Center/PC Center, both provided a plethora of useful information. The EREC committee members have culled together our top takeaways for those of you who weren’t able to attend.
Top Tips from CareerLink:
PA CareerLink is a one-stop shop that seeks to connect employers and job seekers. They offer a range of services to help job seekers find available jobs, assess and improve their skills, and complete the required Commonwealth Workforce Development System (CWDS) profile, which is related to collecting unemployment. Many people have not completed their profile, which is essential in order to receive job matches. She was kind enough to provide a printable CWDS Enrollment Guide. This document offers detailed instructions for completing a CWDS profile.
Betsy herself had two great recommendations. We should all take some time to go through the process of creating our own profile in the CWDS, as well as visit a CareerLink location. As she said, our patrons are using these services, and the more familiar we are with them, the more helpful we can be.
Betsy had a lot of interesting statistics to share, including the fact that of the 61,809 people CareerLink Pittsburgh served in 2011, a high percentage (48%) had completed college, demonstrating that … For more interesting statistics and details about what CareerLink can offer your patrons, check out Betsy’s PowerPoint.
Top Tips from the Job and Career Education Center:
Wes highlighted a lot of great resources for job seekers as well. In addition to a variety of useful databases available through CLP and, in some cases, a handful of other county libraries, there were a number of helpful free sites. Some of our favorites are:
- GCFLearnFree: This site offers free online lessons to help people improve their technology, literacy, and math skills.
- Resunate.com: This Pittsburgh-based company offers a resume wizard, but also a unique “Auto Focus” feature that helps customize a resume to a specific job description. Users get three free focuses before they have to select a subscription plan.
- Indeed.com: This job aggregator captures about 70% of local job openings, making it one of the more useful places to find potential local employment.
For more great recommendations from Wes, check out his Prezi.
Were you at the training? If so, share your favorite takeaways in the comments below. If you weren’t there but have a favorite job and career resource, we want to know about that too!
Charmaine
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For a concise summary of the world (or ocean) of “e”, read this blog post about the Ebook tipping point by Tracey Thompson in Library 020—Musing about public libraries and library technologies where yes, there are still librarians!
