Skills Needs Assessment Checklist Program

About the Program

Category: Personnel Management, Employment and Training (Best in Category)

Year: 2010

The Skills Needs Assessment Checklist Program is an integral component of Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s Emerging Sectors initiative, which develops and attracts a highly skilled workforce to recruit companies from the County’s top ten emerging industry sectors. Before this workforce could be developed, however, the County’s educators needed to learn which soft and technical skills these companies require from their employees. Thus, the Oakland County Workforce Development Division and the consulting firm, EdEn, Incorporated, developed an on-line “checklist” that more than 100 emerging sector employers completed, and that asked the employers to identify the basic and technical skills job seekers need to qualify for emerging sector jobs. Based on their responses, the Skills needs Assessment Checklist Program identified the top ten occupations across all emerging industry sectors; the top five occupations for each emerging industry sector; and the skills employers required across all sectors, and for each sector. The Skills Needs Assessment Checklist Program also developed comprehensive job profiles for the top thirty occupations. Each profile describes the occupation and its tasks and identifies the tools and technology used in, and the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes required for, the occupation.