Certificate shows career readiness

BENTONVILLE - A new certification program will help employers know if an applicant is qualified for a position, a group of business community leaders learned Wednesday afternoon.
"The Arkansas Career Readiness Certificate designates that an individual has core employability skills required across multiple industries and occupations. The CRC will give job seekers a competitive edge, assist them with creating a skill-enhancement road map and assure employers that they can perform the duties required for 21 st-century jobs," according to a press release issued by Kimberly Friedman, communications director for the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services. "The CRC is portable, meaning it is not tied to any specific job or business."
The idea of issuing careerreadiness certificates started several years ago but is just now taking hold, the audience learned. The state was seeing a high turnover rate because many employees were getting jobs that they weren't properly trained for, Arkansas Economic Development Commission representative Steve Sparks said.
The certificates will be issued to rate the employees' skills in three areas - reading for information, applied math and locating information. Each skill area will have its own rating, using a bronze, silver and gold designation system. In other words, the employee will receive one of the color ratings for each of the three areas. An employee could rate as only a bronze in math but have gold-level reading for information skills, Derek Crews agreed. Crews is vice president for corporate learning at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, which will serve as the northwest-region testing center for the certificate. NWACC's Corporate Learning Department hosted Wednesday's forum.
The test that employees can take to receive the certification is free and comes from the WorkKeys comprehensive skills assessment. If the potential employee does not score as well as preferred in a given category, that person can essentially study materials provided by the testing company and test in the area again.
Employers won't be required to expect the certificate, but it could prove to be a useful tool in knowing that a job candidate is truly qualified for a job. The certificates also streamline the training process because an employer can immediately identify areas in which their current or future employees have deficiencies, Crews said.