A Skilled Workforce: Oklahoma’s Career Readiness Certificate (CRC)

A huge percentage of Southern Oklahoma employers report that they cannot find qualified applicants for entry-level positions. There is a growing gap between the skills of the current workforce applicants and the basic skill levels needed for the workplace.

The high school diploma, technical certificates, and college degrees do not always provide the necessary documentation for the requisite skills or the skill levels that are necessary in the workplace.

Oklahoma’s Career Ready Certificate (CRC), utilizing the ACT-WorkKeys System, will provide the skills’ credential that is understood and valued by employers, educators, and employees

The Oklahoma CRC will clearly indicate work skill levels needed for a majority of jobs and occupations found in our state and across the nation. There are 16 states across our nation, in various levels of implementation, developing and creating a career readiness or employability certificate program utilizing the ACT-WorkKeys System.

CRC is that it is an employment system made up of three major components. When all three components are utilized, WorkKeys becomes a very strong predictor of career readiness, equally important for individuals, employers, education/training providers, and job service organizations.

The first component is the assessment of the incumbent employee or employee applicant that is seeking a CRC. The Southern Workforce System has multiple assessment sites where an individual may take the three most common basic skills assessments: Applied Mathematics, Reading for Information, and Locating Information.

The second component is job profiling, which can be performed in Oklahoma by consultants trained and licensed by ACT. If the company is using WorkKeys as the requirement for employment, the specific job or jobs must be profiled. However, an employer may also choose to use the WorkKeys occupational profiles databank, which has over 14,000 jobs previously profiled.

The third component is the up-skilling curriculum which is a paper and pencil or computer-based KeyTrain curriculum available at multiple sites. KeyTrain is designed to enhance and increase individuals’ skill knowledge and success in the areas where skill gaps exist between the individual’s skills ranking and identified occupational/job profiles.

These three components will assure that a CRC system is in place to profile the jobs’ needs, assess the individual’s skill levels, and provides a training component that can improve workers’ job readiness skills. The Southern Workforce Board is currently working with numerous public partners, schools and businesses for implementation of Oklahoma’s CRC. If you would like more information, please contact Kerry Manning at (580) 924-5331 or email at kmanning@bigfive.org