Helping Job Seekers Who Have Limited Basic Skills

11/5/2004 -

The Heldrich Center is proud to offer a new, comprehensive guide for career 
center staff and policymakers entitled, Helping Job Seekers Who Have 
Limited Basic Skills: A Guide for Workforce Development Professionals. The 
guide, created with support from the J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, offers a 
step-by-step overview of how to assist career center customers who lack 
sufficient literacy, language, or other basic skills to fully access career 
center services or to find and keep rewarding jobs.
Government-run One-Stops and other types of career centers are increasingly 
expected to meet the needs of customers who have limited basic skills. 
However, they often lack the tools or knowledge to do this effectively. 
This guide for workforce professionals, the first of its kind in the 
nation, provides specific steps and strategies that career centers can take 
to improve their services.

The guide was authored by Jennifer Cleary, project director at the Heldrich 
Center, and Dr. Paul Jurmo, consultant and nationally recognized expert on 
adult education and workforce development issues. It covers a wide variety 
of topics, and encourages career centers to collaborate with local adult 
education providers. It also promotes the National Institute for Literacy's 
Equipped for the Future (EFF) program, a standards-based reform model for 
adult education that helps adults build the skills needed to function 
effectively at home, at work, and in the community.

Helping Job Seekers Who Have Limited Basic Skills has a user-friendly 
format with an overview of each topic, concrete suggestions for improving 
career services, and a list of Web-based instructional resources.

http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/Resources/Publication/132/Job%20Seekers.pdf

Donna JG Brian
Moderator, NIFL Workplace Literacy Discussion List, and
Coordinator/Developer LINCS Workforce Education Special Collection at 
http://worklink.coe.utk.edu/
Center for Literacy Studies at The University of Tennessee
600 Henley Street, Suite 312
Knoxville, TN 37996-4135

865-974-3420 (desk phone)        FAX 865-974-3857
djgbrian at utk.edu