Workforce Development Training Program Doubles, Job Placement Jumps 10%

The Power of CareerEquity’s Innovative Platform

“Delivering successful career services with CareerEquity compared to without it – is like the difference between using snail mail and email – because finding and screening candidates, and tracking and reporting outcomes, is just so much easier… it doesn’t even compare.”
– Antuan Cannon, Vice President of Talent Development, Willdan

BEFORE

The Willdan Clean Energy Academy was created to help build a pipeline of skilled workers to meet the growing demands of the clean energy industry. After training more than 1,000 students, the academy successfully placed more than 60% of its trained candidates – mainly within the clean energy industry – with average annual salaries of $60K.

But tracking the success of a large number of workforce program graduates proved to be challenging.

The data on available employment opportunities, application success rates, and candidates’ advancement along career pathways remained difficult to access, track, and share with employment partners.

DURING

To solve this major challenge, The Willdan Clean Energy Academy partnered with CareerEquity and within 90 days, Willdan integrated CareerEquity’s cutting-edge technology platform. The platform provided one place for its team members and employment partners to collaborate, collect, and share data while actively connecting pre-vetted talent to the right career opportunities.

The CareerEquity team also provided six additional months of one-on-one support to help the program build processes and procedures designed to enhance career services for training candidates and to better engage with employers and new workforce development partners. After joining CareerEquity’s unified workforce development ecosystem, the Willdan Clean Energy Academy was armed with the tools and technology to improve program outcomes, enhance program measurement, and effectively evaluate their success.

AFTER

Willdan doubled the size of its training program, onboarded 450+ candidates on to the CareerEquity platform, and increased job placement rates by 10%. The career training program also experienced efficiency improvements, higher participation satisfaction levels, and improved training-to-career placement results. Additionally, integrated skills assessments and auto matching improved how their team identified and matched job seekers to open positions, enhancing applicant success rates and employer satisfaction levels. This closed the gap between the understanding of an applicant’s true skills, training, and experience compared to what was documented on their resume.