A New Working Strategy : ‘One-Stop’ Centers Help Job Seekers on Career Paths
On one floor, you can get an assessment of your work skills. On another, counselors will help you with job training. And on another, you can file for unemployment benefits, then use the computers, phones, job postings and even borrow the office wardrobe to look for new work.
Welcome to the Santa Ana Work Center, an experiment aimed at easing the often arduous journey of workers who have lost their jobs or are looking to change careers.
The center, situated in Santa Ana’s rail and bus station building, is the latest in Southern California of a growing number of so-called “one-stop” career centers that are sprouting nationwide. Experts say San Diego already has a network of such centers, and there are similar operations in Long Beach, Anaheim and Cerritos, although some of them are intended mainly to help laid-off aerospace workers.
The idea is simple: Eliminate overlapping employment services and combine them with other social and educational agencies under one roof.
Paul Amorino, director of occupational education at Rancho Santiago College, believes the one-stop career center is the wave of the future. What’s driving them, he says, are shrinking job-training dollars as well as government’s push to slim down.
“It will probably be the least costly way of servicing the client and helping them to get to where they want quickly,” said Amorino, whose school has sent a staff of five skill assessors to the Santa Ana Work Center.
The Santa Ana Work Center, which opened earlier this month and is available to the general public, is run by a staff of 30 from the state Employment Development Department (unemployment claims), Orange County Social Services (welfare work programs), the city of Santa Ana (job training and enterprise zone benefits) and Rancho Santiago College (career and skill assessment).
The center “links and breaks down turf issues,” said Patricia Nunn, the facility’s director and one of its founders. Nunn said more than 200 people have visited the center.
Among them is Chuck Johnston, 38, who last week combed through job postings and was using the telephones and fax machine to make contacts with potential employers.
Johnston, a graphic artist who lives in Santa Ana, says he used to go to downtown Santa Ana for help with job training and then to another office a few miles away for unemployment benefits. Now he can take care of both matters in one place--and with less paperwork.
“They make a difference,” Johnston said, adding that for the unemployed, every little bit helps.
Amorino, Nunn and others have been planning Santa Ana’s one-stop center for more than a year, and it took them several months to scrape together money and donations from both the public and private sectors.
The center’s desks and chairs were donated largely by the state Employment Development Department. Staff workers rounded up four old computers, and local businesses agreed to pay for staff business cards and the subscriptions for a few newspapers. Others have dropped off business suits that workers can wear for job interviews, and a nearby dry cleaner has offered to keep those suits clean.
The center’s future is uncertain, however. Its success will depend on how much it is used by workers and employers, and whether it gets continued support from public agencies and private enterprises. At the moment, counselors and staff workers are trying to get more personal computers, a telephone voice-mail system, a copy machine and staffers who can speak languages such as Vietnamese.
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, who toured the center last week, thinks there will be no shortage of users. Joblessness in Santa Ana--a city of more than 300,000--has typically been about double the nation’s unemployment rate of 5%.
Pulido believes the job center will also help the city maintain and attract employers. “Hey, what company isn’t going to take advantage of a prescreened person to hire?” he said, noting one of the services available to employers.
Also housed in the work center is an office of Santa Ana’s enterprise zone, a program that enables businesses operating in designated areas to get state tax credits for expanding and hiring.
Cindy Andrade, office manager at Riviera Bakery in Santa Ana, says she has used the work center to recruit 15 employees, mainly for kitchen jobs paying $4.50 to $5 an hour to start.
“I think it’s a great idea having everything located centrally,” Andrade said.
Diane Peters, 41, a weight-loss counselor in Huntington Beach who is considering a change in careers, says she is using the center to get help with her resume, learn job interviewing techniques and develop new word-processing skills.
“The resources are wonderful,” she said.
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Where to Go
Locations of some “one-stop” career centers in the Southland:
Career Transition Center
4344 Donald Douglas Drive
Long Beach
(310) 570-3700
One-Stop Career Center
2355 Crenshaw Blvd.
Torrance
(310) 782-3200
Santa Ana Work Center
1000 E. Santa Ana Blvd.
Santa Ana
(714) 565-2600
SELACO Private Industry Council
10900 E. 183rd St.
Cerritos
(310) 402-9336
Anaheim Career Employment Center
50 S. Anaheim Blvd.
Anaheim
(714) 254-4350
