New Program Helps Job Seekers, Employers Connect

Spanning the daunting chasm between employers and the unemployed, state and county agencies have opened a one-stop shop here that is already linking job seekers with new jobs.

The new Employment Resource Center opened this week at the Simi Valley office of the Employment Development Department.

There, the EDD is helping job seekers feed their names and resumes into Internet accounts that employers soon will browse for prospective employees.

Meanwhile, the Ventura County Workforce Development Division is feeding employers’ job listings into a similar system that job hunters can examine at will.

And at the same time, job counseling programs such as GAIN are training new and inexperienced would-be workers for the modern work force: grooming their resumes, building their confidence and hooking them up with employers who offer on-the-job training.

The program taught Sharon Castro how to give a good job interview, linked her to a computerized job-search system and even gave her $50 to go out and buy new clothes for her interviews.

“They’re giving us every opportunity to be successful, and now it’s up to us,” said Castro, 28. “It’s just getting you out there and giving you the skills and the know-how to get a job.”

Castro, a single mother and former medical clerk, was thrown into a bar-tending job after she and her husband separated two years ago. But three months ago, she gave up tending bar and went on welfare for three months because her job was taking time away from her children.

With the Simi Valley job center’s help, she says, she is determined to find a new job in a medical office so she can work full time to support herself and her 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter while they are at school.

The center faxed five copies of Castro’s resume to medical offices Wednesday, and she said she has already lined up several interviews on her own.

“This is a great program,” she said, her fingers cruising over the computer keyboard of Job Opening Browse System, or JOBS, which lists jobs ranging from waitress and warehouse worker to chauffeur and short-order chef. “It’s teaching you things, and giving you self-esteem and maybe things that you wouldn’t have if you were sitting at home.”

The seemingly obvious fusion of supply and demand in the county’s job market took shape only this year, as part of a growing national trend, said Tom Nikirk, regional manager of the county’s Workforce Development Division.

The county and state agencies, as well as the county-run GAIN job-training program for welfare recipients, began unifying their networks earlier this year by identifying points where their systems could intersect, he said.

They redesigned computer and phone systems to meet the dual needs of employers and job hunters. Using funds from the U.S. Department of Labor, the county’s Workforce Development Division will even subsidize wages for new workers during the time that a company needs to retrain them.

The agencies installed cubicles in the Simi Valley center, where employers can interview applicants, and laid out literature from organizations as diverse as the Job Training Partnership Act and Veterans Affairs.

As a result, job hunters no longer “get the runaround,” as they once perceived the unpleasant business of going from referral to referral searching for a job or employment counseling services, Nikirk said.

And if the Simi Valley center works as planned, a new center will be opened in Oxnard later this spring to handle clients from western Ventura County as well, he said.

“The concept is a single point of contact between the job seeker and the employer,” said Nikirk, whose agency helps find employees for companies that have regular turnover and a steady need for workers. “Now that we’ve focused the three primary partners as a cornerstone, an employer or a job-seeker will be able to come in and address their needs.”

Steven Hubbard, 28, said the new job-listing system is a huge improvement over the old system--which involved poring over 3-by-5-inch index cards tacked to a bulletin board.

“I do like this, this is much easier,” said the part-time karate teacher and former postal carrier as he scanned a computer screen for warehouses that might need a shipping clerk. “The only thing is, I wish the list had been updated faster. Sometimes you go after these jobs and they’ve already been filled.”

For employers, the new program is a good source of new, trainable employees, said Newbury Park executive Robert Wentworth.

Wentworth’s company, Incline, repairs LCD screens for the laptop computer industry. And in two years of operation, it has hired seven or eight people and trained them through the Workforce Development Division program, he said.

“We’ve been doing quite a bit of expansion lately, and they’re a good source of people,” he said. “These jobs did not exist until they started it. . . . It really helped tremendously.”

A ceremonial opening for the Employment Resource Center is scheduled for 11:30 this morning.