It’s hard to believe it’s been nine months since CareerBuilder announced its commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which brings together leaders from all over the world to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

This week, CareerBuilder’s Chief Development Officer, Hope Gurion, will be attending CGI America in Chicago, participating in the workforce development discussions at the event, during which she will also provide updates on CareerBuilder’s commitment.

Since launching the commitment in October 2011, CareerBuilder has provided workforce centers in 20 states complimentary access to its proprietary Labor Market Supply and Demand portal, with the goal of helping unemployed individuals get access to accurate, timely information about which jobs are most in demand.

Making the Commitment, Creating a Strategy
Gurion recalls what led to CareerBuilder’s decision to make this particular commitment back in October. “With all of the discussion around the skills mismatch that had been happening at the time, it became clear that there was a lack of education and awareness around exactly which skills were in demand,” she says.

She knew CareerBuilder could be an asset in bridging that awareness gap. “As a result, we felt like there were gaps in the information people were getting from counselors at workforce development centers to determine which jobs would provide sustaintable employment or how to retrain themselves. So we focused our commitment around providing that data.”

CareerBuilder’s Supply and Demand Portal provides crucial insight counselors can use to help the unemployed, such as which companies are hiring the most people in their area, which occupations are most in demand and what kind of skills and training will help them increase their chances of finding employment.

Gurion wanted to provide workforce centers nationwide with both the right resources, as well as proper training on how to use this portal most effectively. “Most workforce development centers do not have easy access to the best data to show which skills and occupations are in the highest demand,” she says. “So instead, they rely on recent anecdotal information or less recent BLS data. The right data can steer them in the right direction.”

To achieve the adoption in certain markets, CareerBuilder leveraged its state and local government salesforce to communicate the availability of the Supply and Demand Portal, and the benefits of using the data to increase employment and placement rates.  In other markets, CareerBuilder contacted more than 3,000 workforce board employees through email inviting them to register for free access online and receive online training to use the portal on a self-serve basis.

“The reason we made the commitment was to educate people most in need so they can pursue necessary training to increase the chances of sustainable employment,” Gurion says.

A New Partnership
Another advantage to being part of the CGI is the networking opportunities it affords those involved. For example, as a result of its involvement with CGI, CareerBuilder recently formed a partnership with a local organization, Chicago Career Tech, which provides on-the-job training to help people get experience while learning skills needed for the job.

“Their mission is to take people who are out of work and pair them with employers who want to hire people who are unemployed,” Gurion explains. “We gave them access to Supply and Demand in order to find other employers who could be other partners with them.” The partnership proved to be a mutually beneficial one, as well: CareerBuilder ended up recruiting and hiring someone through this organization, and he is now one of his department’s top performers.

Challenges, Opportunities and Future Plans
While CareerBuilder has faced challenges in achieving widespread adoption among workforce boards, Gurion says the successes the company has had can be expanded through the modifications recently made to the commitment.

“The proudest achievement so far is seeing the workforce boards of two of America’s largest cities [Chicago and Houston] adopt the CareerBuilder Supply and Demand Portal so widely.  They recognized the potential to have a meaningful impact to reduce unemployment in their cities by directing individuals to areas of sustainable employment, based on the most comprehensive, actionable labor market data available,” Gurion says.

This summer, CareerBuilder will modify and extend its commitment, using what it has learned over the past year to adjust its communication strategy to further increase use of the data from the Supply and Demand Portal to maximize impact on those who need to be reskilled to close the skills gap and get more Americans back to work.

Learn more about CareerBuilder’s commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.