Alonzo Yanez
The Job Center and the Cooperative Work Experience Education (CWEE) program have relocated to the new Village 8200 facility since the beginning of the current semester, offering one-stop assistance to members of the community who need employment placement.
“We are still two separate programs, but we complement each other,” said Richard Skidmore, director of the Job Placement Center and business professor at Pierce College. “We merged the physical location to provide a better service to our clients.”
After being in a 340-square foot trailer since 1996, the center moved to a 1,600 square foot office formally occupied by the Financial Aid office in 2005. Both the CWEE and the Job Center moved to the 1,600 square foot facility at Pierce’s new Village earlier this year.
“We relocated to the same office for organizational purposes,” commented Ronald Smetzer, director of the CWEE.
The center, under Skidmore’s leadership since October 1998, has extended its services, initially offered only to students, to include members of the surrounding community.
In addition to helping clients by providing guidance about resume writing, job searching and interviewing techniques, it also maintains a “jobs board” on its web page for employers to post positions, and job seekers to examine and apply for the jobs.
“We have expanded our services in the last few years,” said Skidmore. “I developed the CWEE Web site and the jobs board, which are utilized by Professor Smetzer as enrichment for CWEE.”
Once Skidmore developed the jobs board for the center in June 2005, the number of contacts through the center’s web page began to increase, attracting clients nationwide but predominantly from Southern California.
“Here you learn a lot, like how to deal with professional employers, how to communicate and resume writing,” said 18-year-old Hovik Hovanisian, who is still undecided about his major.
“I was shocked and surprised when I came in because they also deal with housing, interviewing skills and internships. I think it is great.”
Though the center offers internship opportunities, career advisement and organizes a career fair once a year, there are still many improvements that could be implemented. Despite limitations, such as lack of advertising, reduced hours of operation and reduced staff availability, the center performs at a high level.
“I don’t advertise to employers,” Skidmore added. “They seek me out. I don’t advertise because I don’t have the staff to manage the responses we would get. We would be swamped and not able to properly serve our clientele.”
“This is a big secret. Students don’t know about CWEE,” said Smetzer. “In fact, this semester I’ll be working with my dean and the vice president of academic affairs to see if we can tweak some of the systems that the college uses to communicate with students and ensure that students know about CWEE.”
According to a recent program review, in 10 years the improvements achieved by the center are evident. While in 1996 it served a total of 4,864 clients, in 2006 it served 8,139. In contrast, while the center was open 183 days in 1996 and 202 days in 1997, last year it was open only for 124.
“We need more staff,” Skidmore said.
“We need a career advisor on campus every day and more student workers to support the program, so I can advertise to employers and handle the volume of responses.”
The same review, written by Skidmore, says that while in 1999 the center averaged 37 clients per day, in 2006 the program averaged 66. It is argued that although the center was open for fewer days, the efficiency of client contact per day has almost doubled.
Pierce’s administration has been unwilling to increase the center’s budget because it is not a revenue-generating center as is the learning center or classes offered by the college.
This situation has made the director generate additional revenue by charging career fair participants a fee to enter the event.
While the center does not generate revenue, approximately 23 percent of the total of clients served in the last five years were non-students members of the community.
The purpose of expanding the services to the surrounding community was that clients in need of additional training for employment would be encouraged to enroll at Pierce for the training.
“I made sure these resources are made available to members of the community because other departments at Pierce can help them be more prepared for the type of jobs they are looking for,” commented Skidmore, who has been a business professor at Pierce since 1975.
“People don’t go to college to get a better education,” added Skidmore. “They want to get better paying jobs.”
The center is organizing the annual Career Fair in May.
There has recently been an increase in the number of employer participation because of the use of corporate logos as sponsors of the fair. Employers allowed the center to utilize their corporate logos on advertising and mailers. While the fair had 65 participants in 2003, it had 133 participants last year.
Skidmore also said that in order to get a job it is important to be persistent. “There is nothing wrong with not knowing something, but you have to be aggressive and willing to learn.”
“We just mailed 8,000 invitations for the career fair,” concluded Skidmore.
“We had about 140 participants last year. We hope for more than 300 employers this year.”
Richard Skidmore, Director at the job placement center is getting papers ready for the Job Fair, which will take place March 15th at Pierce College. (David Salpeter)