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February 18, 2007
The agency once known as the unemployment office has been down on its luck.
The state admits its job-matching system used by WorkOne, the CS3 search engine, is out of date. A former employee who worked with the system says it's so cumbersome that only an estimated 10 percent of local employers actually list jobs in the database.
The Post-Tribune reviewed the state database of jobs for Lake and Porter counties and found the state could offer only 744 full-time positions to the 6,634 local people who filed for new unemployment claims in January.
Post-Tribune research also found the state offers only a fraction of the local jobs that appear on major online searches like CareerBuilder or Monster, or on local companies' own Web sites, and that some of the state's listings are outdated.
"I haven't been able to find any openings," Robert Wood, an unemployed carpenter from Valparaiso, said.
Wood said he makes a weekly pilgrimage to the WorkOne office in Portage to use the system, but pickings have been slim. He routinely finds the jobs are filled after he has driven to the company to fill out an application.
A receptionist and data entry clerk from Hobart, who did not want to be named while she is receiving unemployment benefits, said she has gone to the Gary WorkOne site for several weeks.
"The last couple of times, they didn't have even one match," she said.
Last year, the state Department of Workforce Development made an abortive attempt to replace its job matching search engine. In February 2006, the state announced it reached a $2.8 million agreement with Monster to run its database. The state eventually backed away when top officials decided they needed far more than the contract suggested. The state is now back in negotiations with another proposal and an announcement is anticipated, Joe Dilaura, spokesman for Workforce Development, said.
But some wonder if it is worth it for Indiana to stay in the job bank business when it's having so few postings, and with the job market changing so rapidly?
Shift in employment hiring
"There is no question there have been a lot of changes in the last five years," said Gayle Van Sessen, executive director of the Crown Point Chamber of Commerce.
She said she couldn't comment on the state's job bank. But Van Sessen has seen the local employment market shift. Companies are using increasingly sophisticated temporary employment services for their initial hires -- not just for hiring secretaries but warehouse workers, nurses and other professionals.
Companies also post their jobs on their own Web sites. And, of course, the big online databases post thousands of jobs.
The state may manage only 744 full-time listings, but more than 7,000 jobs are available in Lake and Porter counties, according to Greg Fox, recent past president of the Duneland Chamber of Commerce.
Some companies are using the system. Employers aren't listed by name in the database provided by Workforce Development, but some of the bigger companies can be gleaned from the referral information employers list in their contact information. Centier Bank and U.S. Steel each listed several clerical postings on the state's CS3 system.
But noticeably absent from the state's online database were other big local employers -- Mittal Steel, The Methodist Hospitals, Family Express in Valparaiso and each of the five casinos -- even though each of these employers showed dozens of well-paying jobs on their own Web sites.
Methodist reported using WorkOne a year ago to fill a clerical slot and said it plans to use the agency again. But for the current list of hospital technicians and nurses currently listed on its Web site, it has instead used CareerBuilder, Methodist spokeswoman Carole Biancardi, said.
"For some of our more technical positions, we have had really good success with places like CareerBuilder," she said.
As a sign of the times, officials at Resorts in East Chicago said the casino rarely advertises any of its openings outside its own Web site. It doesn't use the state and it rarely uses the big private job banks.
"People understand we have openings at our casino. We get plenty of traffic between our Web site and walk-ins off the street," Debbie Mitchell, spokeswoman for Resorts East Chicago, said.
Horseshoe in Hammond and Majestic Star I and II casinos in Gary were more confusing. Both companies reported working with WorkOne for the dozens of open positions but only two jobs openings appeared in the database provided the Post-Tribune.
Horseshoe reported an average of 50 openings a week, but none of them appeared in the CS3 system. Two openings at Majestic Star did appear in the state database. One appeared to be a listing that had been filled for two months.
Though the state provided a database from the first week in February, the Majestic Star listing for a cage supervisor had been filled on Dec. 1, according to the company.
Majestic Star blames its own computer system for the lack of complete listings. Its computers are not able to provide a salary range, which the state system requires before posting a job, according to Yvette Gawne, public relations manager for the company.
"There is a communications problem. They can see the jobs but they can't post them," Gawne said.
WorkOne employees can refer candidates to Majestic Star's Web site, she said.
Other employers, who did not want to be named because they have to work with the state, were less forgiving. Many said they have abandoned the state's job search, finding it difficult to use and finding the applicants who came through the door unqualified.
A former employee of WorkOne, who was well acquainted with the system, said it would take employers an hour to post a job listing. At the other end, since it's only an automated system, frustrated applicants often list themselves as having skills they didn't really have, just to find matches.
"I wanted people to take it a step further, try to do prescreening but if they didn't do that, the system really didn't work," the former employee said.
WorkOne successes, failures
WorkOne is the state's title for a one-stop shop of job service centers. Local full service offices in Gary, Hammond and LaPorte provide the state employment services from Workforce Development -- mainly unemployment benefits and the computer match. A private vendor provides other basic services like matching job seekers with training, providing data on the job market and finding training grants for local employers, according to the state.
Last year, Gov. Mitch Daniels received approval from the U.S. Department of Labor to further marry the two elements. In Lake and Porter and the surrounding Northwest Indiana counties, the not-for-profit Center for Workforce Innovations now operates WorkOne centers and provides the nongovernment services offered under the old system. The new operators and their subcontractors can also bid on new programs.
"We provide a whole range of services," Linda Woloshansky, president of Workforce Innovations, said.
Since taking over, the Center of Workforce Innovations has had its successes.
Aside from the online database, in the last year, Mittal Steel has signed a contract to use WorkOne to prescreen and pretest future applicants for custodial and blue collar positions at its Harbor Works mill in East Chicago. The steel giant wants to build its own bank of applicants as it anticipates the retirement of baby boomers, according to the company.
There have also been failures. The Lake County subcontractor of Center for Workforce Innovations lost out to Ivy Tech in its bid to run the the multi-million dollar training program, Major Opportunities. The community college will run the preapprentice program geared toward bringing more minorities and women into the construction trades.
Woloshansky acknowledged that the current job matching system can be rough on employers, but said she hoped the new system would be more user friendly.
"There are some real strengths and there are some other services we need to work on," Woloshansky said.
There may be a stigma attached to placing higher skilled jobs with WorkOne, which may be why Mittal and Methodist would consider using WorkOne for some jobs but not the higher-skill, better-paying jobs listed on their own Web sites, she said.
Over the past year, the state has been re-evaluating all of its workforce services. When asked directly if a state-sponsored job bank is necessary in an age when people can go to Monster on their own, Woloshansky said, "That's all part of the evaluation."
Despite the potential cost of rebuilding its own internal job bank, Woloshansky was not certain the state would abandon its own job matching system, at least not without seeking another waiver from the U.S. Department of Labor.
With so few jobs in their computer database, could the newly unemployed really count on the unemployment office to find them a job?
"I think people can rely on CS3 as an option to help them find a job," she said. "But you cannot rely on just one path and one strategy."
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