Attract More Highly Engaged Community College Students With SkillPointe

By Art Oleszczuk

Have you ever heard an employer complain about having too many well-trained workers to choose from?

Neither have we.

Despite all the well-paying job openings, there are millions of potential workers who don’t have the right skills.

Community colleges are a critical part of the solution. They know what skills employers are looking for and how to train people in those skills.

So what’s the issue? People aren’t aware of all the training opportunities community colleges provide.

What Community Colleges Need is Amplification

Community colleges are a key piece of the workforce puzzle — but that’s just one of their missions. And if their marketing departments are like most, they’re having trouble staying ahead of workforce needs.

That’s where SkillPointe comes in. We make it our mission to help young people and career changers identify promising careers and connect them to the training they need to start earning a better paycheck as quickly as possible.

SkillPointe helps community colleges meet employer demand by providing additional ways for prospective students, trainees and job seekers to discover their training programs.

To do that, we’ve developed a search engine containing over 60,000 training programs from local community colleges, which is easily filtered by location, industry and career of interest.

That’s how we expand community colleges’ recruitment efforts. By marketing that database at the ZIP code level, we connect students to the community college programs that provide the training they need to qualify for jobs in 10 different industries.

It’s Not an Either-Or Proposition

Successfully meeting employer demand takes a team and shouldn’t rely solely on one tool or channel.

Dr. Rufus Glasper, president and CEO of the League for Innovation in the Community College, agrees. "Colleges need to improve workforce program marketing. SkillPointe is the perfect solution."

Community college recruitment efforts pair perfectly with SkillPointe’s services to reach more potential applicants. We ensure that all revenue from local community colleges is reinvested in local marketing and content development.

Consider organic search, for example. While community colleges tend to rank well for searches that include the school’s name, they don’t do well for searches around career names or career training. That’s where SkillPointe excels.

Just as home shoppers turn to Zillow as a key source of information, job seekers and learners get trusted career and training guidance from SkillPointe.

“We are a trusted partner for community colleges,” says Todd Wilson, founder of SkillPointe. “We help students identify their best skills-based career match and show them how local training providers can help them attain that goal in a short amount of time.

"We pride ourselves in providing highly engaged visitors."

In fact, one SkillPointe partner says visitors coming from SkillPointe spent more than nine minutes on their website compared to visitors from other sources, who spent less than two minutes.

SkillPointe also supports the SkillPointe Foundation, which funds scholarships that make students' career dreams possible.

We all want to solve the same problem. Why not work together?

To learn more about SkillPointe, contact us today at partners@skillpointe.com.

Art Oleszczuk is a proud graduate of Orange County Community College and a veteran builder of tech solutions and online brands. Art is now focused on giving back and promoting the value of community college programs by serving as chief marketing officer at SkillPointe, the #1 career exploration site and training search engine for non-four-year pathways.