CA Statewide Work and Career Readiness Certificate
Employer Survey Overview

Online Survey

The California Space Authority CSA, www.californiaspaceauthority.org, is working with other industry clusters, to determine a recommendation about whether or not California should implement a statewide work and career readiness certificate (CRC) program. We are enlisting your help to determine a recommendation to the Governor.

• A CRC is a competency-based assessment and validation to indicate that the holder possesses skills employers are looking for in entry-level employees. This includes workplace scenarios that assess math, reading and “locating information” skills with an optional technical component assessing interdisciplinary electrical, mechanical, thermal and fluid foundational concepts in integrated workplace problem solving scenarios.
• It is believed that a CRC will provide employers with accurate information about a job candidates competencies and their readiness for jobs in the company. The CRC will allow employers to better predict a candidate’s performance, thus streamlining the hiring process and ultimately reducing employee turnover costs. The assessment can also identify areas of strengths and areas that need development for incumbent employees. The CRC represents a standardized and reliable indicator of workplace skill levels that can be recognized and used by employers throughout the state. It provides a means of using meaningful assessment results as a “bridge” between job applicants, incumbent workers, educators, training organizations, and the wide range of California’s businesses.
• Seventeen states already have a CRC program. In addition, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and The Manufacturing Institute have a Skills Certification System which establishes career pathways for the nation's leading manufacturers. The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) also supports the National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC) concept and California already has eight separate regional CRC initiatives in various regions around the state.

Several 2008 California Department of Labor employer surveys have indicated that workforce and the shortage of qualified candidates, specifically technical talent, is the highest concern of a company’s success. Some results:

21^st Century Skills Gap Assessment - input from approximately 200 high tech high wage CA employers¹

Hiring difficulty - 21st Century Worker Profiles Assessment - input from ~200 CA biotechnology & life sciences employers²

All three of these referenced employer studies also found that interdisciplinary systems concepts and problem solving ability were also indicated as requirements for qualified workers, see www.innovatecalifornia.net.

Causation analysis of 35 aerospace industry failures by Aerospace Engineering Associations indicated that though failure immediate causes (proximate) appear to be design oriented (66%), however detailed root cause analysis indicates that systems engineering is the single major root cause of failures (57%), again indicating the need for both technical fundamental competency and interdisciplinary systems knowledge and problem solving.

21st Century Skills Gap Assessment – input from high tech high wave CA employers³

³Oliva, 21^st Century Workforce Skills Analysis,  www.innovatecalifornia.net for more information

Your answers to the online survey questions will help determine employer opinions regarding the implementation of a statewide Work and Career Readiness Certificate (CRC) program. Further, your responses will help frame a recommendation to the Governor about whether or not California should support a statewide program.

Please reply to this online survey by September 30, 2009. For more information about work readiness certificates or questions about this survey, please contact Eric Daniels, Director of State and Local Government Relations for the California Space Authority (CSA) at 916-551-1543 or eric.daniels@californiaspaceauthority.org.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Online Survey