In the world of workforce development, it’s a perfect storm: Job seekers with industry-specific skills and an employer eager to hire trained workers.
The scenario perfectly captures a new opportunity that’s opened up for New Community Workforce Development Center to team up with University Hospital.
As a major medical institution, University Hospital is a large employer in Newark and hires for a diverse range of positions. Hospital officials are looking to hire students from NCC’s Allied Health Program as well as its Automotive, Building Trades and Culinary Arts Specialist Training Programs, according to Rodney Brutton, director of Workforce Development.
The hospital owns a fleet of vehicles, requires facility repairs and maintenance and serves food to hundreds of patients, visitors, medical staff and students who pass through every day.
“New Community Workforce Development Center is excited to partner with University Hospital by helping a local employer meet their hiring needs. Our vocational programs align closely with employment opportunities within University Hospital’s food service, facilities maintenance and fleet repair departments,” Brutton said.
According to officials from both the hospital and NCC, the match couldn’t be a better fit.
Sara Pena, senior community outreach coordinator at University Hospital, said that having New Community participate on the hospital’s Community Advisory Council paved the way for the partnership.
“When you have organizations such as NCC who are part of our network, and provide the training necessary to empower individuals to train in specific programs tailored to the needs of the community and the hiring needs of the surrounding employers, it just works!” she said.
It was during a Community Advisory Council meeting last year that Richard Cammarieri, director of Special Projects at New Community, was invited to attend and asked Pena about linkages with the Workforce Development Center and the hospital’s hiring needs after she gave a presentation.
Cammarieri, who represented NCC at the meeting attended by nonprofits, advocacy groups and community organizations, then introduced Pena via email to Brutton and the discussions moved forward.
In February, representatives from University Hospital and staffing agency Adecco visited the Workforce Development Center to provide a tutorial to students in the Allied Health Training Program of the application and hiring process.
“We are not only communicating that we have job openings, but also training them on how to navigate onto our site to apply, while providing resources to assist in preparing them to get the necessary qualifications for a specific job that may be of interest,” Pena said. The hospital wants to hire more students who complete NCC’s vocation training programs, she added.
What started off as a simple conversation has evolved into a new level of collaboration between University Hospital and NCC, which has had a long running partnership for many years in other areas.
“It’s an example of the outreach we have done and continue to do with major anchor institutions in the city, which could bear fruit for everything from hiring to training to education,” Cammarieri said.
