If your career and job search is off track, perhaps you need to invest in lifelong learning by acquiring skill sets needed in the RNR regional economy. The Roanoke Higher Education Center offers many different options.

The career planning and job searching paradigm has shifted. One must acquire “billable skills” in order to prosper in the regional economy. If your skills need updating or are not as unique as they once were, now is the time to update and hone your skill sets in order to compete in the labor market.

The event is Thursday, February 5 from 4 pm – 7 pm at the center.

Chmura Economics has some powerful resources it has created to identify the job openings in your region. Plus, they have also designed a front-end easy to use dashboard for job seekers to interact with the data.

As job seekers struggle for job opportunities, economic development officials design their strategies, entrepreneurs identifying business opportunities and workforce development creates continuing education programs, Chumura’s system is the ideal tool to use during these economic times.
Career Concourse – Powered by JobsEQ(R) from Chmura Economics on Vimeo.

Anne at Handshake 2.0 has asked that we create a show for her blog called Connecting People in the RNR. If you have content ideas, then please share.

It’s been a while since our last post. The reason – you need a break ever once in a while to enjoy life with the family, but also we have been busy help job seekers. Here are some of our projects:

1. 3rd Annual Roanoke Holiday Career and Lifestyle Fair- Between 1,000 and 1,200 people attended in a three-hour timeframe. The event drew 15 unique traditional media exposure and was front page on the Roanoke Times on December 31, including breaking news on Roanoke.com. Bottom line the siutation is worse than many think.

2.JobQuest - A unique partnership with Blue Ridge PBS, WDBJ7, Roanoke Times and others yielded in incredible one-hour live monthly show on Tuesday at 7 pm. On Tuesday, we had over 300 people call in who waited 20 minutes to ask a professional a question and 19 pages of chat room conversations. All of this happened in 90 minutes. Kudos to Blue Ridge PBS for their outstanding commitment.

3. Assistance to Job Seekers - We created a proactive response to assist job seekers that includes awareness of exsiting programs and events, creation of new ones with partners and packages all to brand as one. We have many events remaining.

4. We have some other outstanding and upcoming projects on the horizons. This economic time presents many opportunities and the environment is open for new ideas and directions and I believe the RNR is a place that will thrive.