Recap of Emsi Conference 2017

Last week, Emsi hosted its largest conference ever. Nearly 200 clients and guests from across the US made their way to beautiful Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (90 miles north of Emsi headquarters in Moscow) for our seventh annual conference–three days of collaborative discussion on how to visualize the new economy and build the future workforce. The conference was a resounding success.

In the following recap, see how Emsi users shared innovative, data-informed approaches to improve recruiting, workforce planning, program development, student services, and economic development policy.

Conference Kickoff – Andrew Crapuchettes, Emsi CEO

Andrew Crapuchettes opened up the conference by discussing how Emsi’s vision has shaped exciting innovation during 2017. Our products and services continue to bring people, education, and employers together at the intersection of prosperity.

Keynote: “Building the Future Workforce: Addressing the Biggest Talent Questions on the Horizon” – Mark Hanson, UnitedHealth Group

In his keynote presentation, Mark Hanson discussed how UnitedHealth Group (one of the largest companies in the industry, driving a sixth of the US economy) addresses some of the biggest talent questions on the horizon. UHG is at the leading edge of trends in talent wars. With over 250,000 employees and 200 individual companies worldwide, UHG has unique talent needs that require unique approaches. When you’re hiring 1,000 software engineers a year, you run into issues, such as tapping out entire skilled labor pools, and move toward creative solutions—such as telecommuting, collaboration with higher education, and even developing your own in-house tech skills training.

Panel 1: “How Can We Collaborate to Build the Workforce of the Future?”

Springboarding off the keynote, the panel discussion focused on the biggest issues—and potential solutions—in building the workforce of the future. Panelists included Mark Hanson, Dr. David Andrews (National University), Tina Ngo Bartel (MiraCosta College), and Bob Potts (Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development), with Andrew Crapuchettes serving as moderator.

Breakouts: Day One

1. “Academic & Economic Alignment: A Web-Based Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Demand” – Dr. Peter Quigley and Paul Sakamoto (University of Hawaii Community College System) demonstrated the new web-based sector-mapping tool that provides an organized, real-time look into the relationship between academic and economic alignment.

2. “Fuel Your Business Services With Best Practices in Workforce Research” – Sarah Burns (San Diego Workforce Partnership, SDWP) and Tina Ngo Bartel (MiraCosta College) showed how SDWP uses labor market research to develop programs with employers. By combining both research and business programs into one department, SDWP capitalizes on warm employer leads from their labor market research to develop sector-specific strategies with and for employers.

3. “At the Intersection of Data & Vision: Influencing the Talent Strategy of the 22nd-Century Corporation” – Allstate’s Lesley Rood, Megan Buttita, and Meta McKinney were joined Emsi’s Bruce Evans and Lee Semmes to discuss how Allstate provides labor market analysis through storytelling to support its vision for a diverse, agile, and talented workforce. The Allstate research team leverages Emsi data to test assumptions and provide analysis on diverse pools of talent, current and future skills gaps, location comparison, and competitor insight.

4. “Machine-Matching People, Training, and Jobs: Are Workforce Recommendation Engines Possible?” – Gordon Freedman (National Laboratory for Education Transformation), Matt Gee (University of Chicago), and Nic Richmond (Pima Community College) described the processes they are exploring to make workforce and training courses data-wise so that course data can be machine-matched to résumé, jobs, and labor market data.

5. “Fantastic Unicorns and Where to Find Them: The Six-Figure Question for Every IT Firm” – Hector Acosta discussed the unicorn IT candidates that employers are hunting for, and how he and his colleagues at Worksystems use Emsi and other data sources to prove that these candidates don’t exist.

6. “Why You Should Be Thinking About Location Economics” – Led by Dr. Wayne Gearey, Emsi’s senior vice president of data science, this breakout highlighted how simply having the right data is only part of the battle.​​ Firms must now consider location economics, which is about ordering spatial econometric facts concerning the potential for a business to operate within a market.

7. “Data, Analytics, and Improving Program Development & Employer Engagement” – Dr. Kevin Long (Montgomery College) and Emsi’s chief innovation officer, Rob Sentz, demonstrated how data collected from a variety of sources (traditional, job postings, and résumés) can help colleges make strategic moves to improve student engagement, program development, and employer relationships.

8. “Playing to Your Strengths: Leveraging Emsi Analytics for Business Attraction” – Vince Giovannini talked about how Gilbert, Arizona, leverages Emsi data to identify target industry sectors to support the successful marketing of the community to prospective businesses in those industries.

9. “Insight into Workforce Diversity” – CareerBuilder’s Brendan O’Neill showed how various companies are leveraging Emsi workforce diversity data to set expectations, find the diverse talent they need, and benchmark performance against the broader market.

10. “Connecting College Curricula & Careers” – Dr. Marie Cini (University of Maryland University College) spoke on how program alignment drives enrollment, student success, and ultimately career readiness.

11. “Connecting Marketing & Enrollment Management” – Julie Gacnik (Creighton University) discussed how successful completions begin with finding the right candidates and clarifying post-graduation opportunities.

12. “Driving Campus Innovation: Remaking Career Services” – Dr. Chris Cook (University of Idaho) talked about the integration of labor market data into their process and demonstrated how integration has increased student engagement across the institution.

13. “The Changing Landscape of Outcomes Data” – Tieming Lin (University of Washington Continuum College) discussed the college’s use of Emsi outcomes data in comparing the skills of their alumni with the rest of the workforce, identifying marketable skills and trends, and providing insight on program level outcomes on a more granular level than ever before.

Panel 2: “Putting the Emsi Conference Takeaways into Action”

Following up from a full day of discussing key workforce trends and issues, the second day’s panel focused on actionable items to take home to your business, college, or community. Panelists included Dr. Yustina Saleh (Emsi’s senior VP of analytics), Julie Gacnik (Creighton University), Matt Gee (University of Chicago), and Carla Hichman (EAB), with Rob Sentz serving as moderator.

Breakouts: Day Two

10. “How Workforce & Economic Development Leaders in Dayton Have Partnered to Help Businesses & Jobseekers” – David Snipes (Montgomery County Business Solutions Center) discussed the creative ways that Dayton-area leaders have come together to engage businesses and address their talent needs as well as help dislocated workers in the process.

11. “Another Data Science Program? Really?” – In this workshop, Luke Jankovic (Emsi’s VP of higher education) and Dr. Yustina Saleh presented a new approach that allows us to move beyond ambiguous titles and trending buzzwords to the actual requirements of data science (and similarly emerging fields). They showed how skills cluster together to reveal defining skills, core skills, domain-specific skills, and more.

12. “Corporate Site-Evaluation: Determining the Health & Sustainability of Your Locations” – In his second presentation of the conference, Mark Hanson demonstrated how to utilize dashboards to drive strategic market insight by combining disparate data sources, standard scoring, and decision tree logic.

Panel 3: “Emsi Innovation”

The conference concluded with a panel of Emsi executives highlighting how you can apply the data and conference discussions to the various areas of employers, education, and economic and workforce development. Attendees learned how each team at Emsi is addressing the core issue to provide a more wholistic approach to planning, training, and hiring the future workforce. Panelists included Andrew Crapuchettes (CEO), John Pernsteiner (VP of economic and workforce development), and Bruce Evans (VP of talent strategy).

Save the date! The eighth annual Emsi conference is in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, September 10-12, 2018. For more information, or to receive access to the presentations from 2017, contact Gwen Burrow. Follow Emsi on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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