So, How About That EMSI Conference?

The annual EMSI conference has been one of the highlights of our year ever since we kicked it off in 2011, and last month was no exception. Hosted in the gorgeous Coeur d’Alene Resort in downtown Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the fourth annual Leadership Conference offered nearly 100 guests a two-and-a-half day opportunity to be inspired by some of our most data-successful clients, catch up with the EMSI and CareerBuilder teams, and offer us some fantastic insight on how we can serve them better.

Below is a quick overview of the presentations and events that took place October 20-22. Most of the presentations are also available for download.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 20

Drinks and a delicious hors d’oeuvres reception opened the conference on Monday evening. We really enjoyed the time to mingle with our guests and enjoy the resort’s stunning view before settling down to business.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21

Tuesday was the busiest day of the conference, featuring the keynote address and 15 breakout sessions, besides golf and another favorite event—dinner at Beverly’s.

1. Keynote: Changing the World With Data

EMSI CEO Andrew Crapuchettes presented on EMSI’s success in 2014 and our plans for 2015 as we continue striving to boost economic prosperity. First, there’s the problem of the information gap (more so than a true skills gap) that we are striving to close, as ever, by transforming big data into ready data. Second, EMSI has worked hard this past year to give you incredible job posting analytics (available in Analyst). Unlike many assume, JPA data is not real-time LMI; it is helpful only with context, and the biggest value we bring with JPA is that context: the relationship between hires and postings. Third, we want every person in the U.S. to have decision-ready information for a more prosperous life, and so we are developing an exciting new initiative that we call Find Your Calling. This tool maps college programs to our data so that as high school students in particular (and their parents) search for careers, the site points them straight to the relevant schools and programs. (Click here for more information.) We are thrilled as ever about the prospects of 2015 as we continue to give our clients the gold standard of economic data—and helping them use it to change the world.

2. Putting Big Data to Work: Measuring the Middle-Skills Economy to Drive Programming

Todd Oldham and Lomax Campbell from Monroe Community College talked about MCC’s ambitious initiatives to identify and address middle-skills gaps within the Greater Rochester economy. They discussed how these same initiatives can complement an institution’s overall economic and workforce development strategy by using a big-data approach to secure additional funding and program support from the regional, state, and federal level. Read our case study on Monroe’s work.

3. How KeyBank is Using Data to Meet Their Collegiate Recruitment Goals

Nathan Lippe from CareerBuilder explained how KeyBank used data to develop a strategy that has helped it meet its collegiate recruitment goals. Lippe also discussed how businesses can use insights from College Analyst to execute the following:

• Identify the schools that have the largest number of graduates in the degree areas they need
• Develop an informed campus recruiting strategy to ensure you are targeting schools with students in the majors that fill your company’s talent gaps
• Examine graduate trends so schools know where to increase or decrease their recruitment focus
• Target schools that can provide you with the candidate pool to meet your diversity and veterans goals
• Gain insight into student migration trends

 4. Using Data to Optimize Business Engagement Strategy

Brad Turner-Little from Goodwill Industries International talked about how Goodwill leverages EMSI’s quantitative data to develop service and training strategies that lead to real opportunities for the people Goodwill serves.

5. Using EMSI to Create Data-Driven Career Pathways

Scott Sheely from the Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) Workforce Investment Board described how WIBs can move beyond the career pathway processes normally provided by the education system, using EMSI’s labor market information to build unique, demand-driven career pathways and to inform curriculum development and career counseling. Read our case study and white paper on Sheely’s career pathway work.

6. Feedback Session

Andrew Crapuchettes hosted a CareerBuilder feedback session where EMSI received lots of helpful feedback from our clients. Keep it coming!

7. Getting Coached: Creating a Successful Marketing Strategy for Career Coach

Sarah Wilson and Owen Sutkowski showed how Central Piedmont Community College, since launching Career Coach in early 2013, has taken a dynamic, multifaceted, budget-conscious approach to implementing the tool throughout each student’s educational experience at the college. Read EMSI’s case study on CPCC.

Grateful to present at an awesome conference! #EMSI2014 pic.twitter.com/9lHOq2ABZT

— Owen Sutkowski (@owendrew) October 22, 2014

8. From a $2.3M Grant to Enhancing Student Advising: One College’s Experience in the First Year

Khaki Wunderlich and Kris Altucher from Tompkins Cortland Community College presented on TC3′s exciting first-year experience using EMSI data and tools. Most notably, TC3 used data from Analyst to customize grant applications and other capital funding requests for their new Farm to Bistro initiative, which resulted in more than $5M of anticipated funding. Read our case study on TC3.

9. Thinking Both Inside and Outside the Box: The Art and Science of Economic Impact Analysis

Bob Potts, research director at Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development, riveted his audience with the Tesla saga, wherein Nevada’s economic development team negotiated one of the biggest manufacturing deals in the country by attracting Tesla Automotive to build their 5,000,000-sq-ft battery manufacturing facility near Reno. The plant, more commonly known as the Gigafactory, is slated to hire 6,500 direct jobs, each paying an average annual wage of $60,000. There was steep competition among other states for the facility—including Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—with negotiations that lasted almost 11 months. Centerpiece to assessing the deal was a broad-based economic impact analysis including the use of Analyst.

Impressive use of data & WKFC/ECD/ED partnerships in landing Tesla in NV #EMSI2014 http://t.co/y4RrE6W6hM — TN CC Dyersburg (@TNCCDyersburg) October 21, 2014

10. Five Trends Shaping the Tech-Driven Workforce of the Future

Tim Herbert demonstrated how CompTIA uses EMSI data to confirm primary research and support other data sources that take a more forward-looking approach, focusing on the intersection of people, process, and technology as these factors shape our workforce and emerging digital economy.

11. Avoiding a Million Dollar Mistake: Understanding How HR Can Leverage Supply, Demand, and Cost in Corporate Site Selection

EMSI’s Oliver Lawford showed that by harnessing external workforce trends, HR professionals can assess their own demand for talent against the supply in the labor market, as well as the pressures from other companies competing for those same individuals. Further, they can help define the many criteria that must be considered, thus highlighting other long-term business objectives that should be considered: diversity goals, college recruiting goals, industry competition, and the like.

12. Big Data: Opportunities and Challenges in Today’s Competitive Environment

Nancy Szofran from Community Colleges of Spokane talked about the growing awareness of the need for big data, predicting that, with revolutionary analytic tools, the future trend is the development of holistic big-data strategies that lead to powerful solutions.

13. Measuring the Untapped Job Potential in Your Region Using Shift Share

EMSI’s Josh Wright and Hank Robison explained the fundamentals of our new shift-share model that sorts through more than 1,100 detailed industries, helping economic development practitioners quickly assess their regions’ labor market performance. Read our analysis of Austin, Tampa, and Binghamton using the shift-share model.

14. Reaching New Heights in Regional Competitiveness with Value-Chain Analysis

Marti Romitti related how combining value-chain mapping with EMSI data and tools can help reveal how companies interact with each other, which is vital to constructing successful industry-cluster building strategies. Romitti showed how the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) utilizes EMSI for this analysis, which determines the structure and strength of the buying and selling relationships between an identified core industry and the many other industries present across the economy.

15. Planning Your Recruitment Strategy for the Next 5 Years

Jason Bartusch of CareerBuilder talked about today’s challenging recruitment landscape that requires HR departments to take on more, frequently non-traditional responsibilities. HR is now accountable for finding candidates with increasingly specific and in-demand qualifications, replacing voluntary and involuntary workers that leave the firm—including the substantial number of workers retiring from the workforce altogether—and developing recruitment planning strategies to meet business needs in the next five to 10 years. Here, Bartusch presented on the success of organizations like Bosch that have implemented workforce planning strategies, and how you can lever data to build your own strategy.

16. Chasing Jobs for the Future: Using Labor Market Information to Gauge Employer Demand and Effectively Design Education and Training Programs

Myriam Sullivan from Jobs for the Future and Michael Lang from EMSI discussed JPMorgan Chase’s $250-million training initiative New Skills at Work, which is aimed at addressing skills gaps in nine US markets by focusing on local data, partnerships with industry, and specialized training programs. JFF, the lead intermediary for the US reports, utilized innovative data from EMSI to identify middle-skill demand and talent shortages in New York City. You can download the full NYC report here.

Free time

A couple hours of free time concluded Tuesday afternoon, giving folks a chance to meet one-on-one, get some fresh air on the boardwalk, and—for those who golfed—wrap up their tournament. A brisk wind and changeable storm clouds kept us guessing about the rain, but thankfully everyone stayed dry!

 Dinner at Beverly’s

A wonderful dinner at the five-star restaurant on the resort’s seventh floor capped our busy Tuesday. The evening of wine, food, and fellowship with our clients was definitely one of the high points of the conference.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22

17. Plenary: Analyst Training: How to Use Job Posting Analytics (see presentations here and here)

After breakfast, a team of EMSI managers discussed JPA in Wednesday’s plenary. Bruce Evans (VP, product management), Deacon James (VP, engineering), and Chris Aberle (core product management) talked about the usefulness of job posting data, provided it is presented with the right context and to answer the right questions: Who is hiring? How intensely are they trying to hire? Do online postings play a significant role in recruiting for a given occupation? Conversely, when job postings data is presented without proper context or tries to answer the wrong questions, it can lead to very poor decision-making. 

18. Gap Analysis: Providing the Skills Your Local Economy Needs Most

Jeff Perley of EMSI demonstrated the methodology of our analysis in the Gap Analysis Report, explored success stories, examined the report’s strengths and weaknesses, and discussed future plans for how the report can better enable clients to close gaps of supply and demand in their local labor market.

19. Tips for Using International Data

Sonja Licina from CareerBuilder’s UK team and Kyle Diemer from CareerBuilder’s Chicago office led a round-table discussion on how to use international data for the following:

• Analyzing a new market along with other sources
• Making site-selection decisions
• Mapping out plans for new markets
• Allocating resources and budget for current international offices

20. Marketing Strategy 101: Comparing Markets for a Variety of Needs

Combining aspects of EMSI’s Analyst and CareerBuilder’s Supply & Demand Portal, Arthur Hsu and Kurt Iskrzycki from CareerBuilder’s workforce analytics team presented on the many ways using data to drive strategy can take organizations beyond the stale thinking of “but we’ve always done it this way” and forces them to adjust their traditional human capital practices.

And That’s a Wrap!

We’d love to see even more of you next year. Stay tuned for news on the EMSI Conference 2015!

@desktopecon @GoodwillIntl Great 2 days in ID finding ways to push farther on using LMI to drive strategy. Thanks! #EMSI2014

— Brad Turner-Little (@bturnerlittle) October 23, 2014