Strengthening Talent Management for Your Business

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Why invest in developing talent?

A strong talent pipeline is essential to long-term business success. This talent pipeline is most effective when businesses are actively engaged in the process as producers of talent, working with education and training providers to articulate hiring and skill needs and working collaboratively to develop training to meet those needs.

The TalentFOUND gateway provides resources for employers looking to strengthen their talent pipelines by collaborating with partners in their communities and across the state.

Whether you are looking to test out skills-based hiring, upskill team members, increase employee engagement and retention or diversify your pool of potential candidates, TalentFOUND can connect your business to the tools and resources to help you hire, retain, and grow your talent and help you better connect with other affiliates of the network.

Access Resources

Colorado is committed to building and maintaining a strong economy, and the foundation of a strong economy is a strong workforce. Collaboration plays a critical role in developing and maintaining a robust talent pipeline throughout the state. The TalentFOUND network is made up of public and private stakeholders from across Colorado’s talent development network.

Key to successful collaboration is shared language. The Talent Development Network Glossary of Terms clarifies definitions of common talent development terms to help partners align.

Resources for Employers

Apprentices

Registered Apprenticeships – Colorado Department of Labor and EmploymentResources for developing a registered apprenticeship program.

CareerWise Colorado – Modern Youth Apprenticeships – CareerWise helps businesses hire modern youth apprentices and grow their talent pipeline.

 

Job Description Templates

Skills-based Job Description Templates – SkillfulGuides and tools to help evaluate and select candidates for their skills, including skills-based job descriptions.

LinkedIn Job Description TemplatesA collection of the most common job description templates spanning multiple positions across multiple industries.

 

Job Posting

Connecting Colorado – Connecting Colorado offers a cost-effective way to post job openings, review résumés, and connect with qualified workers.

Built in Colorado – Provides clients in the tech industry with a pool of informed and enthusiastic candidates.

Denver Metro Chamber Job Board – Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce provides members with a visible place to post open positions and the access to view profiles of talented job seekers.

 

Recruiting

Contact your local workforce center – An interactive map to locate your local workforce center. Your workforce center can help you identify, attract, and select the best-qualified candidates for your current workforce needs, including customized hiring events, job fairs, applicant screening, assessments, virtual job fairs.

Employers Council – Employers Council provides classes for members focused on the resources and tools to build a recruiting process from creating a strategy to developing the tactics and creative sourcing ideas.

Experience Element – The Experience Element is a management consulting firm based in Downtown Denver, serving clients across the Front Range of Colorado and beyond.

Jobber Group – Jobber Group is a talent consulting firm which helps clients build a more sustainable and cost-effective talent strategy and make more confident hiring decisions, all driven by data.

LinkedIn Recruiter – LinkedIn Recruiter platform for those looking to constantly and consistently find, connect with, and manage the right talent.

Source Direction – Our software balances hard-skill and soft-skill evaluation to match the right candidates to the right job postings in a way neither party may have imagined. This unique approach helps evaluate candidates working in industries where traditional resumes and sourcing websites based on keywords are not effective.

Turning the Corner – Personalized recruiting services help client companies in Denver, Boulder, and all across the Front Range find the top talent they need.

Virtanza – Virtanza is an expert source for sales job recruitment.

 

Skills-based Hiring

Skills-based Job Description Templates – Skillful – Find guides and tools to help evaluate and select candidates for their skills. 

Innovate+Educate’s Framework for competency-based hiring and advancement – Industry-driven, competency-based hiring processes critical to creating pathways.

 

Talent Sourcing

Contact your local workforce center –  An interactive map to locate your local workforce center. Your workforce center can help you identify, attract, and select the best-qualified candidates for your current workforce needs, including customized hiring events, job fairs, applicant screening, assessments, virtual job fairs.

Work-based Learning

Work-based Learning Continuum – Work-based learning is a continuum of activities that occur, in part or in whole, in the workplace, providing the learner with hands-on, real-world experience. This is Colorado’s framework connecting learning about work, learning through work, and learning at work.

CareerWise Colorado – Modern Youth Apprenticeships – CareerWise helps businesses hire modern youth apprentices and grow their talent pipeline.

BEL Commission – Colorado’s Business Experiential Learning Commission develops, evaluates, and implements a systemic solution for integrated work-based education and training to meet the needs of Colorado’s economy.

Additional work-based learning resources – The work-based learning section of the Colorado Workforce Development Council website contains additional work-based learning resources.

 

Upskilling

Bring Your ‘A’ Game Training – Center for Work Ethic Development – Bring Your ‘A’ Game is an engaging curriculum for building the seven foundational workplace skills of work ethic.

WorkLife Partnership – WorkLife’s strategy of career coaching via upskilling not only helps increase employee engagement and productivity—while decreasing turnover—but also fills gaps in the skills of your workforce.

Skillful – Employer Toolkit – Guides and tools to support the growth and skill development for your employees. Maximize employees’ performance and health and improve retention through smart, skills-based onboarding and development.

PAIRIN – PAIRIN’s online curriculum helps clients’ teams in their individually defined areas of need to advance their professional development. These soft skills training courses are available across 54 skills and are divided into 300 micro-lessons for on-demand access.

MindSpark Learning – Events & Institutes – MindSpark’s institutes offer attendees masters-level credit from the University of Denver, and our events are always a good mix of fun and learning.

Turning the Corner – Management Training – Turning the Corner teaches you and your management team the skills needed to become exceptional leaders and motivators.

Upskill America Playbook for Employers – This Upskilling Playbook is designed to highlight examples of employers modeling new ways of business that advance workers and support long-term business competitiveness via investments in workers through upskilling strategies.

i2iWorkforce – Management Skills Training

Colorado Bioscience Institute Executive Leadership Program – The executive leadership program is designed to enable CEO’s to build better businesses by learning to resolve strategic problems, drive change through their organization, design and motivate effective teams, and communicate plans and strategy to get to the next level of growth in the venture. 

 

Performance Management

Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) – Managing Employee Performance Toolkit – Overview and resources, including sample self-appraisal, manager effectiveness, and performance improvement plan.

SHRM – Performance Management That Makes a Difference: An Evidence-Based Approach – Report from SHRM exploring why performance management systems often fail yet why they still matter and explaining how to design a practical performance management approach leveraging feedback and coaching. 

SHRM – A New Way of Looking at Performance Management – Aug. 2017 article by Amber Lloyd, HCM Strategy, about the evolution of the performance management process.

Competencies Assessments

Competency Model Clearing House – A competency model provides a clear description of what a person needs to know and be able to do – the knowledge, skills, and abilities – to perform well in a specific job, occupation, or industry. The Competency Model Clearinghouse website enables partners to collaborate in building customized competency models and career ladders reflecting regional workforce needs.

O*NET – The O*NET Program is the nation’s primary source of occupational information, containing hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors on almost 1,000 occupations covering the entire U.S. economy. The database, which is available to the public at no cost, is continually updated from input by a broad range of workers in each occupation.

PAIRIN – PAIRIN makes the hiring process easier by allowing companies to hire based on their top performers by identifying the soft skills and mindsets that are most important for a specific job role and organization’s culture.

i2iWorkforce – i2iWorkforce offers assessment solutions to help organizations select the right people and develop them to their fullest potential.

 

Talent Analytics

Colorado LMI Gateway

Colorado’s LMI Gateway is a powerful career assessment and labor market information system providing fast access to a complete set of labor market research tools. 

O*Net

The O*NET Program is the nation’s primary source of occupational information, containing hundreds of standardized and occupation-specific descriptors on almost 1,000 occupations covering the entire U.S. economy. The database, which is available to the public at no cost, is continually updated from input by a broad range of workers in each occupation.

College Scorecard

The College Scorecard is designed to increase transparency, putting the power in the hands of the public to see how well different schools are serving their students. 

BurningGlass

Burning Glass Technologies delivers job market analytics that empowers employers, workers, and educators to make labor market data-driven decisions. The company’s artificial intelligence technology analyzes hundreds of millions of job postings and real-life career transitions to provide insight into labor market patterns.

Census Data

Provides census statistics for all states and counties, and for cities and towns with a population of 5,000 or more.

Cluster Mapping

This Region Dashboard provides data on the economic performance, cluster composition, and sub-regional composition of this region. The map illustrates the economic geography of this region. 

Colorado LMI dashboard

Local Employment Dynamics (LED) is a voluntary partnership between state labor market information agencies and the U.S. Census Bureau to develop new information about local labor market conditions at low cost, with no added respondent burden, and with the same confidentiality protections afforded census and survey data.

Colorado Talent Pipeline Reports

The Colorado Talent Pipeline Report provides an annual assessment of the state of talent development in Colorado and makes recommendations for strengthening its further development.

Colorado TalentFOUND Dashboard

The ColoradoTalent Dashboard presents a range of data points to show the trends behind the pathways Coloradans are taking, and the successes and challenges Colorado is facing in supporting students and job seekers, and meeting labor market demand.

Data Pipeline

Data Pipeline is a streamlined approach to efficiently move required education information from school districts to the Colorado Department of Education.

Colorado’s Top Jobs

Interactive table where you can search Colorado’s in-demand jobs that pay a living wage, and explore typical education/training levels, median earnings, related postsecondary completions, and more.

National Center of Education Statistics – IPEDS

We provide data that describe how well the United States is educating its students. We conduct surveys and sponsor research projects to understand where education needs improvement and how these improvements might be made. We provide resources to increase use of data and research in education decision making. 

Opportunity Index

Opportunity varies significantly by community. The Opportunity Index allows you to compare scores and understand why some communities have more opportunity than others.

Postsecondary Data

Data on Colorado’s postsecondary institutions and programs.

JobZology

jobZology® was founded by two psychologists from Colorado State University looking to help people find meaningful careers. After meeting two business entrepreneurs, jobZology® was set on a path towards using science to connect companies with the right employees who would find meaning and purpose in the work that they do.

Work-based Learning Continuum

Colorado’s framework for the spectrum of work-based learning activities, including everything from career exploration to registered apprenticeships.

Apprenticeship Evolution

Resources for students, job seekers, and employers on the value of apprenticeships and work-based learning and resources for building out apprenticeship programs.

BEL Commission

The Business Experiential-Learning Commission is developing, evaluating, and implementing a systemic solution for integrated work-based education and training to meet the needs of Colorado’s economy. The Commission focuses on three main areas: Engaging business involvement, creating electronic access, leveraging existing resources to create a portal of information

CareerWise Colorado

CareerWise works with strategic-minded business partners that have an interest in becoming producers of their skilled talent pipeline to help them develop modern in-school youth apprenticeships.

Colorado Talent Equity Agenda

The Talent Equity Agenda makes the case for targeting resources, raising awareness, and accelerating shared strategies to close racial economic disparities in the state and measure the results.

Colorado Inclusive Economy

Colorado Inclusive Economy is a statewide movement of design, intent, and action led by CEOs and leaders. We support leaders through regular facilitation, an evolving resource toolkit, and peer support to help them build specific Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategies that align with their overall organizational goals.

B:CIVIC

Engages a wide range of firms that want to build more equitable companies and communities and provides a variety of articles, videos, podcasts, and links to toolkits on their website.

Spark Mindset

For companies and organizations, we provide a research-driven Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training  that transforms workplace cultures so all team members have the organizational confidence and support they need to bring all of their skills, knowledge, and creativity to the team.

EPIC’s Employer Toolkit

A free online resource with hands-on tools for supporting: increased access to quality child care for workers; child-friendly policies and procedures; and, optimized tax benefits for employers and employees.

The Family-Friendly Workplace Assessment (FF+) 

This free assessment identifies the needs and priorities of employers to create environments that are supportive of families. FF+ is divided into four sections that gauge family-friendly culture: Benefits and Leave; Flexibility; New Parents; and, Communication, Education and Training.

The Family-Friendly Workplace Toolkit 

A free resource guide with information about how employers are supporting workers and their families in all stages of life. With case studies and relevant examples, the toolkit highlights the public health and employer benefits of strong family-friendly workplace policies and practices.

Sector Partnerships

Launching and Sustaining Sector Partnerships

Sector partnerships are​ ​industry-specific​ ​regional partnerships​ ​led​ ​by​ ​business​ ​in​ ​partnership​ ​with economic​ ​development,​ ​education,​ ​and​ ​workforce development.

 

Employment Law

Employers Council

Employers Council’s keeps their members up-to-date on employment and labor laws and best practices in preventing and managing legal claims. 

 

ADA Resources

Job Accommodation Network – JAN Workplace Accommodation Toolkit

The Job Accommodation Network provides a free online workplace accommodation toolkit for employers with the tools needed to create a more disability-inclusive and compliant workplace.

 

Payroll

The Payroll Department

The Payroll Department provides clients with personal, professional, confidential, and accurate payroll services.

TalentFOUND

TalentFOUND is the Colorado talent development network

Representatives from business, economic development, workforce development, education and training, and community-based organizations provide programs and resources which are essential to helping businesses, students, and job seekers each find their own unique path to success. Together, these affiliates created the TalentFOUND electronic gateway to serve as a centralized access point to resources for employers, students and job seekers.

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an Affiliate

Any organization of the Colorado talent development network can become an affiliate of TalentFOUND.

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