CareerSource Central Florida

CareerSource Central Florida’s goal is to create, sustain and grow a collaborative system that assesses and gauges changing workforce needs, to ensure there is an adequately trained and available talent pipeline to serve Central Florida businesses with work-ready, skilled talent for many years to come.

CareerSource Central Florida will employ a number of strategies to reach its goal of identifying and building a skilled talent pipeline. CSCF believes that youth are the key; an educated youth population is an empowered youth population that grows into an adult workforce. As education and knowledge are tools that go beyond the classroom, CSCF will develop opportunities to introduce youth populations to  the numerous career paths they can follow in a variety of industries. This will not only spark their imaginations and increase enthusiasm in joining the adult workforce, but also expand their career options and increase their likelihood of success.  Continuing with youth outreach, CSCF will work to provide funding to help youth populations take advantage of STEM programs and services already offered, but that may be out of their reach financially. CareerSource Central Florida will also enhance opportunities for internships by reaching out to more STEM and other businesses to establish partnerships, whereby they will allow CSCF to place youth interns in their businesses.  And CareerSource Central Florida will continue to grow and expand its existing youth internship program to allow more young people to participate in this on-the-job training opportunity that provides young people with real-world work experience. Additionally, CareerSource Central Florida identifies and provides the tools and resources necessary to build a talent pipeline that will ensure the businesses throughout the Central Florida region will have qualified, skilled, and workforce-ready talent for years to come. As such, CSCF will need to extend its reach to provide desperately-needed skills and workforce training to a greater portion of the region’s population, especially youth populations. CareerSource Central Florida realizes that in order to support businesses to the level that is required for them to remain competitive in this global marketplace - and continue to thrive and prosper in Central Florida - it must be able to provide skills training to a much broader segment of the population – and that means youth.

CareerSource Central Florida collaborates with community-based youth organizations that can assist its efforts by finding and identifying youth participants. By hosting an in-house business team of consultants, CSCF can reach out to businesses throughout the five-county region to identify STEM and non-STEM businesses to participate in youth internship programs. CSCF could utilize additional funding to support further outreach to businesses. Programmatically, CareerSource Central Florida has organized several successful internship programs for youth, with up to 380 in-school participants and dozens of participating businesses. CSCF recognizes the need to greatly expand the program to include more youth across the five-county region; however, there is a need for unrestricted funds to allow participation by youth that do not qualify based on current federal-funding guidelines. CareerSource Central Florida has assembled an experienced youth team to organize and execute many of the agency’s youth initiatives. There remains a need to hire additional staff, both temporary and permanent, in order to be able to manage greater numbers of youth internship participants. There also currently exists funding to support a finite number of youth. Current funding will not support more than 400 in-school youth participants, and based on federal funding guidelines, many youth do not qualify for the program and services. In order to truly develop a talent pipeline, an alternate, less restrictive funding source must be developed to greatly expand the number and types of youth served. CareerSource Central Florida does not currently have the capacity for transporting youth to internship programs; overcoming this barrier will make a great difference for many students in helping them commit to a program and achieve a future career.

At the midway point in the fiscal year, we have trained 271 youth, reaching 90% of our annual goal; assisted 189 youth with earning an industry or educational credential, reaching 39% of our annual goal; and have seen 130 youth or 29% of our annual goal, enter into positive outcomes (entering the military, finding employment, or seeking education).