Earlier this month, the Heinz Endowment in Pittsburgh awarded a grant to the Commission for Workforce Excellence to help implement a scalable Keys2Work system in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Commission will use the money to outreach to Community Based Organizations through the Commission’s CBO Network, and to support usage of Keys2Work as a career development and recruiting tool within schools, colleges, and community-based organizations.

The Heinz Endowment indicated that their interest is in seeing Keys2Work achieve scale and hopes that other foundations might follow their lead in supporting connecting Keys2Work to various schools and workforce development organizations in the region.

The City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County’s one stop job services system, Career Links, and the Mon Valley Career Links, have decided implement Keys2Work as a core service it offers to its customers. Testing will be offered each week to persons registering for services at Career Link.

Job seekers will take the Applied Mathematics, Reading for Information, and Locating Information tests. Scores will be matched against participating employers jobs. Employers will receive lists of recruits and will invite matching recruit to begin the interviewing process.