Baton Rouge Community College is offering a new service to Louisiana businesses and industries to help them in screening potential employees.
The service is called WorkKeys, and it’s a series of standardized tests devised by the ACT testing company. The tests measure a job applicant’s work-readiness skills in several critical areas—applied mathematics, locating information and reading information.
BRCC began the program earlier this month, and so far has had just a handful of clients. But community college officials expect those numbers to grow as word of the service gets out.
“Companies can call us and say, ‘We’d like to have a certain number of people tested over a certain number of days,” says Todd Pourciau, dean of innovative learning at BRCC. “Then we would set up appointments with them to come in and do the testing.”
Individuals seeking employment in industry can also take the tests on their own. Satisfactory results will provide them with a credential they can bring to employers in addition to their certificate or degree.
BRCC administers the tests for a fee of $10 per section, or $30 for the complete test, plus a $25 administration fee. The college system is hoping to use the service as a way to generate badly needed revenues.
“We are trying to create new revenue streams as much as possible,” Pourciau says. “We’re becoming state-assisted schools instead of state-funded. So we’re trying to do everything we can to make up the difference.”
Get more information or call the BRCC Testing Center at 225-216-8038.
—Stephanie Riegel
