National Career Readiness Certificate Eases Communication Between Job Seekers and Employers

To support implementation of this solution nationwide, ACT has developed the National Career Readiness Certificate, a national workplace performance standard. In the late 1950s, when we introduced the ACT Assessment, ACT scores quickly became a nationally recognized credential for college admission and placement. Now, we’re doing something similar for the workforce.

For nearly two decades, we have led national efforts to address workforce development issues by creating and administering skills-based assessments that link directly to jobs. The thousands of companies that use our WorkKeys^® system for hiring and employee development have benefited from lower turnover, faster pace to job proficiency, reduced training costs, and gains in productivity.

WorkKeys is the foundation of the National Career Readiness Certificate, which gives job seekers and employers a way to connect and communicate. This initiative is already being supported by dozens of ACT partner organizations that offer WorkKeys-based certificates at regional, statewide, and local levels.

Ten states—Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Virginia—currently have certificate programs in place, and more than 50,000 certificates have already been issued. In addition, several states have emerging certificate programs.

We formally introduced the new National Career Readiness Certificate at an event held in Washington, DC, earlier this fall.

ACT’s Career Readiness System

The certificate is one component of a comprehensive career exploration and placement system—available via the Internet—that links qualified individuals with employers who recognize the value of skilled job applicants. The Career Readiness System offers four components:

• Certification: The National Career Readiness Certificate verifies that an individual has the core foundational skills prerequisite to be successful entering employment or a training program.
• Certificate Registry: This Internet-based system allows an individual to view WorkKeys scores, apply for a certificate, and order paper copies, as well as enabling employers to verify that an individual has a certificate.
• Talent Bank: Individuals who qualify for a National Career Readiness Certificate can use the Talent Bank to post credentials for employers and search job postings in a national job database.
• Job Bank: Employers who use the National Career Readiness Certificate can post job opportunities and search for qualified candidates.

National Career Readiness Certificate Skill Levels

The National Career Readiness Certificate, powered by WorkKeys, verifies to employers anywhere in the United States that an individual has essential core employability skills in Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating Information. ACT’s national database has established that these three skills are highly important to the majority of jobs in the workplace. The certificate offers individuals, employers, and educators an easily understood and universally valued credential that certifies the attainment of these workplace skills.

WorkKeys has generated a database with occupational profiles for thousands of jobs across the country. A majority of the jobs require certain skill levels in Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating Information. Individuals with higher skill levels are ready or qualified for more jobs. The National Career Readiness Certificate and many state and regional programs use test results from these assessments to award certificates in three categories:

• Bronze Level signifies an individual has scored at least a level 3 in each of the three core areas (Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics, and Locating Information) and has the necessary skills for 35 percent of the jobs in the WorkKeys database.
• Silver Level signifies an individual has scored at least a level 4 in each of the three core areas and has the necessary skills for 65 percent of the jobs in the WorkKeys database.
• Gold Level signifies an individual has scored at least a level 5 in each of the three core areas and has the necessary skills for 90 percent of the jobs in the WorkKeys database.

Individuals who meet national performance standards through their state programs are eligible to receive the National Career Readiness Certificate or obtain a national certificate seal to affix to their state certificate.