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WV Forward Connects: WV Colleges Break New Ground to Link Talent to WV Jobs

For the first time, West Virginia's two-and-four year public and private colleges from across the state held a day-long data and information exchange to uncover concrete solutions that link students and alumni to West Virginia jobs, employers and opportunities.

We export too much of our most precious resource - our talent. West Virginia has five cities that rank among the worst on the national Bloomberg Brain Drain Index. Fewer than half of our recent public higher education graduates are in West Virginia's workforce today. (More than 68,000 recent grads are not working in our state, according to WVU BBER). WV Forward collaborators recognize we must do more on our workforce participation rates, education levels, livability of our communities and more effective connections between people and jobs. 

To keep our best talent, dozens of representatives from career services and alumni associations in the state's private, public, and community and technical schools are drilling down on the best data and smartest ways to link students to jobs, keeping grads in West Virginia. 

Thanks to President Marty Roth and the University of Charleston for co-hosting the inaugural WV Forward Talent Pipeline Professionals workshop to (1) give all colleges access to best practices in graduate job surveys, (2) identify strategies for securing key information and data from graduates who have left the state, (3) prioritize West Virginia tailored career advising topics for an online Blackboard module and (4) identify potential opportunities for a joint online job listing database for our colleges and schools. More details to come. See updates on the WV Forward website in 2019.

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