SkillsEngine & Greater Waco Chamber: Transforming Regional Workforce Development through Strategic Skills Insights

In Greater Waco, Texas, workforce development is a strategic imperative driving community growth. Under the leadership of Tiffany Gallegos Whitley, former senior director of workforce and talent, the Greater Waco Chamber implemented SkillsEngine to align education with industry needs. Though Whitley has moved on, the Chamber continues to build on the foundation she created.

During her tenure, the Chamber prioritized three pivotal pillars:

1. Regional Collaboration: Ensuring a robust, future-ready workforce through seamless partnerships among educational institutions, local industry, and public-private sectors.

2. Clarity of Workforce Needs: Utilizing the Talent Pipeline Management Framework developed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Whitley’s team fosters an ongoing dialogue between educators and over 130 local industries, including advanced manufacturing and supply chain management.

3. Preparing Future Generations: Connecting local K-12 schools with businesses through practical, career-oriented experiences such as internships, mentorships, and job-shadowing opportunities.

SkillsEngine’s innovative technology has proven essential in supporting these initiatives, enabling Whitley’s modestly sized team to achieve outcomes comparable to those of significantly larger metropolitan chambers in Texas.

“Part of the challenge for us was uncovering an efficient and ongoing means of activating our regional talent pipeline management framework,” said Whitley. “In order for us to successfully align workforce interests and help local K-12 and college educators understand which jobs are available and how to prepare graduates to fill those jobs, we had to find a way to synthesize critical regional employment needs, have employers validate skills in a way that isn’t onerous or time-consuming, and feed that intelligence back to our education providers in a real-time and consistent fashion. SkillsEngine is helping us do just that, showcasing what the good jobs are and the skills needed for each.”

Leveraging SkillsEngine, the Greater Waco Chamber took a strategic approach to ensuring widespread adoption by deeply understanding local employer challenges before rolling out high-need job profiles.

“To secure broad adoption of utilizing SkillsEngine’s technology to accomplish our workforce goals, we took three months to understand employer hiring challenges, collect feedback on how best to validate job requirements and build awareness around the type of information that is available and the value in sharing intelligence,” Whitley explained. “Then, the team and I started creating and validating high-need job profiles. We’ll use these profiles to pilot a larger validation process with area industry managers in an interactive session in 2024. SkillsEngine provided us with a helpful jumping-off point for this effort.”

For Whitley, the intuitive nature and visual clarity of SkillsEngine’s technology stand out as significant strengths, setting it apart from other solutions.

“I love data and found the process of building skill profiles to be super intuitive,” she said. “Even in its beta stage, SkillsEngine’s technology is much better than anything I’ve utilized to date. I’m a visual learner, so generating regional job profiles based on sample descriptions has been easy. The team at SkillsEngine has been open to feedback, suggestions, and increasing the visual components of the technology. I log in on a regular basis, and am excited to continue expanding our use of this impactful technology.”

Looking ahead, Whitley sees broader potential beyond the Chamber’s immediate workforce development scope. “Beyond our core audience of education and workforce interests, I can envision a number of additional use cases for SkillsEngine’s technology. More specifically, I see it as a tool for building regional awareness of the employment opportunities we have right here in Greater Waco. It’s one thing to say we have great jobs, but it's another thing to showcase the data of what those high-wage, high-growth jobs are. SkillsEngine can help us take our community-level campaigns to new heights.”

Whitley encourages smaller communities to embrace SkillsEngine’s approach without hesitation. “For fellow smaller communities, dive in and start using this visual and intuitive technology now. The lightbulb will immediately go off in terms of benefit and collective impact. If you’re hesitant to take on a new tool or initiative due to bandwidth, start small. The SkillsEngine team is very encouraging and supportive, and in starting with a more narrow focus, say with only three to four industry partners, you’ll start to see concrete data and real-time results. There’s no downside.”

Through strategic use of SkillsEngine, the Greater Waco Chamber is not only advancing local talent development but also setting a powerful example of how regions of any size can efficiently and effectively drive workforce alignment and economic vitality.

The vision for SkillsEngine’s potential in Greater Waco goes beyond workforce development, aiming to build regional awareness and drive economic vitality. By embracing this innovative technology, the Greater Waco Chamber sets a powerful example for regions of all sizes, showcasing how strategic skills insights can transform communities.

Case study completed in Fall 2024

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