WOOD RIVER — Did you know that Madison County Employment and Training provides services at no-cost to job seekers and businesses?

“That’s right, we do,” Employment and Training Director Tony Fuhrmann said.

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Fuhrmann said individuals needing assistance from developing resumes to helping pay for training and education along with services to businesses that provide funding to hire new employees or for training to upskill existing employees.

“In November, Employment and Training started posting on social media all the things we can offer to job-seekers and businesses,” Fuhrmann said.

The daily postings can be found on four employment and training social media sites — Facebook, Twitter, InstaGram, and LinkedIn. There is a combination of announcements, memes and videos that rotate on a daily basis between four areas of service being provided:

· Universal Services – these are services available to any resident at the MCET Office in Wood River. An individual can come into the resource room and create or update a resume, look for a job on-line or via the job board on-site, apply for jobs, complete Career Interest tests to determine the right career path for them and/or meet with a career specialist for more information and assistance.

· Training Services – these are services available to individuals to pay for short-term or longer-term training for individuals to enter in a career. These programs are income based or for individuals who are unemployed. The training can range from short-term trainings such as CDL training to learn the skills needed to become a truck driver to two year degree programs at the local community colleges or even paying for their junior and senior years in completing their Bachelor’s Degree at SIU-E.

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· Business Services – these are services provided to businesses ranging from On-the-Job training funds, which help eligible individuals receive the training they need to be successful employees with a business to Incumbent Worker Funds which assists a company in upskilling their current workforce with new skills or techniques to help the business be more profitable.

· Alternative Digital Credentials – This is a special program for unemployed individuals to be trained to become Lab technicians, Food Science Technicians or Chemical Technicians in the growing bio-science field in the St Louis region.

Fuhrmann said the number of individuals reentering the workforce and looking for training has decreased since the pandemic.

“Our funding doesn’t allow us to produce and pay for traditional marketing and advertising so we started this social media blitz,” Fuhrmann said. “We have a very talented staff and we are now expanding on their creativity to produce entertaining and informative pieces that make people want to reach out to us for more information.”

Since the start of the social media blitz, the number of hits for the department’s pages increased by 130 percent, but more importantly a double-digit increase in the number of individuals entering training programs.

“We are trying to reach out and find those individuals where they are in social media,” Fuhrmann said. “With that being the goal, our latest attempt is the creation of a TikTok account where we hope to provide entertaining approaches to providing information on our programs to younger job-seekers.”

The TikTok account can be found at mcetdlwd22.

For more information about programs available at MCET please visit their website at http://www.co.madison.il.us/mcetd or call (618) 296-4301.

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