Employers need employees. Across Miami-Dade County, employers and educators collaborate to train tomorrow’s workforce today. From IT and specialized skills to professional services, this shared mission is a strong lure for current employers and those contemplating relocating to the market.

“We work with employers to help design programs to build pipelines to meeting area needs,” says Rick Beasley, executive director with CareerSource South Florida in Miami. “It’s not just about providing incentives. This is about synergies designed to bridge the talent gap.”

Most recently, CareerSource worked with Larkin Community Hospital to help train future nurses. Deploying the Academic Council component of the Beacon Council’s One Community One Goal initiative, workforce developers, educators and business leaders across the region devised a program that would have prepared a workforce readiness plan for when South Florida was short-listed for the Amazon HQ2 and its anticipated 50,000 jobs.

With a target of such high-growth industries as aviation, banking, creative design, trade and logistics, hospitality and culinary, technology and health care, educators are diversifying their workforce offerings.

At Miami Dade College, the nation’s largest college by enrollment, 300 programs and tracks constantly evolve to meet business and community needs, says Executive Vice President Lenore Rodicio. The school in April was one of two Florida colleges awarded the 2019 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The school partners with Facebook, Amazon Web Services and Google to train tomorrow’s tech workers, and an expanded aviation program in a new partnership with the Pan Am International Flight Academy will train new pilots to address the coming critical shortage of commercial pilots.

“Our job is to train your workforce,” says Rodicio, whose school was chosen by Tesla as its first Florida partner for its Tesla START automotive training program. “So we have a very keen focus, not just on training of various students to transfer to continue the four-year studies, but to transfer directly into the workforce.”

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