Rensselaer County Career Development Center Opens on Campus

October 27, 2022

Rensselaer County residents and Hudson Valley Community College students looking for additional career guidance and connections will have a new resource on campus starting this fall.

The Rensselaer County Career Center, which helps individuals prepare for and find careers in every sector of the economy, has opened a new satellite Workforce Development Career Center in the college’s Siek Campus Center.

The center is operated in conjunction with the Capital Regional Workforce Development Board, which will also be located on campus. The board serves Albany, Rensselaer, and Schenectady counties and acts as the central hub for all workforce development services in the region.

“Locating the new Workforce Development Career Center on campus makes sense for so many reasons, and it highlights the great working relationship we continue to foster with the county career centers,” said Hudson Valley President Roger Ramsammy. “Our primary focus is to help members of the community and our students find and train for new careers, and this new office will complement the work being done at our Center for Careers and Transfer while offering additional services to job seekers.”

"This is a great investment in an area where we need significant progress in. Every sector is facing challenges with staffing, and workforce development will help find the caregivers, drivers, builders, innovators and instructors of the future. We are excited and honored to be joining in a productive partnership with Hudson Valley Community College and the Capital Region Workforce Development Board in this important endeavor," said Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin.

“The need for the dovetailing of education and workforce development is greater now more than ever before,” stated Brian Williams, executive director of the Capital Region Workforce Development Board. “The opening of the Rensselaer County Workforce Development Center on the Hudson Valley Community College campus achieves the goal of connecting higher education skills training to the full workforce development system, thus improving our community by preparing and connecting individuals to family-sustaining careers with the skills businesses need.”

Staffed by professionals from the Rensselaer County Department of Employment and Training, the affiliate Career Center will provide job seekers with customized career planning, resumé assistance, career search workshops and tuition assistance for short-term training through the federal Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. Locating this new career center directly on the Hudson Valley campus will benefit job seekers who can immediately take advantage of additional resources on campus, including many short-term and long-term career training opportunities.

Staff from the new Rensselaer County Workforce Development Career Center will work in partnership with the college’s Center for Career and Transfer in providing services that complement and expand the connection between education and workforce placement and development activities in the region. Local and regional businesses also will have the opportunity to use the center for recruiting and development of current and future employees.

According to the 2022 Capital Region Annual Report and Workforce Development Report, the Capital Region is experiencing a two-sided predicament – employers in a variety of sectors are anxious to find new talent, and yet there remains a scarcity of trained workers to fill many positions. The Capital Region regained more than 8,000 jobs in 2021, but four times that amount is needed to return to pre-pandemic employment levels. The region’s health care, the skilled trades and technology sectors are particularly hard hit, and their continued growth depends on a concerted effort between business, workforce development entities and education.

The Capital Region Workforce Development Board is comprised of private business representatives and public partners whose goal is to strengthen the skills of the Capital Region’s workforce through partnerships with business, education and community-based organizations. It sponsors the three Comprehensive Career Centers in the region that offer a variety of programs designed to help adults and youth identify career pathways, job training, placement and the tools to strengthen their skills to achieve a higher quality of life.