Alliance Opportunity Center links employers, job seekers
Over the past 15 years, we’ve experienced unprecedented growth at AllianceTexas, and we have every reason to believe that this momentum will remain strong.
That’s why Hillwood, the developer of AllianceTexas, and its workforce development partners recently made a long-term commitment to continue supporting this growth by moving the Alliance Opportunity Center into a permanent storefront at Alliance Crossing, just west of the Westport Parkway and Interstate 35W intersection.
The Alliance Opportunity Center was established in 1998 as a satellite workforce center through the collaboration of local organizations including Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County, Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas, Hillwood-A Perot Company, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, Tarrant County College and the Texas Workforce Commission.
It was an untested concept, never offered before at any other development in the nation. The Center operated from a trailer adjacent to Fort Worth Alliance Airport.
The premise for the Alliance Opportunity Center is simple: Fort Worth residents need jobs with decent salaries and benefits, and AllianceTexas companies need help finding workers with the right skills to fill available positions.
The center addresses both of these needs, free of charge to job seekers and employers, by offering a range of services that identify, recruit and place qualified individuals with companies in AllianceTexas.
While the Center may have started small, the idea was big. Today’s Alliance Opportunity Center is the result of our will to build something that would be a true asset to this community and would bring added value to local businesses.
We have assisted more than 21,000 job seekers and have achieved an 82 percent placement rate since 1998. Just this year, we provided more than 1,900 services to AllianceTexas employers.
The success of the center is a testament to partnerships that we created to serve the workforce needs for one of the fastest growing regions in the nation.
That success is not only measured in the number of job applicants we have helped place or the number of businesses that we have served.
This innovative program has also received statewide and national acclaim, including the Business Results Award from the Texas Workforce Commission and the Workforce Award of Excellence from the National Association of Counties.
To our surprise, the Alliance Opportunity Center has developed beyond a program that sustains businesses with an existing footprint at AllianceTexas by matching them with top job candidates.
The center has also become a powerful economic development tool that is bringing new business to our city.
Fort Worth has one of the most talented workforces in the nation, and companies like Facebook, Amazon.com and GE Transportation want to leverage this labor pool. The Alliance Opportunity Center is making it easier than ever for them to tap into our workforce resources.
The Alliance Opportunity Center is also helping our workforce development partners enhance their service offerings.
For example, Tarrant County College has built several educational programs directly around the jobs that AllianceTexas companies have available, including the Center of Excellence for Aviation, Transportation and Logistics, which opened last year.
These programs ensure that Fort Worth residents have the specific skills necessary to fulfil labor needs.
This new storefront will allow the Alliance Opportunity Center to fully leverage its resources and increase its capacity to serve job seekers and AllianceTexas employers.
I am confident that as AllianceTexas continues to grow, the Alliance Opportunity Center will achieve even greater success. Working together, we will continue serving the workforce needs of Fort Worth’s business community.
Tom Harris is president of Alliance Air Services (Fort Worth Alliance Airport).
This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Alliance Opportunity Center links employers, job seekers."