The Penn Foster Blog

As election post-mortems continue, a growing confidence-in-the future gap has driven a tidal wave of engagement as both sides of the aisle grapple with the growing populist anger. This gap in confidence in our nation's powerful institutions presents us with a challenge as well as an opportunity. As a leading skills organization focused on building competencies, career pathways and employment matching for today's evolving workforce, Penn Foster has a role to play in helping Americans build stronger futures. We're all anxious to build a nation where we can life each other up, and we believe education is the cornerstone sector to start:

It can be downright heartbreaking: A qualified applicant lands a job interview, only to botch the opportunity by making an interviewing mistake that could have been avoided. In fact, job applicants make more mistakes during the interview than during any other step of the hiring process, according to a survey of 2,100 chief financial officers by Accountemps.1 Here are some common interview mistakes that you can prepare your students to avoid:

Each year, Penn Foster takes time to celebrate an exemplary Penn Foster graduate. The Graduate of the Year is selected by student peers and a cross-functional Penn Foster committee. Graduates are encouraged to enter in the contest by submitting an essay about their Penn Foster experience, why graduating is an important milestone in their life, and what their next steps are post-graduation. This year, we could not be more proud to announce the winner, who perfectly exemplifies the grit, determination, and passion that we admire in our students and graduates. Congratulations to our 2016 Graduate of the Year, Omar Haughton! This is his story.

Penn Foster was recently asked to present at the NJCA's Professional Development Innovation Webinar Series. The webinar addressed the need for skilled candidates for today's job market, why it's important to offer post-secondary courses and create career pathways for Job Corps students in particular, and how individual Job Corps centers can offer programs for in-demand skilled trades on center.

Career schools and colleges face a competitive recruitment landscape in 2017. While traditional and nontraditional student enrollment are on an upward trend, the sheer amount of available education choices makes it difficult for schools to stand out. You need a strong recruiting strategy in place before the new year rolls around to catch the attention of people making resolutions to change their lives by going back to school.

Harvey County Detention Center in Kansas is finding that offering inmates a high school diploma program is a significant stepping stone in helping inmates realize a brighter future.

Educators face a widespread problem with students committing plagiarism, and often focus only on eliminating obvious types, such as neglecting to cite information from internet sources and copying another student's work. This approach, however,  overlooks the many other forms of  plagiarism, and neglects to address the fact that students may not even know about these other types of plagiarism. It's essential for educators to teach students about  all forms of plagiarism so they don't suffer the negative consequences.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the accomplishments of both our students and our partners throughout 2016. As a skills solutions organization, we are proud to play a role in providing individuals with the education and skills they need to take the next step in their career and positively impact their future. However, much of this would not be possible without the partnerships we have formed that enable students and employees to pursue our programs.

These days, an accredited high school diploma is a must-have precursor for long-term career success. While a diploma itself may meet the baseline requirement for many employers, offering a diploma with an additional career concentration in an in-demand career field can provide many additional benefits for employers. Whether offered by high schools, colleges, workforce boards, or employers themselves, career concentrations can go a long way to creating a more prepared, career-ready workforce.