-By Gloria Schramm, Career Counselor, Contributing Writer and Author of “The Hardworker Says.”

To obtain government-funded free training through Workforce NY (WIA) which is schooling to upgrade your current skills, you need to go to the One Stop Career Center of your residency. There are plenty of one stop centers near your home, wherever you live and they are all called by different names but administered in conjunction with the NYS Dept of Labor, hence the reference, One Stop Career Center, with every service under one roof.

In fact, there are centers in every city across America and in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, too. And the schools offered through each one stop are mostly in the vicinity or borough of that one stop office. Schools generally have a placement office and you can also take advantage of any job placement assistance you may receive from that school. You may have already been required by postal letter to report to a workshop or show a record of your job search at one of them by the NYS Dept. of Labor. They are aligned with Workforce NY but because taxpayer money is dispersed in a special fund for skills training, one must register specifically for the WIA program at the center. If you happened to be going there soon, you can inquire at the front reception desk. If you don’t know where your One Stop Career Center is, here’s how you can find out:

Go onto www.servicelocator.org and enter your zip code to the left. Several addresses should pop up. Pick the one nearest you and go from there. Some will answer the phone if not too busy or automated. Maybe you can get an answer as to IF they currently have training money to send people to school and what choices they may offer.  Ask to speak to a vocational training supervisor if you get a live person or try to leave a message on that individual’s voicemail. One Stop’s are swamped with customers nowadays, as you can imagine. If you don’t hear back, call again, or if the center is very nearby, go there early in the morning. Most open at 9am. You may have to go in anyway if you cannot get an answer over the phone.

Do call all of them first and see, if possible, who offers funded training and what courses may be appropriate to your present field or career change. You can also search each center’s website that pops up in response to your home zip code and see if they offer training at all. Some centers only offer job search assistance, so maybe you can cut to the chase. However, do not dismiss job search assistance, as it is at the heart of your mission to become reemployed. You may register at more than one center for job search, but keep in mind that you must be registered in the WIA program of the center in your residency to obtain funded training, if any is available at the time.

You will have to go in and register if you find a One Stop in your residency that has money for training. Even if the center is out of funds at this time, register anyway and request to be put on a waiting list. Be prepared to spend several hours at an orientation and then interview. See first what documents they need to qualify you over the phone. If you are receiving unemployment benefits, that is usually sufficient. If you are not, you will need to prove residency with a birth certificate or passport, social security card and possibly show last pay stub. I know it sounds like a lot of information at once, but I want to inform you up front to save time and frustration. Find out what documents you must bring if you are not collecting unemployment insurance before you go. Like the Weather Channel says, know before you go.

The one important thing you must remember is that each center operates independently. Therefore, funding comes and goes and courses/schools vary from center to center. Hopefully, with the stimulus money, there will be enough to go around, but each center’s overhead admin costs vary and some centers may have more money than others for a variety of reasons. Occasionally, you may find a center in another borough that may not require residency.

There are essentially two ways to qualify for school training—laid off from your last job or an economically disadvantaged adult (Medicaid, food stamps, etc.) At times, funding has come down for veterans, etc.

Alternative Free Training

Regardless of the status of WIA funds for formal training or stimulus money for training, most if not all NYS One Stop Career Centers have an online skills training service called Metrix E-learning. Metrix E Learning is available to everyone who registers for WIA regardless of circumstances or residency. The centers purchase licenses for this service of more than 5,000 courses to choose from. The amount is unlimited. There are medical billing courses; infection control courses for those in the medical fields; auditing programs for those in accounting, project management, including Six Sigma to prepare for test certification, business analysis, and so much more, including computer office skills in many applications. You can take these courses in the comfort of your home, day or evening, and receive certificates in your email and test scores upon course completions. The only drawback is that there is no instructor. Customers have reported that the course content is comparable to that of formal schooling.

Goodwill Industries offers free online computer office skills courses with the benefit of an instructor on the message board who gives assignments and tests. This is available worldwide and can also be done in the privacy of your own home day or evening. (www.gcflearnfree.org click on ‘computer training’). The difference with the Goodwill site is that you have to have the desired computer application on your own hard drive. These two sites work wonders if you need to learn theory and practice skills.

Do take advantage of what’s available at this time. Once you complete a funded training, you are under no obligation to pay it back—ever—but please do remember to report a job to your counselor. Even though you report a job placement to the labor dept. the report does not automatically transfer over to WIA records. In order to continue receiving future government funding, One Stop Centers must show placements. Let your taxpayer dollars train you well. Then, pay it forward!