"I See Myself in that Career": Exploring Methods to Attract the Next Generation Transportation Workforce

Predicting a workforce crisis for the past twenty years, the transportation field has launched a wide variety of initiatives to increase the future talent pipeline that would choose transportation as a field of choice for study and future careers. This project follows on the premise that increasing awareness of career opportunities is essential to attracting new entrants at an early age, and that awareness building should be dynamic. This includes providing views of who works in the transportation field, what their experiences are, and what they value about their work. This paper hypothesizes that first-person glimpses into transportation careers are just as essential for job seekers as knowing job specs, qualifications, pay scales and opportunities for advancement. In-depth career profiles of workers were developed and showcase individuals, from diverse backgrounds and interests, engaged in work critical to the future of our transportation systems and infrastructure as an inducement to consider future education and training work needed to enter such a field. A number of other initiatives have created occupation and career profiles in public and private agencies. As with other awareness building and talent pipeline development initiatives such efforts need to be made accessible to a wider more diverse audience and metrics for tracking their effectiveness should be developed and implemented. Coordinating and testing these efforts are part of a future stage of program. View the NCST Project Webpage