For those who currently live in Baton Rouge, or are looking to move to Baton Rouge, BRWorks has provided a full job board which gathers information from over 55,000 websites including Indeed. This site’s goal is to show local openings in order to encourage people to seek jobs in Baton Rouge rather than outside of the city or even the state. This website is an initiative of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber created in response to drastic changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This website has evolved into providing information on job opportunities, educational advancement, training, and local resources for job seekers and employers.

Job Openings

There are several starting points on this website when it comes to looking for a job. The first option is to simply look at the job openings, which can be sorted by industry, city, company and full or part time. Each listing will have the job title, the company, the median salary, and the posted salary for most positions. This is a very useful piece of information to be able to see how the posted salary matches up with the median salary. There will also be a percentage listed on each position which will indicate how well your skills match up with the skills required for the position. In order to determine your match, you will have to input your skills into their matching system.

Get Matched

This is another starting point for finding a job on this website. You are able to answer several questions about your interests as well as any skills you have obtained. The first step is to answer a short series of questions about various tasks and indicating how much you would or would not like to do that task. This is a much simpler version of other career exploration questionnaires that are available and listed on our website if you would like more information on your interests and how they tie into job searching. You will then manually add your skills, and the skills list is searchable by job title, which can be very helpful. This can also be a very useful tool when creating your own resume! Once you have added your skills to your profile, you will see changes in the match percentage listed on the job openings, as well as a change in the types of job listings being suggested to you. This will allow you to then select jobs that you already have the skill set for or see which skills you still need to learn for your dream job which you will be able to indicate that you want to learn them by selecting the star next to the specific skill.

Upskilling

This leads us to the upskilling portion of the website, where you can see various different avenues to learn various skills. When you have chosen the skills you want to learn from the job listings, you will then be able to see specific courses and programs associated with those skills. These courses could be associated with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as Udemy or with local colleges which have relevant degrees and coursework. This website will tell you the average cost of the course or program when that information is available. Most of the courses recommended by BR Works do cost money, so before you commit to that, investigate whether there’s a way to get that training for free. We would like to encourage our readers to double check with the EBR Parish Library digital education offerings, as you will have access to free courses with various MOOCs using your library card number. There are also free Coursera courses offered through the LAworks website. This post will detail the process of signing up for that program. However, the BR Works site does allow you to have a more tailored view of the various course offerings as well as local college course/program offerings which is a very useful tool in advancing your professional enrichment.

Job Seeker Resources

This page provides information about local resources associated with job seeking such as Employ BR, HOPE ministries, local job fairs and a link to our website which is also full of valuable information! They also offer information on financial resources such as the GO Grant, LSU career change scholarship, and MJ Foster Promise project.

This website provides a lot of valuable information tailored to the residents of EBR Parish and could be very helpful in your job search. Please check this website out and feel free to also explore the resources available through our website and department at the Career Center located in the Main library on Goodwood. We provide information and assistance in job searching, career coaching, resume creation and interview preparation. If you have any further questions, you can reach out to us via email, phone or in-person or reach out to your local branch and ask for assistance.

Written by Kathryn Cusimano