Virtual Career Network

The VCN is designed to help jobseekers:

• Explore healthcare careers - by providing information about each career and answering common questions such as: "What do jobs like this pay?" or "What is it like to be a nurse/technician/medical coder?"
• Decide which healthcare career is the best fit for them - by using online assessments and tools to compare options based on interests.
• Identify education and training needed - by showing what education, training, licenses, or certifications are needed to get and hold a job.
• Locate an appropriate instructional program - by identifying courses, training, and other programs near a user's zip code.
• Access test prep materials and online courses - by taking courses directly through VCN for academic preparation.
• Find and apply for financial aid - by helping to find ways to cover the costs of education or training programs.
• Get credit for prior learning - by helping determine whether courses taken through an employer, in college, or while in the military, may be eligible for education credits.
• See job demand in specific geographic areas - by cross-referencing occupational matches with local job openings.
• Search for better jobs - by linking their skills and interests to the National Job Exchange.

The VCN was built as an open source, open content platform. All of the tools, assessments, user interfaces, labor market information, experiential materials about health care careers, foundation-training courses, and other resource materials are available for use by other systems and other platforms. Any user can create and maintain their own Career Management Account, and gain access to all of the career tools it contains. While initially focusing on health care, the platform is being built to cover other occupations, career clusters, or industry sectors. Use of the platform as a delivery system is free to ETA grantees.

Technical activities and services delivered by XPAND for the VCN project fall into the following groups: Project Management and Procurement Support, Monitoring of Application Development and Maintenance, Content Research, Database Development and Management, GIS Development and Internet Mapping, Custom Reporting, SEO and Web Analytics Services, System Infrastructure, Hosting, Operations, Application, software, and hardware testing, Quality Assurance, Risk Management, and After Hours Support.