How to Ask Your Community College for a Workforce Answer That Survives Screening

When a company evaluates locations for a new facility, it typically hires a site selection consultant to screen cities against a detailed requirements list. The consultant sends each city's economic development organization a Request for Information — an RFI — covering infrastructure, real estate, permitting timelines, incentives, and workforce. The EDO may have days or weeks to respond. South Dakota's economic development office says it tries to provide at least one week but that some responses are required within a single day. Cities that cannot document what the RFI asks for are eliminated, usually without detailed feedback, before any negotiation begins.

The Site Selectors Guild's process framework describes this initial screen as the stage where locations with fatal or serious flaws, including inadequate talent infrastructure, are cut from the list. Workforce is the section of the RFI where the exchange between the ED director and the community college either produces a usable answer or doesn't.

A letter from the college president stating that the institution is committed to supporting local workforce needs will be read alongside a response from a competing city's college that names the relevant occupations, states how many completers the program produces annually, gives the lead time to add capacity, and ties a first completion date to the prospect's hiring calendar. The general letter loses. Groundbreak issue #1 distinguished that kind of support letter from a dated commitment tied to cohort timing, instructors, equipment, and an authorized signature. This article covers the bilateral exchange that produces the stronger version.

If you are the dean receiving this from your local ED director, what follows explains why the request looks the way it does and what the college can do with it.

What the consultant is screening for

Site selectors screen workforce training on three questions: whether the college trains the specific occupations the facility requires, whether that capacity is funded and available at the scale the project needs, and whether the training calendar aligns with the company's hiring ramp.

Jeff Troan of Vista Site Selection wrote in Area Development that a workforce analysis begins with the proposed facility's requirements at the Standard Occupational Classification level, the federal taxonomy that assigns a code to each occupation. Where a required occupation is scarce locally, he described looking for related occupations from which workers could be retrained, and he argued that training should begin immediately after the location decision, not near facility completion. Chris Schwinden of Site Selection Group wrote in 2025 that the question is not whether a community has the right programs but whether those programs are funded to meet employers' actual needs.

The college's answer, then, has three parts: named occupations, funded capacity, and a calendar keyed to the company's hiring ramp. A response that stops short of all three is a weak entry in a scored comparison.

Three failure points

The EDO asks too late. The RFI response window can be as short as a single day. If the ED director contacts the dean after the RFI arrives, the college cannot produce a credible, institution-specific response in that window. The relationship and the preliminary planning have to exist before any specific project shows up.

The EDO asks without enough specificity for the college to act. A dean cannot scope a training response from "advanced manufacturing, 300 jobs." The college needs job titles, skill requirements, headcount by role, wage levels, and a hiring timeline. Illinois' project questionnaire shows the level of detail that flows through a search: each position's title and description, number of positions, proposed wages, whether workforce support is needed, and the date workers will be needed, alongside the project-decision date, construction date, and operating date as separate milestones.

The EDO may not have all of this when the conversation starts. That is fine if both parties understand which fields are missing and what the college can commit to without them.

Neither party knows what the college is authorized to commit. A dean may offer a verbal assurance that the college can stand something up. The ED director may accept that as a commitment. The site selector will not. The question is what institutional instrument the college can issue, who can sign it, and what it obligates the institution to do. That is a governance question, and it needs an answer before the project arrives.

What the EDO must provide the college

The college cannot design a response from an industry label and a job count. Before asking the dean for anything, the ED director needs to provide the following, or say plainly which items are missing.

Sector and occupational profile. The target sector, the specific occupations the facility will require, and the skill or credential requirements for each. If the EDO has already built demand envelopes for its target sectors — the occupational mix and headcount ranges a given sector implies, as described in Groundbreak issue #4 — this information exists in usable form. If it doesn't, the first conversation with the dean is the moment to say so.

Headcount and hiring calendar. How many workers, in which roles, by what date. A first-shift hire of 80 and a three-year ramp to 300 change what the college needs to deliver and when.

What kind of training is being requested. Pre-employment screening or assessment, pre-hire training, post-hire customized training, or ongoing incumbent worker training. These are different products with different timelines, funding sources, and institutional approval paths. The EDO should specify which one applies.

The project calendar. Decision date, announcement date, construction start, occupancy, operations start, and full-ramp date, listed as separate milestones. The college works backward from the hiring date.

Confidentiality constraints. What can be shared, what cannot, and when the restriction lifts. More on this below.

What the response will be used for. The dean needs to know that the college's written answer goes to a third-party consultant who will read it next to written answers from colleges in four or five other cities. Vague language gets scored against specific language. Say this early. It is the piece of context most often left out, and it is the one that changes how a dean allocates her own time.

What the college must provide the EDO

The ED director needs the college to separate what exists today from what would have to be created. Each follows a different calendar and carries different institutional risk.

Which delivery path the college proposes. An existing program with available seats, an additional section of an existing program, a noncredit customized training contract, or a new credit program. The timelines differ substantially. Clark State College's president told Manufacturing Dive in 2025 that the college could get something going in 48 hours for noncredit work, while noting that credit programs pass through faculty senate and accreditation processes. Palm Beach State College documents one to three years for a new credit program's approval and implementation. The dean should name which path applies and why.

The approval gates that remain. Curriculum committee, dean, VP of academic affairs, board of trustees, state system review, accreditor notification, whatever the institution's sequence requires. The ED director does not need to understand each gate's internal mechanics. The director needs to know how many gates remain, who controls each one, and the earliest date the program can enroll students.

Current constraints. Qualified instructors, lab space, equipment, funding, minimum enrollment thresholds. If the college can offer the training but only after hiring an adjunct with specific industry credentials, that is a constraint with a timeline attached, and it should be stated that way.

The institutional instrument available. Here the governance question becomes concrete. What a college can issue ranges from a commitment letter signed by the president, to a memorandum of understanding approved by the board, to a customized training contract executed with a state workforce agency, to a statement of work tied to a state incentive program. These are not interchangeable.

Washington State's customized training program produces a three-party contract among the business, the college, and the state board, with defined performance periods, budgets, and payment terms. Antelope Valley College's board approved an MOU for a manufacturing apprenticeship specifying a six-course credential, cohort size, fee responsibilities, and instructor arrangements. Johnson County Community College's contract policy treats letters, arrangements, and commitments as business agreements that may obligate the college, which makes the document's language and its authorized signer matter more than what it is called.

The dean's job in this exchange is to say: here is the strongest instrument I can issue at this stage, here is who signs it, and here is what has to happen before I can issue something stronger.

Managing confidentiality

The EDO may be under a nondisclosure agreement and unable to name the prospect. The dean may need to justify resource allocation to a provost or a board. Both constraints are real, and both are manageable if the parties plan for them in advance.

Illinois' project questionnaire tells companies they need not initially provide sensitive or confidential information and may forward it later. Virginia's Talent Accelerator begins planning once an eligible company commits to a Virginia location, then conducts detailed process analysis under NDA and records obligations in a statement of work afterward. Preliminary project definition with non-sensitive details first; protected needs analysis after a commitment milestone.

For the dean, that sequence means the EDO may open in sector-generic terms: an advanced manufacturing operation requiring 120 CNC machinists and 40 industrial maintenance technicians over 18 months, no company name. That is enough to scope a preliminary response. Company-specific curriculum design, proprietary process training, and detailed needs analysis come later, after the prospect authorizes disclosure or signs an NDA with the college directly.

One caution. An NDA does not override public-records law. North Carolina's public records statute defines records made or received in public business broadly and limits a public entity's ability to use an NDA to restrict access to otherwise disclosable records. The ED director and dean should work out together what may be withheld under applicable state law, who holds the sensitive records, and when later disclosure obligations arise.

Structuring the initial ask

The first conversation, or the written request the ED director sends, should do four things.

Establish the context. Site selection consultants screen communities against specific workforce criteria; the college's written response is evaluated against other colleges' responses; timing is measured in days or weeks once an RFI arrives. The dean does not need a briefing on reshoring economics. The dean needs to know that a vague or late response eliminates the community before anyone negotiates anything.

Provide the sector profile. Share the target sector's occupational mix, anticipated headcount ranges, and likely hiring calendar. If the EDO hasn't built that profile yet, the first ask is for the dean's help building it: which occupations the college currently trains, current annual completions, and the lead time to add capacity.

Ask for the college's response framework. For the relevant occupations, request the delivery path, the remaining approval gates and their timeline, current constraints, and the strongest institutional instrument available at each stage of project disclosure.

Agree on a standing process. Groundbreak issue #2 proposed asking counterparties in advance for current completions, a conditional-commitment template, and the lead time to first completers. This conversation is where that template gets built. When the RFI lands, the college is filling in headcount, calendar, and constraints against work it has already done, rather than starting the institutional analysis under someone else's deadline.