The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Job Corps has served more than 2 million young Americans since its inception in 1964, training them for meaningful careers, assisting in their search for steady employment, and providing access to room and board. As diverse as their life experiences surely were, every one of the students faced the same critical first steps on their Job Corps journey: learning about, applying for, and being admitted into the program.

Booz Allen transformed the Job Corps enrollment process for the 21^st century, taking it from a paper-based to a cloud-based enrollment system and data platform for both applicants and admissions staff—making it faster, more efficient, and easier to use.

Job Corps is the largest nationwide, residential technical career training program in the United States. Its 123 locally run centers, spread throughout the nation, serve low-income young people ages 16–24, helping them complete high school and endowing them with in-demand career skills, on-campus lodging, and other assistive services that support their long-term success.

Previously, Job Corps’ admissions process was manual and paper-based, and each Job Corps center had its own way of screening and onboarding applicants. In practice, this lack of standardization and digitization caused delays, resulting in long wait times for applicants. For the young applicant base, accustomed to smooth, intuitive digital experiences, the lengthy, manual, and paper-based admissions process was arduous.

Some participants in Job Corps have faced serious challenges such as lack of parental support, food insecurity, and homelessness. When serving such at-risk populations, minimizing obstacles is critical. A qualified applicant experiencing precarious life circumstances may lose touch with the program during a difficult, drawn-out application process.

To bring the Job Corps admissions process online and make it easier and intuitive for today’s users, Booz Allen designed a modern, cloud-based services architecture encompassing reusable components that can scale based on Job Corps’ needs. We quickly developed a minimum viable product (MVP), a barebones application to pilot with a handful of the nation’s Job Corps centers.

Tapping our expertise in the methods and practices of user-centered design, we iterated and improved upon the MVP by leveraging extensive user testing, interviews, focus groups, and other research to address the needs and pain points of applicants and the OJC staff who review and process applications.

Job Corps’ new digital enrollment platform, MyJobCorps, empowers both applicants and admissions staff to digitize and speed up enrollments. Currently, MyJobCorps is live at all Job Corps centers and accessible to all public users and applicants nationwide.

MyJobCorps is built on a cloud-based technology platform that makes it easy to scale and evolve for future needs. Applicants can access the public MyJobCorps Portal from anywhere using the device of their choice—desktop, smartphone, or tablet—to learn about Job Corps, start an application, and communicate with admissions staff. The portal also allows users to complete their application, sign all their agreements, and upload all their documents.

Admissions staff have an internal MyJobCorps case management system that streamlines case assignment, management of applicant cases, visibility into the full application submission and documents with automatic checks from applicants, eligibility verification, and other downstream processes to enroll future students. Staff now use the same standardized, automated digital processes to receive, organize, evaluate, and respond to applications for all Job Corps centers across the United States.

Booz Allen partnered with Job Corps to build and implement a modern platform solution to streamline enrollment processing time from 6 months to, on average, 66 days. Application submissions are up to an average of 3,000 per week, and applicants can complete their portal applications in as little as 15 minutes.

In addition to the improved user experience for applicants and admissions staff, Booz Allen built the data platform to enable Job Corps to glean insights and develop forward-looking predictive analysis and data visualizations. The MyJobCorps Data Platform leverages the power of data from the admissions process that can be used to establish baseline metrics to inform decisions.

Booz Allen built, with Job Corps, a modern, digital enrollment platform, lowering the barrier to entry to this critical program. By decommissioning legacy tools, the modern platform is far more accessible to young people taking a bold first step toward broadening their education and employment opportunities and improving their lives, while adding skilled workers to the labor force faster.