Recredentialing the Skilled Immigrant Workforce: Early Lessons from Minnesota’s Recredentialing Pathways Pilot Program

By Hakim Laafri

Minnesota faces a challenge that may seem paradoxical: employers continue to experience workforce shortages in critical fields, while many internationally trained professionals (ITPs) living in the state struggle to gain employment in the occupations for which they were trained.

For ITPs in healthcare, engineering, education or information technology, possessing the appropriate education and experience does not necessarily translate into the ability to use those qualifications in Minnesota. Foreign transcripts often require evaluation; additional training may be necessary; licensing requirements must be met; and navigating the array of organizations involved can be difficult. The result is a significant loss of talent for both the individuals affected and the broader economy.

In response, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), through its Office of New Americans, launched the Recredentialing Pathways for Internationally Trained Professionals (RCP) pilot in December 2025. The initiative aims to simplify the process through which ITPs re-enter their fields and to improve coordination among the organizations that play a role in credentialing, training and employment.

Early implementation suggests that supporting ITPs in re-entering the workforce requires more than the removal of individual barriers. In order to be successful, it requires effective collaboration among organizations across the workforce system.

A workforce challenge hidden in plain sight

Many people who immigrate to the United States are not fully using their skills in the workforce. Across the United States and other advanced economies, research has documented substantial levels of underemployment among college-educated immigrants.

Minnesota is no exception. Foreign-born residents represent an important part of the state's working-age population, while many internationally trained professionals remain unable to fully use their education, experience and skills.

This creates a difficult paradox. Minnesota needs workers in fields such as healthcare, engineering, education and information technology, yet professionals who have already developed skills in these areas may face significant barriers to entering those same occupations.

Credential recognition and professional licensing are part of the challenge. But they are not the only challenges. Individuals may also need language assistance, additional education or training, career guidance, and assistance understanding a system that involves multiple institutions. For participants, the pathway can quickly become complicated.

Building a pathway back to professional careers

The RCP pilot was established to address this complexity through robust multi-agency coordination that connects programs, services and providers of Minnesota's workforce and education systems. The pilot focuses on the healthcare, engineering, education, and information technology sectors and convenes collaborative partners whose roles differ but are complementary.

Internationally trained New American's represent a broad and diverse group of adult professionals, many of whom possess postsecondary degrees and substantial work experience. Yet they often face significant disadvantages in accessing career pathways and workforce development opportunities. Accordingly, RCP begins with applicant recruitment and a single point of entry into the program. Applicants who received foreign training in one of the four priority sectors are referred to a local CareerForce office or a participating community-based organization for eligibility determination, academic assessment and program enrollment.

Collaborative partnerships between education and workforce organizations are essential for addressing challenges facing internationally trained professionals and bridging gaps. Local workforce development area providers offer one-on-one career planning, access to state and federal funding streams, academic and career assessments, early support with transcript evaluations, and employment assistance; community-based organization for navigation, supports, and bridge programming options; and Adult Education programs assess English language proficiency and provide flexible skill-building opportunities as needed. Faculty within Minnesota State Colleges and Universities develop and implement Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) assessments, while licensing bodies and employers also play critical roles in determining whether a participant can ultimately enter their professions.

The goal is not merely to expand available services. Rather, it is to establish a more coordinated pathway through those services, a distinction of considerable importance.  When multiple organizations are involved, ensuring that participants successfully progress from one step to the next becomes just as vital as the individual services themselves.

When every part depends on another

The RCP early implementation experience highlights how much the different parts of the system depend on one another. One program manager described the situation simply: "Everything depends on whether we can trust one another enough to take the risk of a different approach towards successful completion."

That observation captures one of the central challenges facing the pilot: a participant's progress can depend on several organizations completing their respective roles and communicating with one another.

The pathway is also not necessarily a straight line. Someone may begin with an assessment at a CareerForce center, but then need additional information before moving to transcript evaluation. Another participant may need training before pursuing licensing. Someone else may require additional support to understand the next step. Without effective communication and follow-up, participants can become stuck between stages.

The implementation analysis found that some participants are initially engaged but are not always systematically followed through the different parts of the system. This points to gaps in coordination and continuity of service. As another observation from the implementation experience put it, coordination can require "constant follow-up across partners." In other words, coordination is not something that automatically happens simply because organizations are participating in the same program.

The technical side of coordination

Several challenges identified through the early implementation analysis are relatively straightforward to describe.

Although the RCP pilot engages multiple organizations, standardized processes for communication and referrals remain an important area for development. Each service provider comes with individual differences and varying levels of capacity. Therefore, transitions across intake, enrollment, training and employment are not consistently managed through a unified, system-wide process.

Case management is another challenge. When participants move between organizations, information about their progress may not move with them in a consistent way. RCP has streamlined its process for both greater clarity and security by working with MyCPL, an online platform that helps students earn academic credit for college-level knowledge demonstrated through formal and informal learning outside of the classroom. Once participants have provided their transcripts and acquired their transcript evaluations, participants interested in obtaining a CPL assessment use MyCPL and staff will assign a school and advisor.

Shared data and performance information are also still evolving. Because the pilot was launched recently, formal outcome data are not yet available, and a common performance measure framework across partner organizations has not yet been fully established.

These issues point toward several practical improvements: clearer referral procedures, more robust systems for tracking participants, stronger information sharing mechanisms and common indicators for assessing movement through the pathway. However, technical improvements alone may not be sufficient.

The harder challenge: working as a system

Some of the most important challenges are less visible because they involve organizational concern, coordination and incentives.

The organizations involved in workforce integration have their own responsibilities: adherence to eligibility requirements, performance expectations, at times decreased funding and institutional priorities. They may all support the goal of helping ITPs succeed but are bound to an existing system and its requirements. The existing system for short term training and supportive services has proven to be challenging for foreign-trained professionals to access. This can create tension. For example, if organizations are strongly evaluated on easily measurable outcomes such as job placements, there may be pressure to prioritize participants who are most likely to achieve those outcomes quickly. Participants who require more time or have more complex needs may require considerably more coordination and follow-up.

The issue, therefore, is not simply whether organizations are willing to collaborate. It is whether the broader system gives them sufficient incentives, structures and capacity to do so. This is what makes coordination an organizational governance challenge as well as a technical one.

From organizational success to system success

The RCP pilot offers an opportunity to reconsider how workforce integration programs are designed and evaluated. When participants must navigate multiple organizations, success cannot be measured solely by outcomes achieved within each individual entity; it must also reflect the effectiveness of the interactions and transitions between them.

The RCP program poses a central question: can workforce development programming and its implementation for ITPs in Minnesota be collectively reimagined? The pilot seeks to identify and acknowledge gaps in services for ITPs across participating state agencies and nonprofit partners, while providing guidance and support to both the participants and the providers who administer these services. It recognizes that without sufficient attention and coordination, participants may encounter delays or confusion as they transition between organizations.

This experience highlights the need for a greater focus on system-level outcomes. In addition to assessing whether each organization has fulfilled its responsibilities, policymakers and program partners can also consider the following:

• Did the participant successfully move through the entire pathway?
• Where did the participant encounter delays or gaps?
• Which transitions between organizations created challenges?
• Do existing performance measures promote collaboration and equitable outcomes across the system?

These questions can help shift attention from individual organizational performance toward the participant's overall journey.

What early implementation can teach us

The RCP pilot is still in its initial phase, making it premature to evaluate its long-term employment outcomes or determine whether the model has achieved its broader objectives. Nevertheless, the pilot's early implementation offers valuable insight and can help identify potential bottlenecks before any expansion occurs. Early analysis can clarify where communication failures arise, where participants require additional support and where partner organizations need stronger mechanisms for effective collaboration.

Several key lessons have emerged for RCP. First, coordination must be intentionally structured; it cannot be assumed simply because multiple organizations share a common policy goal. Second, shared systems for referrals, participant tracking and performance information can strengthen continuity throughout the participant experience. Third, technical systems must be complimented by strong relationships and trust among partner organizations. Effective collaboration relies on consistent communication and sustained engagement, particularly when responsibilities extend across institutional boundaries. Finally, performance measurement is important, but when organizations are incentivized to prioritize their own short-term outcomes, broader system goals can become more difficult to achieve. Measures of success should account for the time and effort required to support participants with more complex pathways.

Looking ahead

Minnesota's efforts to support internationally trained professionals in re-entering their fields address a significant workforce challenge: how to better utilize the skills already present within the state. The RCP pilot offers a promising platform for examining this question, while its early implementation underscores that constructing a coordinated pathway is itself a substantial undertaking.

Experience to date indicates that successful workforce integration requires more than credential recognition or the provision of discrete individual services. It depends on organizations aligning their work, sharing information, maintaining continuity and pursuing outcomes that matter across the entirety of the participant journey.

For internationally trained professionals, the objective is clear: to have the opportunity to apply the skills and experience they already possess. For Minnesota, enabling such opportunities could not only enhance economic prospects for immigrant professionals, but also improve the utilization of talent at a time when employers across the state continue to face demand for skilled workers.

The RCP pilot remains in development. Its next phase offers an opportunity to build on early lessons, strengthen coordination across partner organizations and continue testing approaches to ensure that internationally trained talent becomes a more fully utilized part of Minnesota's workforce.