The CareerOneStop team at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development won three awards from different organizations recognizing their work on CareerBot, the artificial intelligence chatbot designed to help users of the CareerOneStop website find exactly what they are looking for without needing to learn the site’s web layout.

The 8-month-old AI helper won the Granicus Digital Strategy Award in Innovation, a State Government Innovation Award (SGIA) from University of Minnesota, and a Government IT Symposium (GOVIT) Award.

CareerOneStop features 61 interactive tools, special purpose portals, and hundreds of content pages. With so much to see in one place users can easily become overwhelmed.

Taking about a year to create, CareerBot makes it simpler to navigate the CareerOneStop site. Users can type their question into the CareerBot box and receive a link to relevant information. For example, a user looking for a job need only enter their occupation and zip code to see local postings. A user needing access to veteran benefits or unemployment insurance can ask for those services directly.

Since its creation, users have had more than a quarter million interactions with CareerBot. Those interactions produced relevant responses 97 percent of the time.

CareerOneStop is a massive 20-year-old integrated suite of national websites that helps job seekers, employers and workforce professionals find the employment and career resources they need. In 2017, CareerOneStop had just under 34 million visits and more than 198 million pages viewed on the website.

CareerOneStop has been managed and operated by DEED since its creation in 1997. It started out as America’s Career InfoNet and has gone through multiple changes to become CareerOneStop.

CareerOneStop is sponsored by a cooperative grant from the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration (DOLETA) to DEED and funding is provided on a year-to-year basis. Activities under the grant are managed by DEED’s CareerOneStop Program Director with guidance and active involvement from DOLETA. CareerOneStop resources are available in English or Spanish and can be used by individuals alone or with workforce professionals using desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones.