Spanish, Polish translations added to unemployment insurance applications and IllinoisJobLink.com

[January 30, 2013]  CHICAGO -- Electronic applications for unemployment insurance benefits and IllinoisJobLink.com now are available in Spanish and Polish, the Illinois Department of Employment Security announced this week.

Electronic unemployment insurance applications at www.ides.illinois.gov are preferred to paper applications for accuracy and efficiency. IllinoisJobLink.com is a free help-wanted job board featuring more than 100,000 job openings and 70,000 resumes. IDES staff also provides no-cost human resources recruitment services to Illinois businesses.

"Today's news is a win for all taxpayers in Illinois because it increases access to services and saves taxpayer money," said IDES Director Jay Rowell on Monday. "Translating additional online services allows us to serve people in a way that is more convenient for them."

The announcement augments initiatives to make services more readily available to individuals whose preferred language is not English. Last year, IDES converted important documents on its website to the four non-English languages most requested: Spanish, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Russian. The translator button is in the upper-right corner of the IDES home page. Other language translations can be met upon request. The IDES has been asked to translate its information into more than 60 languages.

For each language, the IDES reviews more than 280 website pages with nearly 94,000 characters. A common website language translator first converts the text from English. Then the translation is reviewed by IDES staff for accuracy and nuance. As a precaution, legal opinions, legislation and court orders are not automatically translated. Most customers do not seek these documents.

IllinoisJobLink.com is the revamped IDES employment website that links job seekers with ready-to-hire employers. This no-cost, online career resource allows individuals to create multiple resumes that emphasize different talents and allows businesses to search for specific skills. The keyword-matching technology increases the likelihood of a successful new hire. Illinois JobLink emphasizes Illinois jobs, scrapes other commercial job boards and compares favorably with private efforts that cost hundreds of dollars for a single advertisement. Hiring managers can call 877-342-7533 for direct assistance with www.illinoisjoblink.com.

[Text from Illinois Department of Employment Security file received from the Illinois Office of Communication and Information]