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    Case Study

    How the City of Birmingham, UAB Medicine, and Guild transformed workforce training into job placement

    In Birmingham, the City was working hard to expand training efforts, but residents still faced barriers connecting to quality jobs. Through a federal grant from Good Jobs, Guild partnered with the City of Birmingham and UAB Medicine to redesign the program — starting with employer demand and building workforce strategy from there. Now, residents are moving into new, family-sustaining careers.

    Key takeaways

    • Workforce training programs in Birmingham weren’t fully aligned with local hiring needs

    • Guild partnered with UAB Medicine, the largest local health system and anchor employer, to co-design a program based on real roles

    • The program featured quality training, hands-on experience, coaching support, and talent pipeline visibility

    • Jobseekers are moving into roles, UAB Medicine is filling talent gaps, and the City is proving impact

    The challenge: Strengthening the connection between training and hiring

    Like many cities, Birmingham offered a variety of training programs but residents still struggled to turn credentials into jobs. Local employers needed specific skills and hands-on experience, prompting the need for a more coordinated, demand-driven approach.

    The City was ready to try something different and innovative: a model driven by employer demand, not just training supply.

    The solution: Co-designing with UAB Medicine to fill specific needs

    Guild introduced a fundamentally different approach. Combining regional labor market data with strategic insights gathered through direct consultations with UAB Medicine, Guild identified a high-demand role — Certified Medical Assistant — and partnered with UAB Medicine to co-design a job-aligned pathway.

    Within just three months, Guild secured a hiring commitment from UAB Medicine and collaboratively built a program that aligned training, hands-on experience, and hiring needs. The model included:

    • A 100-hour externship at UAB, providing the real-world experience that had previously been a barrier to hire

    • High-quality, vetted coursework from Guild’s Learning Marketplace

    • Clear role pathways and transparent job opportunities

    • Enrollment from previously rejected applicants and staffing agency roles like patient transport and food services

    Guild’s technology served as the digital backbone for the program — managing enrollment, tracking learner progress, coordinating externships, and ensuring transparency across partners.

    Guild brought a fundamentally different model. They started by working directly with the employer…to identify high-need roles and then built the training around those jobs. That level of alignment, plus the commitment to hands-on learning, really changed the game for us."

    Sarah Wilson, Deputy Director
    City of Birmingham logo
    City of Birmingham logo

    The impact: New jobs to fill high-demand roles, and a stronger community

    The Birmingham pilot is already delivering meaningful results:

    • Jobseekers with no prior clinical experience are being hired into high-demand, family-sustaining allied health roles.

    • UAB Medicine now has a job-ready, reliable talent pipeline for critical roles.

    • The City of Birmingham is demonstrating measurable impact, creating economic opportunity and improving quality of life for its residents.

    Beyond jobs, the program is generating enthusiasm in the community as the program scales. Learners are completing their self-paced modules faster than expected, and enrollment for the program is climbing.

    What started as a pilot is now a blueprint, showing how cities, employers, and workforce partners can align around outcomes-based hiring and build sustainable pathways into good jobs.

    Hear from the leaders creating economic opportunity for their communities

    Sarah Wilson, Deputy Director, City of Birmingham, and Tiffany Bishop, Workforce Development Manager at UAB Medicine, discuss how an employer-driven approach to workforce development is building sustainable pathways to employment and a stronger Birmingham.

    Meet the individuals finding career paths

    • A Birmingham-based woman is training to become a Certified Medical Assistant after first being exposed to healthcare through caring for her grandmother and participating in health science programs in high school — returning to a path she put on hold after entering the workforce.

    • A retail team lead with nearly 15 years of experience is transitioning into healthcare after managing diabetes personally and within her family, pursuing medical assisting as a first step toward helping other patients navigate chronic illness.

    • An ESL teacher aide working with K-8 students is pursuing clinical care at UAB after her grandfather’s cancer diagnosis at age 10, motivated by witnessing nurses support her family and a long-held goal of becoming a registered nurse.

    We’re ready to work with you. Let’s talk about how Guild can help.

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