There are so many articles about job search, it is easy to get overwhelmed. Which articles are the best? This list features the feedback from some well known experts on job search about the articles they think are really worth reading. What makes this such a helpful resource is that the list itself is a very fast read. You will see the title of each article and you can click on it to access the information. You will not be wasting your time plowing through articles that are not relevant to your work.
Welcome to a new feature of the newsletter! While the newsletter has covered employer related issues in some of the past issues, this topic will now be a regular feature in every issue. We will feature information on a wide variety of topics related to working with employers.
In this issue, we are including an article about the topic of employer engagement. Employer engagement involves developing relationships between workforce organizations and employers that go beyond the traditional roles of referral and hiring. Engagement relationships are partnerships that go deep inside the both the employer's way of working and how the workforce program serves them. Employer engagement is one of the hallmarks of the Workforce Investment Opportunity Act, but it is also being developed in other parts of the workforce world.
In this article, a group of workforce development experts share their perspectives on employer engagement. I offer workforce organizations a customized consultation session that has a plan and model for taking relationships with employers from placement to engagement.
For a description of my consultation session on engagement, click here.
To go to the article on engagement, click here.
WHAT LESSONS CAN JOB SEEKERS LEARN
FROM THE SHARK TANK TV SHOW?
I really enjoy watching Shark Tank. Four very wealthy people (the sharks) listen to individuals that are starting businesses and want to get more capital and help. The sharks are very good at analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of both the business and the businessperson. There are a lot of important lessons for job seekers to learn from the way the sharks scrutinize people and information. This article sums up those lessons. The information will help your job seekers be much better in presenting and communicating when they meet the interview "shark."
Click here to see what can be learned from this TV show.
MANAGEMENT CORNER
ARE YOU GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR SECTOR STRATEGIES?
Sector strategies are one of the most effective ways to engage employers and get job seekers with barriers to employment into jobs and careers. But sector strategies can be difficult to manage and they can be very time consuming. This resource list will connect with some great information and best practices about working with sector strategies. As a manager, you should not reinvent the wheel. Look at some of these resources and best practices to get your sector strategy up and running successfully as soon as possible.
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WHAT HAS LARRY BEEN UP TO LATELY?
I had the pleasure of presenting at the
CASAS National Summer Institute. I was invited to present by Patricia Rickard the President of CASAS and Jane Equez the Vice-President and Director of Program Development. This nonprofit organization provides the most widely used competency based assessment system in the United States designed to assess the relevant real world basic skills of adult learners. CASAS is also used internationally. The primary focus areas of CASAS are adult education and workforce development. Their adult education assessments cover a wide range of competencies. Their Workforce Skills Certification System documents potential employees' skill levels in reading, math, critical thinking, problem solving and soft skills. CASAS assessments are used in schools, training programs, workforce organizations, reentry programs, businesses and many other types of organizations.
Check out their catalog and services by clicking here to go their website. You should get on their mailing list to learn about new products and services and to get the announcement for next year's annual conference. I presented two of my most popular training topics,
Cooperation, Coordination and Collaboration! What is the Difference and How to Make Them Work Together! and
The Rules of Engagement.
Click here to see descriptions of these workshops.
I presented at the annual
Saffron Strand Homeless Employment Conference. Saffron Strand is a very innovative homeless employment program that uses a unique model to help people go from being homeless and unemployed to being housed and working. The dynamic and very dedicated founder and Executive Director, Yvonne Nair, works with a team that includes many volunteers and people who are homeless to put on this powerful two day conference. The theme for this year's conference was Working with the Homeless: How to Thrive and Survive in the trenches. The conference focused on strategies for helping front line workers and their managers find ways to cope with the stress and burnout that are so common in this field. I presented a workshop titled,
Management Strategies for Reducing Stress and Burnout Among Homeless Service Provider Personnel. I have been working for many years to use employment strategies to help people who are homeless get jobs and careers.
For more information about my services for organizations serving people who are homeless click here.
For the
San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families I recently presented
Make Your Program a Magnet! How to Recruit, Engage and Retain Disconnected and Transition Age Youth in Your Program! One of the exciting things about this training was that I hired three transition aged youth to come and speak to the trainees about their life experiences and experiences being in employment programs.
I also want to thank my long time colleague and friend,
Glenn Eagleson, who is widely regarded as a national expert in the youth employment field for his help in designing this training and for coordinating the youth panel. Glenn has dedicated many years as a professional and volunteer to improving the employment and education outcomes of youth with barriers to employment. He is one of my go to sources for information about the state-of-the-art in the youth employment field. Glenn is the longest serving member of the board of the
National Youth Employment Coalition and he works as a planner for the
San Francisco Department of Children Youth and Their Families, which is a client agency of mine. For more information on my services for organizations that serve youth click here.
Opportunity Junction used my training services to do a workshop for people who are in their program and for people who have been unemployed a long time. I presented
How to Stay Motivated in a Long Job Search! In this time of economic recovery, it is easy to overlook people that have been unemployed a long time. We still have two million people who have been unemployed for longer than twenty-seven weeks! I was inspired by these individuals who in spite of facing so much rejection are still in active job search. After the training, I did a consulting session with the team from Opportunity Junction.
They have a new grant to set up career pathways for foster and disconnected youth. I shared my perspectives about how to be successful with these populations. Given the outstanding track record of Opportunity Junction and their creative approach to program development, I expect them to be designing new and very successful approaches for this initiative.
Thanks to all of these organizations for using my services. I will have more to report in the next issue.
WHAT ARE 7 OF THE HARDEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO
ANSWER AND HOW SHOULD YOUR JOB SEEKERS ANSWER THEM?
There are some interview questions that most job seekers dread. These questions have underlying agendas that can sink job offers if people do not know how to respond to them. This article identifies those questions and provides some good information about how to handle the questions that most candidates hope they never hear.
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DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE PSYCHIATRIC DISABILITY LINKEDIN GROUP?
Boston University has been a leader in developing strategies and models that can help people with mental health disabilities go to work. Now they have started a LinkedIn group for both mental health consumers and the people that provide support and information to help them be successful in the labor market. You need to be registered on LinkedIn to join the group and participate.
Click here to connect with the group.
WHAT SHOULD PEOPLE DO AFTER BEING FIRED?
Being fired is a devastating experience for the vast majority of people. Individuals lose more than a job. They lose their workplace family, status, routines, value and often their identity. This article has some helpful hints about what people can do to process this experience and move on with their lives.
Read More >>>
WHAT IS THE BEST TIME TO SCHEDULE A JOB INTERVIEW?
WHAT IS THE JOB MATCH?
You are working with this job seeker and when you ask them what they love to do, they say, "I love to shop." That is not what you expected to hear and you do not know how that can be a job match. But there are many people who shop for a living! There are enough of them that they have their own professional association!
To learn more about this interesting job match click here.
HOW CAN YOU DEVELOP CAREER PATHWAYS FOR THE HARD-TO-EMPLOY?
Programs that serve people with multiple barriers to employment and low employment motivation often focus on helping people get jobs and not careers. There is a problem with this approach. Jobs are not much of an incentive to help people become motivated to deal with their barriers to employment. As a result, the jobs strategy does not increase employment motivation and it will often lead to retention problems as people burnout on entry-level jobs with little opportunity to advance. If we can connect people with the idea of careers that match things they are passionate about, they will often make surprising progress on their barriers to employment and do everything they can to climb the career ladder. I have seen this happen many times in my volunteer work. The problem is that many models of career counseling do not incorporate the challenges the hard-to-employ face in thinking about careers. That is why I worked for several years to develop a career counseling model specifically for the hard-to-employ. For more information on the training, I have developed on this model, click here. There are also some good career pathway models that have proven to be effective.