Part Two: Starting a Job Club

We were all excited about job club when we first got it started. (For details of our start-up thought processes, refer to Part One posted on September 21). We thought through all the details and believe it can achieve multiple objectives. Personally, I was happy to have more direct client contact and a chance to facilitate training. The staff of the public Library where we meet has been supportive and I’ve had no problem preparing enough fresh job leads and other useful materials for each meeting time. (Look for more details about some of those materials in Part Three.)

Despite these great plans, it’s gotten off to a rough start. I’ve had lots of reading time in the library. A total of 9 clients have attended, despite more numerous referrals. We knew it might take some time to build, but after 2 months, we met to reevaluate and decide what changes to make. We have weekly program meetings and spent a good portion of one of those talking about changes.

What strikes me as I reviewed this before posting is how interconnected job development is with everything else about employment services. It takes team work and an adjustment in the way we all work. Here are the changes we decided to implement:

1. I will stay a whole hour in case someone shows up toward the end of the published time. A couple of times, clients came after I had left. We thought reliability and consistency would encourage clients to come back.
2. The Employment Specialists will pay more attention to referrals to be sure that all eligible clients know about the opportunity.
3. The most important decision was to include attendance in our compliance criteria for receiving Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA). Clients are required to attend once a week if they have been referred and to call their Employment Specialist in advance if they cannot attend. Failure to comply will feed into our already-established sanction process.
   

Since these changes, attendance has definitely picked up. We now help an average of 9 clients per week – some of them repeat attendees. The feedback clients give their Employment Specialists has been positive. We have talked about a variety of topics, including how to read want ads, when to schedule cold calls, how to attach resumes to email and how to complete on-line applications.

I have developed several additional handouts based on questions and requests from clients. In the third and final post about Starting a Job Club, I’ll focus on some of them in case others could use some of those materials.

It would be great to hear from others who are doing something similar in their Employment Programs.