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Workforce Development: It's What's for Dinner


Many times when I coach job seekers and workforce development professionals, I like to make comparisons to help people better understand a concept better. These seem to keep people entertained and also works for me, so I wanted to share some of my workforce development analogies.

Job Seekers look at the One-Stop Career Center (a.k.a American Job Center) like the menu at the Cheesecake Factory. If you have never dined at the Cheesecake Factory, this restaurant has a book for a menu! This is not an exaggeration. This restaurant has a book with a selection of anything they believe a person could want to eat, including multiple ethnic dishes. This extensive offering I am describing does not even include the multitude of cheesecake and non-cheesecake dessert options or beverages.  The first time a person eats at the restaurant the reaction is, “What do I choose?”  The same is true for people walking into a One- Stop. Just like the Cheesecake Factory, many job seekers will ask for a recommendation on a service from another job seeker that has been to the office before or a staff member. Like restaurants, One-Stops have a “secret menu.” In the One-Stop this includes the services that a job seeker needs to be eligible for that are not available to the masses.

Getting a Job is like baking a cake! Job Seeking is a delicate balance of the right ingredients, in the right amounts, cooked at the correct temperature for a precise amount of time.  Baking a cake from scratch is precise and takes practice. Job Seekers would like a cake mix experience, add a couple of ingredients, mix, and bake, but unfortunately adding one egg and water to anything won’t make for a job offer in today’s job market. Many industries are still recovering from the Great Recession, so growth may still be slow. Because of that, employers are looking for a homemade taste that cannot easily be made. In the case of job seekers, homemade taste is the right combination of qualifications and presentation that can be a matched (or “baked”) to an employer.

Success, for workforce professionals and job seekers alike, is like a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Everyone knows someone that wants to be successful, but laments that he never gets an opportunity. Some job seekers act the same. They sit home, apply on-line, and wait for phone calls that never come. Being passive in your success will not make someone successful. Being passive in your job search will not make you employed. Being passive at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant will not get you a dragon roll.  Let’s say you are sitting at the counter in the sushi restaurant and you are unsure what kind of sushi to choose. While you decide if that dragon roll is for you, it has long since passed you by. Successful eating at one of these restaurants requires person to be aware of what they want to eat and to be willing to choose it off the conveyor belt. Looking at successful people, whether they were job seekers at the One–Stop that found employment, workforce development professionals, or entrepreneurs that started million dollar companies, you will see that all of these people knew what they wanted and then took action to get what they wanted.  Job seekers that successfully landed employment not only applied online, but were pro-active in the follow up with employers, networking with others, and marketing and promoting themselves.

If I thought harder, I could come up with many more. If you have any great food analogies, please feel free to share also.  My one final thought about food and workforce development is that workforce development is like Shake-n-Bake. Just when you thought that you knew it all, were comfortable with the “right now” way of getting a job or plain old chicken, the chicken goes in the bag and it gets all shaken up! We may change how we teach job seekers to get a job. We may change the methods for instruction, lingo, and acronyms, but at the end of the day, in the bag is still chicken!

For question, comments, angry rants, prophetic messages, or just to say “hi,” feel free to leave me a comment below. I can also be reached at kcirincione@gmail.com. Thank you for reading! ~ Karen Cirincione

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