Big White Elephants and the Brokenshop

In workforce development, we assume other people’s problems as our own. People that do not have jobs are our problem. If there are not enough jobs or the right jobs, it is our problem.  As an industry, we look at the problems of the individual and the problems of society and work to solve them through employment and training options. The focus is centered on the needs of the client- whether it is the job seeker, the employer, or our funder. In our process of trying to solve problems of others, we neglect the big elephant in the room that is preventing us from actually achieving our mission.
 
The industry is on the verge of a shift. The change is that in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, WIOA, we will be required to work harder than we ever have before to find employment for people with multiple barriers. These barriers will not be easily solved with a bus map and a stack of bus tokens, but will instead require us to look at the whole person. We may need to call upon our partners for assistance and work as a team to get the job seeker to employment.

Additionally, we may need to look at how we work with job seekers. The job seekers need to get a job as a result of the stuff that we do. How do we know when we work with a job seeker, both individually and in a group, the job seekers is learning? The big white elephant is a job seeker’s ability to learn. If a person is not learning, they are not able to take the next step, applying the lessons. The success of any program that works with job seekers, is the ability of the person to learn any apply the lessons learned.

 

I am recommending that as an industry, we not only apply the best practices from the experts in workforce development and economic development to get our people employed, but also some of the lessons from the experts in education.  My first recommendation is as part of the assessment of a job seeker to assess a person’s learning style.  Secondly, the job seeker should be presented with information to aid him in his job search based on his learning style. Accommodating a job seeker’s natural learning style will not only allow the job seeker to learn and therefore apply the job seeking skills learned.  Helping people understand how they learn will help them make better career choices. This is how learning styles is part of the career counseling process.

I would also like to recommend that anyone that conducts workshops for job seekers rethink the workshop. It doesn’t matter the title- workshop, seminar, class. If the method doesn’t work, it is the opposite of a workshop. It is a “brokenshop”. One of the reasons is that the instructors are talking to themselves. If the job seekers enrolled in these group sessions do not learn well in a classroom setting where people are talking at them- referring to their PowerPoints along the way, then it is useless. What is the point of a workshop or seminar if the attendees do not learn anything? I would recommend that workshops are developed by people with backgrounds in curriculum development and facilitators are trained like teachers.  Each job seeking workshop should have a pre and post test to measure if anyone has learned anything.

Some of the job seekers that seek job seeking services will have difficulties with learning. They may have learning disabilities that are undiagnosed. In order to effectively service these job seekers, they need to know if they have a learning disability and how to work with it.  Investing in services to diagnose learning disabilities, so that job seekers can receive accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA while receiving job seeking services and during employment will lead to greater success increased outcomes for programs and employment retention for job seekers.

For those that work in a one-stop career center setting. It is time to stop thinking of a one-stop as library where people flutter from experience to experience learning about different things along the way. A One-Stop Career Center is really a school.  Job seekers learn about job seeking and the labor market.  Employers learn about the candidates and how to grow their workforce.  Thinking of the One-Stop Career Center in this method means that the infrastructure needs to be developed in a way for the best learning. Is the layout conductive to a learning atmosphere? Does it have the necessary technology and materials to aid in learning?

Finally, if there is one thing that that can help people learn is to think of learning in program design. If job seeking programs are built upon a set of public and/or private funding, then the individuals that make decisions on funding need to think about how people learn.  Program designers need to think about learning for the best outcome. Learning does not happen from the bottom up. Like many other things, a learning culture is top down.

Readers, please do not confuse me with an educational expert. I am a front line worker. I have years of experience with job seekers in different professions, educational levels, and career success.  What I have noticed is throughout my years is that there are some job seekers that never seem to make it to career success. Many of the job seekers have been in the job seeking programs for many years, repeating information over and over again, never being able to get over the hump to career success. It is time for the workforce development industry to learn and grow. It is time to really analyze why some people are quickly successful and others are not.

I welcome ideas and comments below. Tell me what you learned. If you didn’t, tell me also. I am available by email also at kcirincione@gmail.com.   ~ Karen Cirincione