shifts at work

Jubilee Jobs has been inundated with a high volume of job-seekers in the recent months. Our week-long process of preparation was grinding along and we as Job Counselors were struggling to meet, intake, process, and place all the folks coming through the door.

Thankfully, a few months ago my supervisors heard our cries of "uncle!" and "enough!" and "not sustainable!" and we changed some structural things beginning at the end of April. Since then, we've extended our week of preparation to a week and a half and have thus staggered our orientations (the first step to participate in our process) to the first and third Mondays of every month (versus every Monday of every month). This has helped tremendously - mainly in giving us as Job Counselors a little extra time to work with our caseload of people before the new batch starts up.

With the extension of preparation, we've added 2 workshops to our time, making it a total of 4 workshops that each applicant must attend to complete the process. We've traditionally offered both an interview skills workshop and a conflict resolution workshop, and now we've added 2 customer service workshops as well. Each workshop runs about an hour and a half.

Before we changed the process, the workshops were mainly run by volunteers, and then a few staff would have to fill in as needed. With 2 extra days of workshops (each with 3-5 more times each day offered), Jubilee has needed to call on us staff members to lead the sessions. Consequently, I have been leading many more workshops in the last month than ever before.

I am enjoying the opportunity to facilitate these groups of 6-12 people on a variety of topics. I've now led 2 interview workshops, 1 conflict resolution, 4 customer service, and a few others on post-employment topics. I like it best when the discussion starts rolling and people are contributing fresh examples of the material we're working with. The goal is that as we talk through what folks can think about prior to their interview, they will have that much more of an advantage in the way they present themselves and market themselves for the job in question than any other Joe Shmoe from the street.

There's one quote we use in the Customer Service workshop that essentially says, "what is the point of life if it is not to make it easier for one another?" We ask participants to respond to the quote, and in my first time leading this session, one guy jumped in there with an excellent example. He affirmed the quote and explained that that morning, he was on the bus worrying about if he was going to make it to us on time (if they're late for any appointment during the week+ of prep, they have to start over again with everything), and there was a mother with 3 young kids and a stroller that had to come up on the bus. He told our group, he had the choice: sigh and roll his eyes and hold a grudge at the woman getting on the bus (how DARE she hold up the bus by having so many kids and a stroller...) OR he could offer to help the woman, thereby relieving some of her stress and demonstrating his kindness which would then put everyone in a better mood on the bus. It's THAT kind of care, attention, and service that we want to embody at any job we have so that whomever is watching will see what kind of excellent employee we are and it will positively affect our whole environment.

I do enjoy my work. The only thing that seems to be so slippery is time. If I lead workshops (they're very engaging), I end up having a hard time transitioning back to the Job Counselor stuff. If I do too much of the Job Counselor stuff, I end up looking for diversions, but then too much of that is not good either. What's that elusive little thing for which we all so eagerly long? Oh that's right - balance.