Date: Monday, April 1, 2013; 6:45-8:30 pm
Back in my college days, I used
to get on a lot of public transport trains.
Often you would run into the same group of people, whose schedules were
governed by the train time. Some had
spent years – decades – travelling on the same train and people knew about each
other lives, their families and often shared in the laughter and the
tears. On many occasions, you would see
a game of cards being played amidst stories of mischievous kids and hard-nosed bosses. For people of my generation,
sports were the number one topic followed by entertainment or how we were
going to get all of our assignments done on time. The point is that traveling by trains was a
social outing, something that brought people together. As I rode the Blue Line CTA this evening,
headed to the ODS, I looked around me.
There were 13 people in the area where I was and 12 of them were using
their mobile devices for a variety of applications ranging from texting to
music to general browsing. The 13th
person was reading a book. Nobody made
eye contact and everyone looked as if they were rather somewhere else. It is indeed ironic that a device that was invented to bring the people of this world closer, is today the biggest instrument of our isolation. When people say one shouldn't live in the
past, they’re right. But there’s no harm
in a bit of nostalgia every now and then.
I arrived at ODS to find Claire
was already there as were few other volunteers, Phil, Laura and Kathryn. The previous time that I was here, Claire had
made people do a real mock interview by rotating the candidates amongst various
volunteers, who asked each of them the same question. We had then ranked them based on their
response, and at the end of the evening, Claire had given prizes for the top
three candidates. Today we were
following a different format where we would be coaching the young men and women
on three critical aspects of the interview process – Resume Preparation;
Filling out a Job Application and Conflict Resolution; the last one being a
question that usually comes up during the interviews.
As an ice breaker, Claire had
devised a Bingo game which had 16 squares with things such as ‘Likes to cook’ and ‘Likes to paint/draw’. The
idea was for all of us to find someone to sign the square which applied to
them. This way we would converse with
everyone and also learn a bit about them.
I was actually in demand due to my qualification to sign squares such as
‘Has traveled outside the US’, ‘Speaks another language’ and ‘Has lived outside the state of Illinois’. I was doing well with my squares and had
managed to get signatures on all except one, ‘Has the same favorite color as you’. One of the girls attending this evening’s
session had brought her 9 month old baby girl.
She was sitting on the table playing and I asked her Mom what the little
girl’s favorite color was. She said it
was purple and I said I would take it.
So we held the infants hand as she scribbled on my square and the game
was over. Of all the ice breaker games
that I have been a part of through Chicago Cares, this one was probably the
best since everyone had really enjoyed it and it had achieved its stated
purpose of getting people comfortable with each other. I thought it had been a brilliant idea and
kudos to Claire for that. Right then I
decided that I was going to ask Claire to join my team for Serve-A-Thon.
 |
| My 'Icebreaker' form: All signed |
My task was to work with the
candidates on Resume Preparation, something which I consider an important first
step in any interview. I started with a
girl called Naomi who told me that she had never had any job and thus no experience
to speak of. This also meant that she
had never prepared a resume. I told her
that now was as good a time as any and started taking her through the basics of a resume. Claire had given me a printout
of resume tips, but I was also going by my experience. I told her there are four main things that one
should follow while preparing a resume: (1) Tailoring the resume for the job
one is applying for, by using the proper keywords that the employers are
looking for; (2) Make achievements quantifiable, by using as many numbers as
possible; (3) Using action words such as ‘led’,
‘managed’ etc. and (4) Proof-reading
to ensure that there are no mistakes. Naomi was listening closely, but I knew there was going to be a challenge for her to
make a resume with no background to speak of.
I asked Naomi what kind of job she was looking for and she said she was
good in typing and wanted to be an office administrator. She also said she would like taking care of
kids. We drilled further into her skill
set and learned that she did have some experience with MS Office and was good in
organization and managing children. I
gave her a blank resume template to fill out and since we were almost out of
time, fed her some tips on how to fill it out.
She kept nodding the whole time and I hope it was registering with her.
 |
| Maurice's Day Out |
Next up was Maurice, whom I had
ranked quite high during my last session.
Maurice looked as if he was not interested at all. I asked if he had a job and he said yes, working with patients having serious brain injuries. Of all the things, I had not expected that. I went through the resume drill with him and
said that his work with the patients provided him with a lot of credibility as
a care provider. I also told him that in
his line of work, he was sure to come across several frustrated families and that he should use that experience while discussing ‘Conflict
Resolution’. While it seemed like he
was listening, his mind was distracted and he was constantly texting
someone. I asked what his ideal job would be and he
said he wanted to be in the music industry.
I asked if he meant as an artist and he said no, as a producer. I complimented him on his watch and that
brought a smile to his face. I told him
that I admired the work he currently did and he should be proud of that. Maurice’s phone was buzzing all the time and
I asked whom he was texting. He said
that it was his girlfriend and today was in fact their one year
anniversary. I asked him why he was here
when they should be celebrating and he said that they would be doing that the
next day, since it was her birthday.
That got me interested and we kept the resume templates aside. I asked what the plan was and he said they
were going to take a trip to the Navy Pier and go on one of the boat
rides. I told him to take her up on the
Ferris wheel as well and he liked that suggestion. Claire had told us that even if some of the
candidates were not keen on coaching, we could still chat with them about other
things and Maurice and I were doing better than that, we were planning his date!
My time with Maurice was up and I
moved on to the next person, Walter; whom I had given the highest marks during my last visit. He
told me that he was a junior in college and was really looking for some help on
making a professional resume. Finally,
someone who was willing to work with me!
I asked him what he wanted to be and he said he wanted to work as a web
designer. When asked why, he replied
that he wanted to create better websites for all industries. As we started working on his resume template,
I learned that Walter had been the recipient of several awards in high school,
including ‘Perfect attendance’ and the
Dean’s award for ‘Most likely to succeed’. I told him that these awards were quite an
accomplishment and he should check if the Dean could give him a letter of recommendation. We went over the resume drill and I gave him
my email address in case he wanted me to look over his resume.
Walter was my last ‘student’ and
I chatted with Kathryn and we joked that Phil, who was doing ‘Conflict Resolution’, looked as if he
was holding court; with him sitting comfortably in an armchair and all others
gathered around him. Soon our time was
up and before we walked out, I once again found Maurice and I wished him luck
on his date. I took a cab back into
downtown with Phil and he told me how much he had enjoyed doing this and so had
I. As stated before, this program
always starts of on a difficult note, because most of the young folk are not
keen at the beginning; but ends with all of us getting along well and them
actually learning from us. I hope tonight
was no different and people like Naomi and Walter benefit from my counsel. Above all, I hope Maurice and his girlfriend
have a splendid time tomorrow. After all
the troubles that have landed him in ODS, Maurice deserves that.
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy
No comments:
Post a Comment