Job Coaching

Location: Open Door Shelter

Date: Monday, July 27, 2015; 6:45-8:30 pm

I was leading again and had received talking points from Amy and also some course material that I could use for this session and it looked like they were trying to design this like a course.  Amy had called me earlier in the day and mentioned that Nancy, Chicago Cares new 'Program Officer', would be visiting this evening as an observer.  I had designed a “Getting to know you Bingo” game as an icebreaker and based on its success at my job event earlier, it would be useful here.  One of the volunteers from last month called me and said that she was stuck in the suburbs and would not be able to make it.  She said if there were cancellations, she would come late and I said that we should be fine.

I arrived after getting some chocolates as handout in the end and some pens for the icebreaker.  As I waited in the lobby, 3 of my volunteers arrived, along with Nancy.  Two of them were coming here for the first time and the 3^rd one had done cooking at this site. However, 3 other volunteers did not show up and we would have to make do with what we had.  I told them about this place and how the evening would go and then we were ready to go upstairs.  Unlike other occasions, I didn’t have to do much to assemble the youth at the table and almost all of them came voluntarily.  I recognized a few, but many were new.

Who knew we had a Pirate amongst us!

For the introductions I said that besides our name, we should also state what we wanted to do for the remaining days of summer.  I said that I was looking forward to spending as much time outside as possible…with an exception of this evening of course.  Many said that they wanted to be outside, some said work or look for a job – which was nice to hear.  One volunteer said that she and her family were going down a river in canoe, dressed as pirates.  Now that sounded cool.  One guy said that he wanted to do “Paintball” and I said that maybe they can stand on the banks and shoot at these pirates!  I distributed the Bingo Sheets and asked everyone to start.  Initially people weren’t moving as much, but soon they started mingling.  One guy came to ask my favorite musical genre and I asked him about his favorite band; and he said “Beatles”. What can I say…at first shot.  A few got me on “Visited a new State last month” or even “Cannot swim”.  I got everyone back for debrief and asked questions like who had Bingo - quite a few - or “Who wasn’t on Facebook” – which was also a few of them.  Everyone had enjoyed the activity.

There were 8 youth and 3 volunteers besides me and Nancy.  So I assigned 3 youth each to 2 of the volunteers and 2 youth to one of them, including the girl who had talked about starting a daycare last time.  I paired her with a volunteer who knew about child care, hoping that it would spurn conversations.  I would be floating between the groups and would go wherever help was required.  I had told the volunteers to “freestyle” it today and do whatever the youth wanted.  I chatted with one of the youth supervisors as my volunteers got underway. Three gentlemen were discussing strengths and weaknesses and I said that people do not ask that question to know where you are lacking, but rather to see your process in answering this.  I told them how I would ask the candidate to take something off the ‘Job Description’ document, something which they least identified with.  One youth said that his weakness was “Not being able to get up early”.  I said that perhaps you can spin that.  One youth who was very well spoken said that his was not being very social on the outside, or introverted.  We said that this wasn’t a weakness, just a personality trait and there are many jobs out there that were suitable for him. 

Another group of 3 ladies moved to the computer room to work on their Resume’s.  While one lady was working on it with the volunteer, another one was filling out some college application.  The one working on the resume also seemed to be trying to use more professional synonyms in the resume and that was great.  The 3^rd group was with the girl who wanted to do child care and she was being her usual jovial self.  It looked like this group was having some trouble focusing and when I asked one of the young men their about what he wanted to do in his career, he seemed a bit disinterested.  He said that he wanted to do everything and I asked how I could help.  He retorted with “What can you do” and I said that it is a wrong response and based on his requirements, we could discuss how I could help.  He said that he wanted to do “Sound Recording” and then he changed it to “Fashion Design” - at which the girl made fun of him through some comments.  I said that it looked like he wanted to do something creative.  I counseled him on how to go about it, saying that he needed to establish milestones to reach his goal. 

It was 8:15 pm and I got all the groups together one last time, saying that everyone had to tell us what they had learnt, following which they would then be allowed to pick a chocolate mini.  Everyone contributed and gave a good feedback, such as the girl working on the resume who mentioned how she had learnt to use the synonyms.  The guys from the first group told us how they had learnt about strength and weakness.  The girl with the day care said that she had learnt how not to give up.  There’s something to be said about that.  We left and I debriefed with my volunteers downstairs.  They said that it would be nice to have some printed material for the volunteers, such as resource websites, questions etc., something that I said we were working on.  The next day Amy said that Nancy had given me a positive feedback, which was good to hear.