Faith in the Future

There was a whole lot of good feeling, and welcome good news, yesterday at a special forum in the White House in Washington D.C. The purpose of the gathering was to shine the spotlight on the legion of faith-filled Americans who are trying to help the unemployed get back to work.

As one of the legion who is actively involved in this mission, I was invited by Ben Seigel of The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships to join U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis at a White House Forum titled:

Job Clubs and Career Ministries: On the Front Lines of Getting Americans Back to Work


The room was packed with ordinary people from all over the country --including Florida, Rhode Island, California, New York, and Kentucky-- who are doing extraordinary things to help their neighbors find the way back to meaningful employment.

Participants included job club and ministry leaders, faith and community leaders, workforce development officials, nonprofit leaders, and others from across the country who are assisting job seekers and workers. It was great to meet people like Dan Lott from the Bayside Career Coaching ministry in Sacramento, California. Also present from New Jersey were John Fugazzie of Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and Anna Maria Miller, Director of Human Resources at The Bank of Princeton, an employer that hires talent from job clubs.

Over the course of the morning, the gathering of over 100 shared many emotional stories, about challenges, programs and successes, from all corners of America. What really came through from all the different regions and efforts was a strong sense of What Works:

Local efforts - The closer to the need, the better. As well-intentioned as government may be, the real innovations and successes are driven at the local level by ministries and community groups that are closest to the unemployed and their families. The local level is where the need is best understood and the programs have the biggest impact.

All hands on deck - If there was one phrase uttered more than any other it was "We can't do this alone." The only way to address this painful issue of unemployment is to get every stakeholder involved, especially the job seekers, program providers, schools, libraries, the community, and employers. In a word, partnerships.

Networking - Although we all knew this walking in the room, it became crystal clear that the key skill for job seekers is networking.

Getting connected with employers - One speaker, who founded the job clubs of Rhode Island, said that, while networking as a skill is vital, it's not enough. There must also be a way to connecting directly with the employers in the local area. Many other speakers echoed this, several recommending the establishment of Employer Councils to work directly with the job clubs.

And one more, of course:

The power of groups - Whatever you call them, wherever and whenever they meet, grouping for mutual support is the most important thing. There is strength in numbers. And job seekers need all the support and strength they can get.

It was this last item, grouping for job search support, that first brought me to Ben Seigel's attention when his team member Ashley Gerwitz requested a copy of the guide that Janice Lee Juvrud and I wrote back in 2009 to assist those who wanted to start a group in their local area.

Soon after we published our guide, it was recognized by Margaret Riley Dikel, publisher of The Riley Guide (one of the best internet resource sites for job hunters) as a recommended resource for areas lacking support groups.

Janice and I were well-positioned to author this guide because of how fortunate we and other job hunters are to live in the State of New Jersey. New Jersey is packed with support groups! It was the first state, back in 1989, to officially launch job search support groups. Originally called Professional Service Groups (PSGs), they were sponsored by the State Department of Labor as havens in the rough economy for anyone seeking employment.

What made the PSGs unique, and a national benchmark for such groups, was the idea of members helping other members. Anyone who joined a PSG was expected to join a subcommittee and volunteer some time each week to help run the PSG. The subcommittee work, while unpaid, was real work, and therefore considered as job experience. Today, some of the original PSGs are becoming non-profit organizations so that they can carry on this great legacy.

When my church, St Matthias in Somerset, NJ, decided to start an employment ministry, several of us brought the PSG spirit with us as we formulated our vision for outreach to the community.

Let's look ahead, with faith in the future, that working together we can help all Americans get back to work.

Posted by Terrence Seamon on Friday September 21, 2012

Past Vs Potential: We Have A Dilemma

Those of us who assist job seekers are very good at teaching the job search process and each of its various skills. These skills include networking, writing cover letters and resumes, and preparing for interviews.

Now we have a new and unexpected dilemma. There is a skill we have been missing. But thanks to some new research, now we have it in our sights.

At the end of August, Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson published a piece online at the Harvard Business Review blog called "The Surprising Secret to Selling Yourself" which opens with this teaser paragraph:

"There is no shortage of advice out there on how to make a good impression — an impression good enough to land you a new job, score a promotion, or bring in that lucrative sales lead. Practice your pitch. Speak confidently, but not too quickly. Make eye contact. And for the love of Pete, don't be modest — highlight your accomplishments. After all, a person's track record of success (or a company's, for that matter) is the single most important factor in determining whether or not they get hired. Or is it?"

Calling upon recent research conducted at Harvard and Stanford, Halvorson says that we have an unconscious bias in favor of potential vs past accomplishments.

It appears, Halvorson surmises, that we find the candidate with potential to be more interesting, though more uncertain.

OK. This may take some time to digest. But the practical question is: How do we teach and prepare job hunters, especially those with considerable past success, to convey their potential?

Halvorson offers this general thought:

"All this suggests that you need a very different approach to selling
yourself than the one you intuitively take, because your intuitions are
probably wrong. People are much more impressed, whether they realize it or
not, by your potential than by your track record. It would be wise to start
focusing your pitch on your future, as an individual or as a company, rather
than on your past — even if that past is very impressive indeed. It's what
you could be that makes people sit up and take notice — learn to use the
power of potential to your advantage."

So, What is that different approach exactly? What does it mean, in practical terms, to sell based on your potential?

We know how to communicate our past accomplishments using PAR stories (Problem, Action, Results). Is there a formula for communicating future potential?

How about CASE?

Challenge - When asked a "What if" or "How would you handle" type of question, you have been given an opportunity to convey potential. Start by reframing the challenge you are hearing in the question.

Analysis - Any challenge situation will call for some analysis of what is actually going on, what the real need is, so offer a tentative assessment.

Strategy - Suggest a plan that would address the need.

Expectations - What would you expect the outcomes to be if the above proved successful?

What do you think? What would you suggest?

To Job Coaches reading this blog post: We have our work cut out for us. Let's get creative and come up with new tools to help our clients.

Posted by Terrence Seamon on Saturday September 15, 2012