My ward is really pushing the whole employment specialist role, not just for members that have lost jobs but also to help people that might be under-employed get a better job.

I thought briefly about this today and started with quite a positive sentiment 'it's good that the church provides this support to members'. But then I considered how the church doesn't help in so many other non-church ways and so the very next thought was 'TITHING'.

TSCC directly benefits when unemployed members get jobs or get better jobs with pay rises. Call me cynical but the worth of a soul's paycheck is great in the eyes of TSCC.

The employment specialist is some guy who has multiple callings, and usually feel really bad he has no time to do it or just ignores the calling completely.
The region employment specialist are senior missionaries, who also met you once and advised networking. I already knew ow to write resumes and do interviews, so they couldn't even begin to figure out what they were supposed to do with me.

Except for the handy advice, call everyone you know every week and ask if they have heard of anything. Even when not everyone I knew was out of a job, they get really tired of you calling.

Worthless calling in the sea of worthless callings, right up there with RS greeter.

ya that ended up being a rant.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2011 07:28PM by nomilk.

The Bishop told me that I needed to find jobs for "those guys" who had been unemployed for year and had no desire to find jobs. Every Ward has "those guys" and "those guys" are the eternal unemployed Elder that doesn't care if he finds a job or not because the wife is working two jobs and the Ward is paying their bills.

One guy, Frank, hadn't worked since he graduated from college. He kept waiting for the right offer. He was 50. I convinced him to apply at Target and he was hired on the spot. He lasted 4 days and told me the reason he couldn't work there was because his manager smoked on his break and he refused to work for a person that smoked. Frank came into some money a while back, due to an inheritance, and left his wife and moved to Las Vegas to work as a professional poker player.

Another person, Scott, had worked for the church as a custodian but had been laid off as part of the cutbacks. He had no education past high school and all he knew was custodial services. The church had been a good employer and his building was the cleanest and best maintained in the Stake. He took pride in his work and you could tell he loved his job. After getting the pink slip he collected his unemployment until it ran out then went to the Bishop for help. The Bishop, being the prick that he was, refused to help Scott because Scott had not been actively looking for work while collecting unemployment and referred him to me. I looked and looked and finally found him a job in the same field. But he had to work nights and weekend evenings and he had a hard time with it and finally quit. The last I heard he was still unemployed and considering going back to school. He is in his 50's now.

These two men are among the 20+ that the Bishop told me to help. We held resume' classes, conducted mock interviews, and did everything we could to help but it was fruitless as I learned a very important lesson: You can't help people who don't want to help themselves.

And that's why the Ward Employment Specialist is a thankless job. People don't want the help. If they did they'd be out there on their own looking.

called Job Search and Rescue 911 for people who had tried all the conventional things and still nothing. What to do next?

It's not that people stop looking, they just don't know what else to do after they respond to Craiglist and check the newspaper.

I had people with secretarial skills call law offices on Saturday and if someone answered the phone, it was usually the boss. I did this once and said, "You're working on Saturday, why don't I come over and take care of that filing for you. If we hit it off, you can hire me. If not, you still got your filing done."

It worked and he hired me as a paralegal for his firm. He was just tickle to see somebody doing something different.


Anagrammy

replaces gardeners and custodians with volunteers and then calls a volunteer to help them find another job.

Anagrammy

When I worked in sales, and was between jobs, I would simply walk into a business that I was interested in and ask if they were looking for a salesperson. The employers I talked with universally LOVED this approach since it demonstrated the initiative that they were looking for.

thedrive Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Frank
> came into some money a while back, due to an
> inheritance, and left his wife and moved to Las
> Vegas to work as a professional poker player.

That sounds exactly like me, except for the part about coming into money, and the part about leaving my wife, and the part about moving to Vegas and the part about becoming a poker player.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2011 07:21AM by baura.

Two of the greatest positions I held during in the Church. Not the highest in position or authority but the most rewarding and useful..

I had numerous contacts in the local business world and often they would phone me long before any vacancy was listed in the newspapers. I managed to fit quite a few unemployed and under-employed into new jobs,some of which turned into long lasting careers, and were quite well paid..

It always gave me satisfaction to hear the feedback that " hey the guy /girl you sent over worked out very well and we are making their position permenant". I even held a jobs fair for some companies to meet the unemployed in the Stake .

So some horses from the LDS stable are winners - Never did ask them to understand the religion part --Just got them good jobs !!

JB

Utah's new guest worker law sponsered by the church so to speak, will make it much harder for the unemployed citizens to find work.