Nancy
15-07-2008, 02:43 PM
Project Overview:
Skills4Success has developed over the past six years from our experience in working with people who have been unemployed for a long term. The current model is a 6 day course, over 2 weeks, giving time in between sessions for participants to explore ideas on their own and return to the group with ideas and problems to solve. We cover:
· Building rapport and communicating effectively
· Team work
· Setting and achieving personal outcomes
· Re-creating and maintaining a confident state
· Practical cold calling and CV writing sessions
· Interview preparation (including presenting styles)
· Mock interviews with other staff
· Effective job search techniques.
Like the Transition project, the aim is to allow the participants time and space to self-model and model each other in their experiences of looking for work, knowing what they want, maintaining motivation and self belief, presentation skills and communication skills. By creating large, diverse groups we can rely on the skills of the group to compliment each other – some confident but inexperienced, some experienced but deflated – and they quickly form strong coaching relationships with each other. We assume that they know best what they need and that by attending the course, which is voluntary, they are motivated to shift whichever patterns are preventing them from working.
We’ve noticed a trend for participants to arrive on the course with a sense of helplessness, feeling powerless to improve their situation and then the resulting frustration and anxiety that arise. We believe the existing services for people who are unemployed reinforce that position by finding jobs for people, providing a 1:1 advisor (i.e. an ‘expert’ to the unemployed person’s ‘novice’) and telling people how to behave. By modelling groups’ behaviour and experience live in the moment, we think that we’re redressing that balance and our experience is that people leave the course with a great sense of control, or ‘agency’ (the power to act) over their career.
Over the last few years we’ve worked extensively in LB Brent and we’re beginning to develop the Skills4Success project into an independent community resource. Like Transition, our aim is for the intervention to become self-sustaining, so that the system is not reliant on outside help any more that our participants are by the end of a course. We’ve begun training past participants as apprentices and working with advisors in the existing services, hoping to eventually shift a the whole approach to working with people who are unemployed.
Evaluation
· We continue to follow up with all participants until 6 months, at which point an average of 70% of them are working in the job of their choice.
· We have a 95% retention rate in a voluntary programme
· We ask Employment Advisors to rate their referrals before and after the programme on a scale of 1 – 10 in terms of ‘job readiness’. Advisors report an average shift of 5 points.
Participants say:
“It gave me so much confidence even friends saw me after the course and asked what had I done to become more confident. I even started inspiring them to go and improve things for themselves”. Participant
“S4S really transformed peoples attitudes to finding work and getting work. I’ve noticed more positive thinking, determination, better time keeping, continued job search, not giving up and thinking “we CAN find a job””. Brent in2Work Advisor who is also an apprentice
“[Skills4Success] brought out my confidence to ring up, look for jobs and keep going until I got one”
“I’m calmer and more confident and I know how to use my knowledge more quickly.”
Skills4Success has developed over the past six years from our experience in working with people who have been unemployed for a long term. The current model is a 6 day course, over 2 weeks, giving time in between sessions for participants to explore ideas on their own and return to the group with ideas and problems to solve. We cover:
· Building rapport and communicating effectively
· Team work
· Setting and achieving personal outcomes
· Re-creating and maintaining a confident state
· Practical cold calling and CV writing sessions
· Interview preparation (including presenting styles)
· Mock interviews with other staff
· Effective job search techniques.
Like the Transition project, the aim is to allow the participants time and space to self-model and model each other in their experiences of looking for work, knowing what they want, maintaining motivation and self belief, presentation skills and communication skills. By creating large, diverse groups we can rely on the skills of the group to compliment each other – some confident but inexperienced, some experienced but deflated – and they quickly form strong coaching relationships with each other. We assume that they know best what they need and that by attending the course, which is voluntary, they are motivated to shift whichever patterns are preventing them from working.
We’ve noticed a trend for participants to arrive on the course with a sense of helplessness, feeling powerless to improve their situation and then the resulting frustration and anxiety that arise. We believe the existing services for people who are unemployed reinforce that position by finding jobs for people, providing a 1:1 advisor (i.e. an ‘expert’ to the unemployed person’s ‘novice’) and telling people how to behave. By modelling groups’ behaviour and experience live in the moment, we think that we’re redressing that balance and our experience is that people leave the course with a great sense of control, or ‘agency’ (the power to act) over their career.
Over the last few years we’ve worked extensively in LB Brent and we’re beginning to develop the Skills4Success project into an independent community resource. Like Transition, our aim is for the intervention to become self-sustaining, so that the system is not reliant on outside help any more that our participants are by the end of a course. We’ve begun training past participants as apprentices and working with advisors in the existing services, hoping to eventually shift a the whole approach to working with people who are unemployed.
Evaluation
· We continue to follow up with all participants until 6 months, at which point an average of 70% of them are working in the job of their choice.
· We have a 95% retention rate in a voluntary programme
· We ask Employment Advisors to rate their referrals before and after the programme on a scale of 1 – 10 in terms of ‘job readiness’. Advisors report an average shift of 5 points.
Participants say:
“It gave me so much confidence even friends saw me after the course and asked what had I done to become more confident. I even started inspiring them to go and improve things for themselves”. Participant
“S4S really transformed peoples attitudes to finding work and getting work. I’ve noticed more positive thinking, determination, better time keeping, continued job search, not giving up and thinking “we CAN find a job””. Brent in2Work Advisor who is also an apprentice
“[Skills4Success] brought out my confidence to ring up, look for jobs and keep going until I got one”
“I’m calmer and more confident and I know how to use my knowledge more quickly.”