Making an Impact: Virtual Coaching and Job Search Help Client Return to Desired Profession
In the Making an Impact series, clients and services are featured to expand awareness of the wide array of help available at JFS and to ensure donors understand the lives they touch and the difference they make throughout the community. Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Jenna is a long-time Jewish resident of St. Paul. She had successfully pursued both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in various parts of the U.S. and settled back in St. Paul where she and her husband raised their family. She had bounced around somewhat in her 18-year professional career, shifting from technical to business communication with occasional short-term contracts in process analysis. But she was tired of the contracting circuit, and her current job, which she was largely performing from home, had become very dry and repetitive. She yearned to return to the kinds of higher level, more challenging and more creative roles that her academic training and earlier career experiences had offered her.
Our employment specialist began having weekly Zoom meetings with Jenna to help her identify and re-define some focused and highly achievable roles that she could move into immediately that would be more satisfying and put her back on track with her desired career. The specialist helped her polish the marketing effectiveness of her resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profile to help Jenna focus on the right details in language and visual formats that would highlight her strengths, transferrable skills and solid achievements.
Soon after this, recruiters started calling. The specialist also began coaching Jenna on interviewing preparation and practice, pay negotiation, networking techniques and other soft skills that contributed to the effectiveness of Jenna’s ongoing communications with recruiters and prospective employers. Things continue to move forward for Jenna, who is interviewing for several desirable new positions now.