Bibliography

• http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_07/b4215058743638_page_2.htm
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My Experience

The youths in the Mayor’s Work and Learn Program are each working at different locations and doing different kinds of work. It stands to reason, then, that they would each get something different out of the time they spend at their work site. The variety of experience presented by different situations provides a variety of lessons and possibilities, each one being unique on to itself.

One of our youth has been participating in the program for the past few summers. She has worked at multiple sites including the teen center, the library, and the mailroom at GCC. She has had some difficulty with social anxiety in the past and working at the teen center with her peers pushed her out of her comfort zone. The unease of working there allowed her to begin confronting and working through her lack of self confidence. While she was working at the library she ran into a situation where she felt condescended to by the older librarians. Dealing with these perceived difficult interactions with her coworkers helped develop both her self control and her understanding of conflict management within a workplace. Her current job at the GCC mailroom isn’t one that I would imagine leading to much personal development, but her employment there lead to her decision to go back to college and get her degree. The work experience you gain from the MWLP can provide more things than you would expect.

My experience at FHCC has exposed me to a myriad of opportunities. I’ve already signed a contract with the Franklin Hampshire Regional Employment Board to do peer leadership work once this program ends, which probably wouldn’t have been available to me if I had been assigned a different job site. To a certain extent, I got lucky. My supervisor has helped me get involved in a lot of things that will aid me in getting to where I want to be in the future. I came into this program uninsured and struggling to get by on virtually no money. He helped me acquire both health insurance and food stamps as well as with dial/self. The most valuable thing I received from the program was contact with a woman by the name of Sorrel. Sorrel runs and organic farm in Gill and is willing to teach me her ways. It’s obvious even just in looking at the job I’ve been asked to do that I got lucky, regardless of these perks.

Initially, I was excited to talk to some of my peers and write about their experiences. I went to a few of the orientations with my fellow MWLP members and let them know that I’d be in contact wit them. After some quiet observation I started questioning whether there would be enough content to keep me going for the following months. It just didn’t feel like there was that much to say. Here’s a program, this is what it does, here are some of the people in it, and then what? I spoke with Larry (my supervisor) about my concerns around two or three weeks into the program. He acknowledged them, and went on to list different things I could talk about, ways I could use this or that piece of information, and on into the various possible realities for the blog. I was comforted and felt that if I just started writing I would find direction. I spent a lot of time writing, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. Some of it was me (inadvertently) working through my own process on paper. I spent a week researching and writing about youth unemployment rates for college graduates in contrast to non graduates. The real reason for my research was that I was weighing my own options, and when it came time to turn the information into something workable for the blog, it wasn’t possible. Most of what I wrote was unusable.

Larry watched all of this and left me to it. The point was to see if I could work it out on my own. Honestly, I didn’t. I wasn’t able to turn the end product, this blog, into exactly what I or Larry had hoped it would be. I hope it’s not too presumptuous to say that I think the end product wasn’t really the point. The learning experience that I received was enlightening, and I think that when it comes down to it that’s what this whole program is about. Once the Mayor’s Work and Learn Program is over, each youth will come away with an experience which is personal and unique. That experience is invaluable.

Find A Job

There is a well known catch 22 in employment when it comes to youth just starting out. It is that you need work experience in order to get a job and you need a job to get work experience. This challenge faces everyone in the time between high school and college graduation. It’s not hopeless, because lots of companies have internships and training available for those who can demonstrate they’re ready to learn. Internships have the added benefit of possible future employment within the company once the internship is completed. If you’re unable to find an internship, volunteer work can serve the same purpose in a different way. There may not be many opportunities for further employment, but any references you can get there will come in handy. The more people you have vouching for the quality of your work, the better.

Often, the only impression a potential employer has of you is your resume. They’re deciding whether or not you are worth interviewing based solely on that very crucial piece of paper. How your resume will look depends on the kind of work experience you’ve had and the kind of work you hope to do in the future. You should have different resumes tailored for different positions you’re applying for.

What positions are you applying for? Finding open positions can be a challenge if you don’t know where to look. Of course there’s always the newspaper, and craigslist, but where else? You can find places that are hiring just by doing some light networking amongst friends; some of them are bound to know of available positions somewhere. Maybe it’s their uncles business and they’ll put in a good word for you. You never know. Career fairs provide a great opportunity to see what’s out there and to meet and greet potential employers. You can find out about career fairs happening near you by contacting your local career center. Once you know where you’ll be applying, I’d say start with a minimum of 10 places, research them! A candidate who already knows about the company and where they might fit into it is a lot more desirable than someone who just walked in off the street.

Once you land an interview, make sure to keep cool. You don’t have the job yet. Knowing about the company and job you’re applying for may be the most important thing when it comes to interviewing well. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, they’ll be able to tell. In an interview you’re trying to sell yourself, imagine yourself as a product. If a product looks beaten up or run down, no one’s going to buy it. Anyone you ask will tell you to dress well, I’d go a step farther and say be well. If you’re anxious or depressed, it’ll show. Before your interview, pamper yourself. Take an unreasonably long bath, relax. Give yourself enough time to get ready so you’re not rushing out the door. Be 15 minutes early. These days they often have interviewers learn how to read body language, so pay attention to the manor in which you present yourself. Good eye contact and a smile can go a long way.

What We Want

When I first applied for the Mayor’s Work and Learn Program last December, I did so simply because I needed work. Or rather, I needed a paycheck and was willing to work for it. I think that this is true of a lot of our youth, that the motivational force behind their participation is money.

Of course, the MWLP isn’t just about getting paid. The paycheck is secondary; the priority is to give us firsthand work experience. It is through this experience that we develop a multitude of different skills. By showing up to work every day we bring ourselves into a routine, develop our interpersonal proficiency, and learn new technical skills. The act of getting to and leaving work at the predetermined times strengthens our planning and time management skills. Discipline is required to balance our outside lives and work schedules. While at work we’re obligated to deal with people who we might not have otherwise chosen to associate with. How we relate to our coworkers and supervisors dictates, to a certain extent, our workplace experience. A congenial relationship with your fellow workers results in a much more pleasant work atmosphere. The ability to work as a team makes a business run more efficiently. This skill is something that employers look for in their employees. Employees that are willing and able to learn are valuable resources to their employer, thus it is valuable for us as employees to put the effort into learning as much as possible about the field/the work that gets done at our job site.

The more of these workplace skills that we acquire, the greater our value is as an employee. With that added value comes opportunity.Opportunity also comes from the connections we built at our places of work in another way. Even if you didn’t know it, you were networking the whole time. Networking is surprisingly significant when it comes to finding employment, but I won’t get into that now. You can find out more about that here. With the cultivation of all of the skills (and connections) I mentioned above (and those I didn’t), we get what we really want out of the program, an increase in employment prospects.

Youth Unemployment: Help Exists

I have been sitting at the desk temporarily designated mine for the past three hours, reading article after article about the recession and how it is affecting today’s youth. Each one delivers a long stream of statistics that indicate the lowest youth employment rates than have been seen since the 1930s, and tales of college students graduating to find the job market essentially closed. The authors of these articles speculate that the stress of coping with unemployment so early in our careers will turn us into dejected, unproductive individuals. I disagree, we’re awesome and we can totally handle it. Of course, if we’re supported our chances at success are much higher. The Mayor’s Work & Learn Program (MWLP) is one of the few programs in place which can offer that support.

We need reinforcement from our communities now more than ever. The companies that would normally have open positions for the bright eyed and bushy tailed recent graduates are instead laying off the employees they already have. According to the Labor Department’s numbers from last July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed. It’s easy to choke on these numbers; the enormity of their difference is overwhelming.

We need not wallow in the figures, because there is help. Here in Massachusetts and all around the country there are programs that are introducing youth into the labor market. (You can find information about those programs by clicking here.) The Mayor’s Work and Learn Program offers youth an education in the art of being valuable employees by placing them in a public or private nonprofit, or private-sector job sites. Here we’re able to work from November until the beginning of April, for up to 20 hours a week, at $8 per hour. This aspect of MWLP is essentially a paid internship, which is a really wonderful thing. Often, we are expected to pay to receive an education rather than being paid to do so. Of course, our education doesn’t begin and end at the worksite. There are workshops throughout the program that act towards securing our futures by giving us the most powerful of tools, knowledge. Through these we become well versed in resume writing and interviewing, among other vital skills. Larry Poirier, second in command of the program, acts as case manager for each of us. His objective is (as is the objective of MWLP) to ensure that we’re getting as much as we can out of the program, and to help us formulate a plan that will keep us on the path to success after it ends.