Jewish Social Services Agency
March 2013
 Photo: JSSA
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Employment and Career Services for the Community
In Fiscal Year 2012 and the first six months of Fiscal Year 2013, JSSA Career Services, partially funded by a generous gift from The Wolpoff Family Foundation, served 1,540 clients. Boot Camp, Job Search Club and Community Workshops like speed networking and LinkedIn could not be offered without The Wolpoff Family Foundation funding. Your continued support is a blessing to JSSA’s Career Services department and the over 1000 clients a year we serve. Because of The Wolpoff Family Foundation’s support JSSA Career Services we are able to offer our Boot Camps and other programs for no fee. An instant uptick in attendance occurred when program fees were removed. December, January and February included two fully booked Boot Camps per month which served over 100 new JSSA Career Services clients. A new event, Speed Networking, was also fully booked and met with great enthusiasm and results. Success of our programming can be measured in many ways. The most compelling result is employment outcomes. Of those responding to our survey and follow up, 36% have indicated they found new employment since graduating from a JSSA Boot Camp. A robust 86% said Boot Camp and other related JSSA Career Services programming brought them closer to employment status. Program satisfaction surveys show overwhelming approval of our Boot Camp and related programs: Content was current – 99% Presentation met their needs – 98% Presentation was of high quality – 98% Would consider attending future JSSA programming – 99% Likely to use in future – 98% Likely to recommend JSSA to others – 99% Numbers and statistics only speak so loudly, below we have included a few e-mails received from Boot Camp graduates and some vignettes outlining the stories of some of our clients: Dear Judy, Good morning. Things are moving right along for me. I just closed on a town house in King Farm and plan to move by the end of October. My job is fabulous. I work with super bright staff and the students are for the most part wonderful. As I am sure you can imagine, finding work for them poses many challenges. I have used much of what I learned at boot camp to create resumes, cover letters and developing the "elevator speech". I would love it if we could develop a boot camp for my students and perhaps even hold it in our conference room. It would have to be tailored but I do think it would be wonderful. Thank you for thinking of me. Sandra B Dear Judy, My name is Theresa T and I have come to your Boot Camp and networking workshop the last two weeks, I am the one who wants to be a cancer counselor. One piece of advice you gave us was to let everyone in your circle of friends and neighbors know you were job hunting. It paid off! My neighbor, Gerri, was gracious enough to give my name to her principal when she heard there was a part-time opening. I got the job yesterday. Since it is part time it will allow me to pursue my dream job in my off time. My reason for emailing you today is twofold: Please share this story with the group. You are a fantastic motivator. The program you offer is great. Please let me know of any other employment workshops you plan to facilitate. Thank you for all of your help. Sincerely, Theresa T |