Emily and I met up at the Starbucks in the St. Laurent Centre. Emily is a military spouse with London, Halifax, Winnipeg and now Ottawa as places she calls home. Military spouses face a unique challenge of constant movement with often little time (2-3 years) spent in any one location. That makes it difficult to build up work experience and a network in any one location. Yet, that’s just what Emily has done to date. She has used her time and travels strategically, earning a Child and Youth Care Diploma while successfully gaining work experience and her own network during numerous workplace transitions. She’s landed in Ottawa (actually Russell) with a passion for helping older youth learn life skills, a young family and the drive to make it work here.
Emily faces big challenges in that she must once again map out a new employment market, reach out to key groups involved with youth and introduce herself. We all know that drill. Interestingly for Emily, she offered up an observation that she’s never “not been hired” once she had an interview. So, we know where she needs to focus. For Emily, there’s homework in ensuring she’s well connected to the organizations for whom she’s worked, has letters of recommendation/Linkedin recommendations and of course, builds up a good Linkedin profile as her starting point. There's more hard work in first finding and then connecting with the groups that focus on youth. Her past connections may be help (it's a small world) but it will be mostly up to Emily and basic research, emails and phone calls. Specialized job boards like CharityVillage are good for both jobs as well as the organizations. One thought is that recruiters might also be a great starting point to work in parallel with her own efforts. For Emily, it’s all about getting noticed.
Oh yes. Given what Emily's accomplished to date, the Batman t-shirt was very appropriate.
Emily faces big challenges in that she must once again map out a new employment market, reach out to key groups involved with youth and introduce herself. We all know that drill. Interestingly for Emily, she offered up an observation that she’s never “not been hired” once she had an interview. So, we know where she needs to focus. For Emily, there’s homework in ensuring she’s well connected to the organizations for whom she’s worked, has letters of recommendation/Linkedin recommendations and of course, builds up a good Linkedin profile as her starting point. There's more hard work in first finding and then connecting with the groups that focus on youth. Her past connections may be help (it's a small world) but it will be mostly up to Emily and basic research, emails and phone calls. Specialized job boards like CharityVillage are good for both jobs as well as the organizations. One thought is that recruiters might also be a great starting point to work in parallel with her own efforts. For Emily, it’s all about getting noticed.
Oh yes. Given what Emily's accomplished to date, the Batman t-shirt was very appropriate.
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