We opened our offices on Thursday night to newly unemployed people to come along and get some advice on their job options. We weren't inundated as the article hadn't been published in the Belfast Telegraph (it was published on Friday 20th but more on that later). However we did have two people come to seek support and by pure coincidence they were both called Bill.
Bill 1 was a man in his early 50's with a lengthy sales/territory manager history and a track record in selling to the construction industry. Bill was self employed and relied on sales plus commission and unfortunately the sales weren't coming in and the commission had all but dried up. Bill 1 was frankly "old school" with buckets of experience and very little idea of where to begin in marketing himself in new potential employment contexts.
Bill 2 was 23 with 4 A levels at grade a, a 2:1 Law and a MSc in Corporate Governance and had a dilemma try to get an apprenticeship with a large Solicitors or spend another 3 years on a Doctorate. Bill 2 had some temporary admin work but was becoming increasingly anxious about his career prospects.
Both Bills were supported to explore their options with Bill 1 undertaking one to one mentoring sessions aimed at building his confidence and awareness of the world of working for someone else and intensive interview preparation to move him from patter to competence based interview proficiency.
With Bill 2 we used some careers interest software and then a SWOT analysis of each of this identified options - Bill 2 has the opportunity for a funded Doctorate including a reasonable amount of tax free "bursary" Bill 2 will probably opt for the Doctorate and will either pick up on professional legal practice when he completes it or move into the private sector in a company secretary role or into further research/policy. The foregoing represents a basic overview of our work and while it might help to pay their Bills it won't do much to help us pay ours.
The article has resulted in a request for support for a company due to close with 38 people scheduled to lose their jobs and a list of other people contacting us individually. We are opening our offices Tuesday and Thursdays 5pm-8pm as part of our committment to do our bit to support the newly unemployed and I hope that others will do the same. It is going to get worse and everyone doing their bit can help to make it better.
Bill 1 was a man in his early 50's with a lengthy sales/territory manager history and a track record in selling to the construction industry. Bill was self employed and relied on sales plus commission and unfortunately the sales weren't coming in and the commission had all but dried up. Bill 1 was frankly "old school" with buckets of experience and very little idea of where to begin in marketing himself in new potential employment contexts.
Bill 2 was 23 with 4 A levels at grade a, a 2:1 Law and a MSc in Corporate Governance and had a dilemma try to get an apprenticeship with a large Solicitors or spend another 3 years on a Doctorate. Bill 2 had some temporary admin work but was becoming increasingly anxious about his career prospects.
Both Bills were supported to explore their options with Bill 1 undertaking one to one mentoring sessions aimed at building his confidence and awareness of the world of working for someone else and intensive interview preparation to move him from patter to competence based interview proficiency.
With Bill 2 we used some careers interest software and then a SWOT analysis of each of this identified options - Bill 2 has the opportunity for a funded Doctorate including a reasonable amount of tax free "bursary" Bill 2 will probably opt for the Doctorate and will either pick up on professional legal practice when he completes it or move into the private sector in a company secretary role or into further research/policy. The foregoing represents a basic overview of our work and while it might help to pay their Bills it won't do much to help us pay ours.
The article has resulted in a request for support for a company due to close with 38 people scheduled to lose their jobs and a list of other people contacting us individually. We are opening our offices Tuesday and Thursdays 5pm-8pm as part of our committment to do our bit to support the newly unemployed and I hope that others will do the same. It is going to get worse and everyone doing their bit can help to make it better.
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