What is a Job Club?

A Job Club is a support group coupled with career experts and industry leaders, and includes the creation of a Job Club “dream team” to assist, inform, and advise Job Club members. Job Clubs are very popular across the United States, and according to Tory Johnson, GMA of Waggle Force, show an 86% success rate, compared to a 15% success rate for those going job search alone.

Why bring Job Clubs to Eastern Kentucky?

Job Clubs can help reduce the shock to areas crippled with heavy unemployment. They offer supportive services to the unemployed and reduce the stress and isolation that come with being in the “crisis mode” of isolation and transition.

What is your community doing to help the unemployed?

Job Clubs can be an outlet, providing emotional support for the unemployed and underemployed. This can cut down rates of crime, petty theft, drug abuse, alcoholism, rates of depression: all the things that continue to cripple communities during bouts of high unemployment.

Job Clubs can help decrease unemployment, decrease dependency for government assistance programs, which means less taxpayer expense.

Why support Job Club?

The theory behind small group dynamics and support groups show that during a job search, participation in a job club reduces the stress and feelings of isolation that come with being in transition or “crisis” mode. Career experts claim that job seekers tend to burn out shortly after the onset of their job search, failing to realize that efforts might require weeks or even months of rigorous searching. Job club participation can stave off the depression that sometimes sets in during a protracted job search.

Success Rates

National Career experts indicate that individuals seeking support through job clubs have an 84% success rate when job search techniques are conducted in groups, compared with a 15% chance when job seekers go it alone. (Bolles, R. What Color is Your Parachute)

Why do Employers, Business, and Industry need local Job Clubs?

You’re getting a more hirable pool of job candidates when those candidates have participated in a Job Club. HR managers who turn to your local Job Clubs will find qualified candidates who are most likely above average or above the pool of the general hirable workforce.

Inside the Job Club, career experts have provided the majority of all the prescreening processes that can save you time and money, including:

  • Matching Job Club members to career goals with job placement assessments
  • Job Club facilitators have established relationships with the Job Club participants.
    We know each of them personally: their character, attendance, commitment and personality. We’ve PRESCREENED ALL YOUR APPLICANTS FOR YOU. We know who’s a good fit and who isn’t.

It’s easy to see that turning to Job Clubs when you’re ready to hire guarantees that you’ll spend less time in the hiring process, plus you’ll have a more qualified pool of candidates to choose from.

All of our participants have an increased knowledge base of employability skills, including:

  • how to get along with your employer
  • getting along with co-workers
  • upgraded computer skills
  • time management skills
  • managing personal issues that could hinder job success

As an employer, take on Job Club candidates as volunteers inside your agency or organization, training them from the ground up to meet the specific needs of your business.

Benefits for Business and Industry

Job Clubs create a “win-win” situation for local business and industry. With the help of community and business leaders who believe in the value of local career clubs, area employers quickly find a more hirable pool of applicants when potential employees come up through the ranks of a job club. Successful job club participants have spent weeks or months, with the help and support of the group, upgrading their skills through various career training workshops, while working one-on-one with area career experts on various job-related initiatives to help them become more attractive employees. Additionally, job club participants – through frequent networking opportunities with local business leaders – have established relationships with local professionals who have spent time with the job club participants as a featured speakers, guests, or individual mentors.

Furthermore, local employers find so much success in hiring recent job club participants that, often times, they send their HR reps to recruit specifically from within the clubs. Moreover, job club participants, through the support of their job club family, feel supported in their efforts to enroll in short term training, technical trades, or post- secondary institutions while also successfully landing a much needed job!

Thanks to this group effort, the job club provides the motivation that moves the job seeker to create long term career goals, which ultimately creates a more qualified work force within the local area. Having a local qualified workforce ready to meet the demands of today’s labor market ultimately attracts larger industries into the area – thus creating jobs, industry and wealth in local communities. That’s a winning future for everyone.

Job Clubs of Eastern Kentucky is a cooperative effort of