St Mary Job Search Support Group News!

Greetings!

Thanks to everyone who attended our September meeting. If you were there you found yourself with a lot of individual attention from the group. It was a very interactive meeting that brought a lot of value to the people who attended.

Many thanks to Linda Cella for leading the meeting. Linda did a great job!

My latest informal count is that ten people who have come to our meetings have landed. We can't take credit for them finding a job but I would like to think that we helped them on their journey to their job.

Our next meeting will Tuesday October 21 at 7pm in St Mary Church Meeting room in the Rectory basement.

I will be giving a workshop on "Kick Starting Your Network." 

The job search gurus tell us that our next job won't come from someone you know but from someone you know's network. How do get there from here?

It is not enough to just tell people you know that you are out of work and looking or that you are just plain looking for your next job whether you are working or not. 

As a job seeker you need to nurture the relationships of those in your network, especially those that are connectors and influencers but you also have to build awareness with them. You will find out ways to do those things at the next meeting.

If you are on the job hunt, I hope you have a great week! We strongly urge all job seekers to check out Connecticut Works and take advantage of their great programs. I also would urge you to take advantage of other job support groups.

Happy Hunting!
Andy

Moving to Fall

Greetings!

I thought we had a good, interactive meeting in August. In fact it went so well that Linda and Kathy did not make it thought their program. They will finish at our September meeting. 

Please note for the 2014-2015 Job Search Year we will start meetings at 7pm. We will continue to have speakers when I can find them. 

But the real focus will be peer to peer information and experiential conversations. Except for Xavier Gordon't visit in March, our best meetings were ones where there was interaction between the people attending. 

More information to follow.

Thanks,
Andy  

JSSG Update

Greetings!

Many thanks to Dan Lenhart for his excellent presentation on Navigating the Phone Interview. We had time to do introductions and find out more about those who attended.

Tentatively we are going to have three peer to peer presentations at the August Meeting. More to follow!

July Meeting Note

Just a quick note to let you know that our own Dan Lenhart, Assoc. Director, will be our guest speaker for the July Meeting. Dan is an HR professional and has been on both sides of the fence in the job search process. Dan will speak on "How to Navigate the Telephone Interview."

Just a reminder that though St. Mary sponsors the St. Mary Job Search Support Group, it is open to anyone that would like to attend regardless of parish or religious denomination. We are a job knowledge and networking group and work to deliver value to all of our attendees!

A note of thanks for June Meeting Speaker

Many thanks to my good friend Kathlene Gerrity for taking the time to be our guest speaker in June. She did a great job in engaging the attendees and sharing valuable insights!

A Big Thanks and Looking Ahead!

I want to thank all of you who attended our May Meeting. Our guest speaker was not able to make it but I thought Linda Cella did an outstanding job given the last minute change! 

One of the things I had hoped would happen and did was more peer to peer interaction with the group. My apologies for having gotten away from that important part of the meeting. Moving forward time will be put aside for peer to peer discussion. 

I mentioned that a friend of mine, Super Julie Braun has company called Super Interns. I mentioned Super Interns in the meeting last night. I spoke to Super Julie today and she plans to share more details of how her intern program could benefit you. 

I'm not sure when I'll get the information as Julie's calendar is beyond crazy over the next two weeks. When I do get the information, I will post it here and send an email blast to our members. Stay tuned!

Interesting Job Search Article - May Meeting Information

Greetings!

There was an excellent article in the CT Post on Sunday titled "Relearning how to find a job in the digital age." 

If you did not see it or have a change to read it, here is the link...

Link to CT Post Article - Relearning to how to find a job in the digital age

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday May 20 at 7:30 pm. Our guest speaker will be Kathlene Gerrity who owned her own recruiting firm and will talk about the job search from the recruiters perspective.

At 6 pm, I'll lead a 30 minute work shop on how to set-up a Referral system for a job search. It will be along the lines of the workshop I gave in March.

Andy