career services
The Career Services Technical project. What you see is what you get – meaning we expect you to use what you know about us + the position + your skill set to wow us. We want to see how you think, plan, and create. This also means we cannot answer any questions about what you should or should not include if doing so might impact hiring equity.
Deep Background
The majority of the CS responsibilities include the following:
• A daily recommitment to youth and Liberty’s Kitchen mission, vision, and values
• A daily recommitment to enthusiastic collaboration and effective communication with youth, staff, and partners
• Provide wrap around career services, including delivering frequent instruction, to Youth Development Program (YDP) participants and/or LK Alum
• Arrange, manage, and support YDP Externship placements (3 week placements: 4 days with an employment partner, and 1 day with us)
• Build our Externship/Employment network to include those in any sector willing to embrace and embody who we are and how we do
• Support YDP recruitment and retention (We start a new 12 week cycle every 3 weeks with a goal of starting 10 youth starting in each cohort)
• Support scheduling youth for internal and external events (catering; fundraisers; community events)
• Provide regular and timely data capture of YDP and LK Alum employment outcomes
Attachments:
• The 2019 Cycle Calendar is our road map. If, how, and when it can happen starts here.
• Liberty’s Kitchen Mission, Vision, and Values: Everything comes back to the question “Does [ ] meet our mission, vision, and values?”
Your First Mission: Given the above parameters and the documents included, briefly outline your top six “must have” career development (CD) lessons for youth entering the job market. Please include a concise explanation for your choices, including how your selections will lead to strong employment outcomes.
Pro Tip 1: Content must be relevant, sequenced, and scaffolded to accommodate a multitude of learning styles and aptitudes within and across cohorts.
Pro Tip 2: Some instruction is cohort-specific and some is all-cohorts together.
Pro Tip 3: We prioritize working smarter, not harder. We also prioritize an “all hands on deck” approach when it comes to career development. Everyone on the programs team teaches CD and knows how to step in for each other.
Your Second Mission: At Liberty’s Kitchen, our culture and our programs live at the intersection of youth- centered economic, social, and civic engagement. We believe deeply in supporting our career development curriculum with authentic wellness and advocacy empowerment. Our partners include community minded social service agencies, education navigators, legal non-profits, housing advocates, full-spectrum health providers, collective impact organizations, equity movement builders, law enforcement reformers, and more. We don’t just make referrals. We model what it looks like to know your rights and exercise them. Our partners provide relevant, real-time tools to youth.
Now that you’ve laid out your top 6 CD lessons, we’d like you to pair each one with our remaining two engagement goals: wellness and advocacy. How does each lesson you’ve chosen tie into a wellness objective? How does each lesson impact or affect a young person’s ability to advocate for themselves or others? We’re asking you to envision the interconnectedness of everything we do: Everything is wellness. Everything is advocacy. Everything is career development. We want to see how you envision it.
Pro Tip 1: We consider wellness through a broad lens. It encompasses the quality of our relationships, health, life priorities, physical movement, and beyond.
Pro Tip 2: We consider advocacy the knowing of one’s rights and how to exercise them. It is the public support of self, other, and community.
Your Final Mission: An essential component of maintaining relationships is thorough communication with the externship triad. In this exercise, demonstrate how you would navigate the relationships between Liberty’s Kitchen, Kim Divette at Always Hiring NOLA, and Extern Robert Reid.
✓ Create an “email” to Kim with your initial request to discuss a potential externship relationship. ✓ Flash forward, end of Week 1, Day 2, Externship: Always Hiring NOLA signed on as a partner thanks to
your efforts. Kim has negative feedback about their first LK extern, Robert. Submit a “case note” summarizing what steps you took to remediate the situation. ✓ Flash forward, end of Week 2 Externship: Leave Kim a voicemail inquiring about the likelihood of Robert
being hired full time post-externship. She can be reached at 504-304-3362. Submit a “case note” summarizing all conversations. ✓ Flash forward, end of Week 3 Externship (aka Robert’s graduation day): Submit a “case note”
summarizing the outcome(s) of Robert’s externship at Always Hiring NOLA.
Pro Tip 1: Yes, we are asking you to create fictional emails and case notes to fictional people. Include them in the same PDF as the missions. The phone number is dixmarie’s, but let’s pretend it’s Kim’s.
Pro Tip 2: Yes, you are choosing the direction of the storyline.
Solution Preview
Career Services
Mission One: Career Development Lessons
Given the responsibilities of the career services development, the different career “must have” lessons relate to the potential placement of the youth into different working environments. The first of the lessons necessary is the ability to work in a diverse environment. Lessons on working in such an environment would help improve potential positive outcomes,
(995 words)