Do you care enough to help the jobless? If so, at what level are you willing to help – Maze Help or Mentoring Help?
Let me explain how I view the difference.
Finding work, or helping someone find work, is often likened to simple navigation of a maze, consuming as little as 15-minutes of your time, but certainly less than a few hours at best. This short expenditure of time and effort I call “maze help,” aka – charity help.
If you intend to contribute meaningful help to someone seeking re-employment, then the analogy of mentoring a visitor or immigrant in acclimatizing to his or her new environment is more apropos, I believe. The reason being that joblessness is frequently a seismic crisis, precipitating significant life adjustments. Helping someone through and beyond job loss could possibly consume tens of hours of your time spread across days, weeks, and in a recessionary climate, even extending to months.
I have experienced both analogies.
As job seeker, I have been the recipient of well-intentioned friends or acquaintances, who offer “maze help.” Regrettably maze help is most common, and I define it as snippets of time and energy, requiring minimal personal inconvenience, and often assumes the form of verbal or written statements such as – “I really don’t know of anything at present, but I will certainly let you know if I do hear of a position that might be suitable for you.”
“Maze helpers” seem to view the act of helping as simply an act of charity, as Jon Picoult notes in his article “The Jobless Won’t Forget Your Help.” Promises of help are made by well-intentioned individuals, who either don’t want to be troubled beyond the time and energy it takes to write a reply email or make a phone call, or who feel insecure and ill-suited to help you for whatever unknown reason.
An example of “Mentoring Help” occurred in 2008, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. A local non-profit I worked with gladly accepted the offer of an unpaid, six-month German intern. As national director of a newly funded USAID training project, I was not charged with orienting this intern, nor did I feel I had the time to do so due to project compliance requirements. Nevertheless, shortly after this intern’s arrival it was apparent that we had not done enough in helping him acclimate to our city and country. I could have simply offered him “maze help” in the form of an email or phone call or a quick cup of coffee, sharing condolences about his struggles but little else, yet I knew this wouldn’t suffice, nor was it the right and decent thing to do.
He needed mentoring/orienting help. So for the next few weeks, plus periodically, then, over the next four months, I invested time and effort in helping him make a positive transition through the attending acclimating-to-South-Africa crisis. I picked him up and took him to the bank, helping him transact money. I drove him to town where he bought an A/C adaptor for his laptop, as well as groceries. I invited him for several meals, and facilitated a doctor’s appointment when he became ill. I informed him of “safety tips” (turn your cell phone off during taxi rides, so you don’t advertise it to would-be-muggers), and acted as his sounding board when he was lonely, frustrated, and processing more information and newfound experiences than his single brain could manage.
After reading this blog I hope you still want to help! Jobless people need your help, yet not if they feel your help is merely acts of charity. “Charity help” merely accentuates your fortuitousness of economics, life, education, inheritance, et cetera, and makes people in need feel correspondingly more shameful (=failure).
Below are 20 suggested Do’s and Don’ts on providing practical assistance to jobless individuals. Please feel free to contribute additional ideas, or to add commentary to those listed.
DON’TS:
1. Don’t assume anything.
- Don’t assume a person doesn’t want help simply because they haven’t asked for it. If you have an interest in helping, don’t wait for the jobless to ask you. Take the initiative. Risk investing 30-minutes to an hour of your time and the price of two cups of coffee (Yes, be sensitive to their curtailing of expenditures and buy them a cup of coffee!). Your initiative will be appreciated and remembered.
- Don’t assume the jobless will tell you exactly what they need. After all, they, like you, have self-respect. They feel awful being in need already; don’t make them beg for your assistance if you’re already willing or in a position to help. Rather, ask if and how you might be of help. Cite specifics within the parameter of your kindness and willingness to help: e.g., tuition assistance for continuing studies or merely meeting once monthly for coffee.
- Don’t assume a person’s joblessness is due to laziness, ineptness, or any other self-made mistake. Think the best of a person until fact proves otherwise.
2. Don’t assume every job seeker’s reason for unemployment is the same. I list this separately because it is purported that, despite the illegality of discrimination against job applicants for a status of “unemployed,” it is still widely practiced.
3. Don’t “false promise.” Offer help only if you will keep your promise. Otherwise, candor is preferred – e.g., “I’m sorry. I would like to help, but I don’t feel I’m in a position to do so at this time.”
4. Once committed to helping, don’t disengage without informing the person, preferably with an explanation and in person. Disengagement without explanation, leaves open the question of “why,” and risks further adding to a job seeker’s unwarranted, yet shameful sense of not measuring up, or of somehow being deserving of one’s predicament.
DO’S:
5. Assess your motive for helping prior to offering help. If you don’t, it’s possible you will communicate a patronizing (=treat with an apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority) versus compassionate attitude.
6. Think sensitively before asking questions, because the questions might merely transfer additional anxieties on to the job seeker. Examples: “Did you manage to secure any job interviews last month? No? Really!”
7. Allow individuals to vocalize frustrations and struggles without correcting or criticizing them. Strive to provide a “safe place” (a figurative place of trust that is free from ridicule) where the jobless can air any and all feelings of insecurity and struggle. Listen. Affirm their feelings. Occasionally offer their words of struggle back in the form of a question – e.g., “So, what I hear you saying is that you’re struggling with the reality that your wife will ‘better you’ in terms of pay and position?” Talking is cathartic. Often time answers to problems and a willingness to re-engage life arise from those emotional outbursts.
8. Offer the jobless unused air miles for airfare purchase toward job-related trips.
9. Offer to help offset expenses related to continuing education or skills training.
10. Offer gift vouchers to coffee shops or restaurants, which they can use toward job search purposes, such as informational interviews.
11. Offer or help them find a temporary work opportunity, even if it’s a more volunteer than paid type situation, which will help mitigate discrimination as an “unemployed” candidate when submitting job applications.
12. Offer to review resumes, cover letters, and provide input on job search strategy.
13. Invite and accompany them as your guest to Rotary and such meetings.
14. Offer to be their elevator pitch recipient.
15. Offer to role-play the interviewer.
16. Write them a LinkedIn recommendation and/or endorse their skills.
17. Offer to assist with expenses of enlisting a top-recruitment firm.
18. Assist and affirm them in identifying their transferable skills.
19. Offer to teach them basic skill sets of yours (e.g., Excel, web page development).
20. Offer to child-sit for job interviews, or merely to provide a self-care outing.
Life 