Maxine Katz from JEVS gives helpful hints about Career Choices - Poem: The Intake Worker

    Thanks, Maxine, for coming out to New Directions on the eve of your retirement. Here's the JEVS website.

What will Maxine do? She'll continue volunteering.

Join LinkedIn.

Two types of resumes: chronological and functional. Send in one or the other.

Which to use? Advice from Monster.com.

On top of the resume write a brief profile with a couple of bulleted points. Not complete sentences, just phrases.

Write in the third person. Never say "I worked here or there." Simply list the position, a brief description, and dates.

Two pages maximum. 

If you've only worked a day or so at a place, you can write: Brief consultation job.

Networking with people you know is the best way to find a new job. You can consult with Facebook friends, LinkedIn or simply people you know.

The US Dept of Labor has a helpful job website here.

If you apply for a job on Craigslist, don't be surprised if you don't hear from them. They get between 200 and 1,000 responses per ad.

As with all jobs you applied for, write them a second time, call if you know the phone number, and if you've interviewed with them, write a thank-you note.

Minding the gaps in employment. Always tell the truth.

Watch body language of person interviewing you. Do not give out too much information. Short bytes of information - 20 or 30 seconds' worth.

Never disclose your illness in an interview or on a resume. However, once you get the job it's okay to get accommodations from the ADA. Americans with Disabilities Act. 

If you need reassurance at a job, call someone supportive.

One of my favorite jobs I've ever had was that of an "Intake Specialist" at the now-defunct Bristol-Bensalem Human Services. At the time I was a prolific poet and wrote this poem about my job.


THE INTAKE WORKER

They come
one by one
to the intake worker's office,
facing
calendar pictures
of mountains
and deserts
and places they will never see.
And they answer the tough intake questions:
So how old were you when it happened?
How frequent are the dreams?
What made you take the pills?

Sometimes they cry.
The intake worker
has a box of Kleenex
and a nice way about her
so that after the tears
they say,
Thanks,
I'm glad I got that out.

They ask when they will see the doctor.
Soon, please? It's no good.
I can't go on like this.
I haven't touched my wife
in over a year. She'll leave.

The intake worker bites her lip
and flips through the schedule
that has no spaces.

Afterward
she lays her cheek across a pile of papers
that stand for
all the people who've come and gone
but never really left.
She begins to picture
sharp rocks rising
from the blue-green sea,
a spit of land
where she and James would go.
I'll bet I could swim the length of it,
she'd brag. You couldn't, he'd. say. You're an amateur.
But she could.

She'd pick a fine day.
The water would be cool and fresh.
She'd begin with breaststrokes,
rippling the water with wide swirling arcs.
Why, I can probably clear it in less than an hour,
she thinks.
They might come looking for her.
But she'd fool them all
pulling out to sea
with firm strokes
gathering speed
parting the waters with cupped hands
as she puts the sea
behind her, and hearing what sounds like
faint cheers on the other side,
she shakes the sea from her hair
and touches shore.