I am Amy Hoster the Business Development Manager for WiserWorker.com; I wanted to share with you our story, the journey that brought The Employment Guide to create WiserWorker.com. I am more than a manager for a project, or maybe this is more than just a ‘job,’ it’s an honor to have been given the opportunity to help create a tool that will ultimately help older jobseekers find jobs. As a manager of the product I serve many roles within our organization, starting with the older worker initiative and ending with the creation of Wiser Worker. It’s been a long road to get WiserWorker.com to where we are now, and we have plenty more work to do, but today let me share with you how we got started so you can get a better picture of where we are going.
The Problem:
Believe it or not our older worker initiative started with a one sales person from the Phoenix Employment Guide, he came into my office one day and said;
“Amy we need to help older workers reenter the job market so I invited the local AARP program participants to the job fair next week”.
Great idea, but what I didn’t know was that job fair was going to change our business and ultimately send The Employment Guide down a road that would be full of challenges and in the end rewards. A week later at that job fair I met a man in probably his late 60’s who asked if I could help him find a resume. He didn’t know what a resume was but he knew he needed one and he wanted me to show him were he could get one. Luckily we had a resume specialist at that event who was able to help him create a resume, but it was that day I knew we needed to help the older worker.
Start of a Solution
I was also fortunate our event the Phoenix AARP Foundation Project Director Maria Ramirez-Trillo who sat down and educated me on how they helped the community. The next day I set out to work on a plan with the goal of helping senior workers in markets all across the country, I figured that if we could do it in Phoenix we could duplicate our efforts in all of our markets. After months of planning I was able to start setting our program in motion by working with the AARP Foundation on a national level with their Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP). The Department of Labor funds SCSEP programs in markets all across the country and work with many different partners.
Together with the AARP Foundation, our first project would be to create a digest size “resource book” that would hold all the essential information a job seeker would need to know to re-enter the job market. Our first run we published 15,000 books and that only got us through about 3 months, we are now in our 3rd issue of that publication book titled Wiser Worker Survival Guide due out late this summer, pick up a copy at any of our job fairs or drop me a line at amy.hoster@wiserworker.com.
The Job Fairs
By this point in the older worker project was heating up and The Employment Guide decided that there was a need to hold an events that would highlight jobs and opportunities for the older worker. We strive to create an environment were we could invite mature workers to a locations in their local neighborhoods where they could look for a job. The Employment Guide is no stranger to the world of job fairs and since we started our program with a single job fair in Phoenix it seemed fitting that we move forward to create a job fair program that would not only honor but benefit the older job seeker. In June of 2007 we started planning the 1st Annual National Employ the Older Worker Job Fair Series honoring the Department of Labor’s older worker programs. We consulted with Department of Labor and The AARP Foundation to ensure the events were created and formatted so that the older worker would get the most out of the event. Employmentguide.com is one of the only job boards that’s listed on the Department of Labors Resource Page. When the last event was held we had hosted over 47 job fairs in 40 states in over 6 weeks, when our events were attended by over 40,000 job seekers. Our events are held in honor of the Department of Labor’s National Older Worker Week held during the last week of every September.
The Website
It was then when the concept of WiserWorker.com was born, the product was created so that there would be a method of helping older job seekers regardless of where they lived. Our goal was to create a internet product rich with resources for the fast growing demographic in the country and with a job board that will ultimately be tailored for the older more mature job seeker. We are still developing our product and value feedback from users, because after all we started this product be finding out what the public needs and creating a product based on that information.
Hopefully you have a better picture of how committed we are to the working adult. Our program started a little over 2 years ago, frankly speaking I don’t think any of us knew we would end up where we are now. We have a great partnership with our flagship product EmploymentGuide.com and our 2008 Job Fair Series is in motion this year with over 65 events. We will be updating the job fairs section as we get closer to the events. Please visit our site and send me your feedback. What do you don’t like is just as important as what you like. I am interested in what changes would you like to see in the future. I can be reached at amy.hoster@wiserworker.com or 623-869-8888 Ext 238
(photo by danesparza)