Using Next Steps and Other Tools to Prepare Members for Life After AmeriCorps
By Kelly Causey, Assistant Project and Training Director, A*NCCC, and Allen Dietz, Director of AmeriCorps programs at the Mental Health Association in Texas
SUMMER 1997 - (archived information - please note the date of publication)
A*NCCC Denver
One of the goals of the Denver campus of A*NCCC is to prepare its members who have completed their year of service for the next phase of their lives. Staff work hard to help members explore many options, including career. This means helping them to prepare a resume, write cover letters, and practice their interview techniques. Staff also conduct career expos and bring in a professional employment consultant to meet individually with members. In spite of these efforts, however, they have encountered an onslaught of anxious members who, with only a couple of weeks left, rush to staff for last minute help. It's been through these experiences that staff have come to realize the necessity of offering this sort of career assistance sooner and more often.
The Denver A*NCCC conducts a Corps Member Training Institute (CTI), which occurs the first month (October) of the new program year. This year they are incorporating a session, "Life After the Corps," into the third training week of CTI. They are inviting Sylvia Wilkins from the Volunteerism Project in San Francisco to speak to members on how to maximize each worksite experience to further their personal and professional goals. The Next Steps workbook will be distributed to each member along with an orientation on how to use it. Throughout the year they will check in with members to support them in completing the exercises in the book.
Staff are also incorporating resume writing updates in their project debriefs and bringing in professionals from the community to share experiences about their careers. Teams will interview project sponsors and ask for letters of recommendation from each site (when appropriate). The training staff is developing an annual calendar to remind members about GRE testing, college application dates, and local career fairs. Staff is also available to help members study for their GED, prepare their college applications, and navigate the financial aid system.
Mental Health Association in Texas
The Mental Health Association in Texas operates a large statewide AmeriCorps program focusing on parenting education and children's literacy issues. They recently conducted three regional end-of-service one-day workshops for over 100 of their AmeriCorps members.
In designing the workshop, they used a combination of material from the Next Steps workbook, from information obtained from the Internet, and from personal experiences of staff. Allen Dietz, director of the AmeriCorps program there, relates their experience in using the workbook: "Many of the worksheets in the Next Steps manual lend themselves nicely to small group cooperative learning exercises. We used the material in Chapter 3 on examining the AmeriCorps experience, and in Chapter 5 on work values, self-management skills, transferable skills, and interests, as individual and small group exercises in our end-of-service workshop. We also used the manual in a brainstorming session, listing all of the things the members had accomplished this year, with sentences beginning with one of the action words listed on page 65 [i.e., "arranged," "completed," "participated"]....We found the Next Steps manual to be extremely useful. It's an excellent manual by itself, and is even more valuable when used as an adjunct to other material." There are, however, a few suggestions: for example, a list of generic interview questions and adding a sample resume that includes an education section would be helpful.
In addition to Next Steps, the program used resume writing and job interview material obtained from the Internetãthe search words "Resume Writing" and "Interview Skills" produced an abundance of good material. A financial aid officer from a college in each of the regions presented information on financing college and answered questions about grants, scholarships, and loans. The program staff presented information on what they look for on resumes and in job applicants during the interview process, and members worked on their resumes and practiced giving sample interview questions to each other.
Based on what was learned from these workshops, the AmeriCorps program at the Mental Health Association plans to do some things differently the next time. End-of-service topics will be integrated with activities they conduct throughout the year, with ongoing discussions about how to translate AmeriCorps experiences to real-world terms. Members will be encouraged to keep a portfolio during their year of service, which will be helpful for them when they begin writing resumes or going to job interviews. They plan to distribute Next Steps in advance and have members do more homework ahead of time so the end-of-service workshops can focus more on group and less on individual exercises. Finally, they are considering ways to expand several of the topics to provide practice on mock interviews, more time to develop resumes and have them critiqued, and more in-depth information about applying to college.
