Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette’s Post

Transcript

When I first started at Goodwill, I've only been here a couple of weeks, and I was an employment specialist and Job Connection, a gentleman came in in the middle of the day, it was pouring down rain, and he said he took three buses in the rain to come and shake the hand of the guy that got him a job, and that guy was me. Hi, my name is Paul Langdon and I'm the senior program manager with Job Connection. I've been at Goodwill for 10 years now, and I have the privilege of managing the local Job Connection team in Oregon and Southwest. Washington. Job Connection is a free job referral and assistance program, and you only have to be 16 years old to join the Job Connection. We do an enrollment initially. We do a deep dive at that enrollment. We assess everybody's needs or interests. We do mock interviews, we set up a resume for them, and then we give them localized job leads and invite them to job fairs and events. And all of these services are free. Some of the companies that were really good at connecting people with are some of our local retailers, which include Lowe's, Home Depot, Amazon and also grocers like Safeway and Fred Meyer. Included in that, of course, is Goodwill. We have two new stores opening in the next six months, which means there'll be lots of opportunities for employment. So everybody is on their own path when they come into job connection. No2 situations are the same. So we will work with anybody until they find a job, no matter how long it takes. It took could take six months, it could take a year, it could take two weeks, but we are along with them for that entire journey. It's an open-ended invitation. It's very exciting. It's rewarding to work with the nonprofit that does stuff like this. I get to go home and tell stories every night of the amazing things that we do. We help 7000 people in the local community back into employment last year through hosting over 500 events. I mean, it's truly amazing. Well, you can find us in 39 of our local Goodwill stores. You can set an appointment with us or just walk in. We meet people virtually as well as in person and really it just starts from that day working with you on your journey. What I love about my job are, along with the thousands of people that we help every year, everyone of those is a story. It's not just a number. Everyone of those is a success story, getting somebody from where they are back into employment and it doesn't end. And next year there'll be several thousand more.