PAC Tip # 2 How to Get Into Federal Institutions

PAC Tip # 4 – The Recently Unemployed

As reviewed in PAC Tip # 3, the Carleton University report offers several recommendations for improving the marketing of the Christopher Leadership Course. One of the primary suggestions was to target more specific audiences as potential students, rather than just a general broadcast of information aimed at anyone and everyone. Another of these specific groups is the recently unemployed.

Much like the immigrant population, people who have recently become unemployed, and are actively looking for work, are a group of people in transition. They have lost the financial and social stability that full time employment provides, typically not of their own choice, and must now find other employment in a very competitive marketplace. Getting to the top of the heap of candidates in today’s job market requires more than job experience. Convincing an employer that you are the right choice can also require confidence, communication skills and demonstrated leadership abilities. People who are still employed, but looking for a better opportunity, are also in this category.

The Christopher Leadership Course can help with these issues. Our course provides communication skills and increased confidence that will shine through in an interview situation. Adding our course to their resume will demonstrate the continued ability to learn new things, the courage to tackle public speaking, and will improve both their leadership credentials and overall employability. Working with the instructors and other students in the course may improve their social skills, and possibly offer professional networking opportunities. All of these factors can contribute to giving the unemployed person a competitive advantage in their job search.

Unemployed Canadians will be in contact with, and influenced by:  Family and friends  Career counselors.  Employment assistance agencies like government and private employment services, job banks, job fairs.  Employment opportunities published in newspapers and on websites To reach this target group, we need to get the Christopher name, tagline and course information in front of them. We need to emphasis the “Find Your Voice” concept, talk about confidence and self-improvement, and remember from the report, and last year’s sales training at AGM, that people don’t buy features, they buy benefits. They don’t care about a 10-week course taught by highly qualified instructors, they care about greater confidence, better communication and leadership skills, and developing that competitive advantage that will get them back to work.

We can contact the unemployed directly, through advertisements in the places they will be, and in the media they will seek out.  Put an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper, as close to employment listings as possible.  Get a poster and some brochures on display anywhere that people come to look for work, or for help finding work.  Unemployed people often seek retraining to allow a career change, so get our promotional material into the career centers of community colleges and other training organizations.  Set up a booth at local job fairs, where you can tell people directly about the benefits of being a course graduate. These events are most common in spring and fall, and are always advertised in local media. Create a display board about the course and its benefits, to draw people to your booth. The more visual impact you can create, the more initial interest you will generate. Professionals do this very well, but are quite costly. Try doing it yourself. Colorful displays are not difficult to create on the computer with even moderate skills. Business copy & print stores like Staples can reproduce your material on much bigger paper than most people have access to at home, and for a very reasonable price.  Get course information onto your local Kijiji site, under the Community / Classes section, or better yet in the Jobs section.  If you can afford it, get the course name on job search websites like Workopolis. Your area may have a smaller, more local version, where advertising could be less costly. For example, the Kitchener/Waterloo area has “kwjobshop.ca”. We can contact the unemployed indirectly, through the people and organizations they turn to for help in finding new employment. Beyond the federal government employment insurance job boards, there are many private and community employment search and career-counselling firms who offer assistance to the unemployed.  Use local media or the internet to identify local employment service organizations, and make contact with the people who work there. Explain what we can do for their clients, and try to build a working relationship with them. Non-profit groups may be most receptive to forging a partnership, as we would work with them for the benefit of their clients without representing any threat to their business.  Present them with an information kit containing brochures, introductory letters, testimonials, etc. that can be presented and explained if possible, or that staff can read at their leisure. Examples of this sort of kit are contained in the Carleton Report, called Info Kit. I have attached this file for reference.  Staff who can be convinced of the value of our course will become very credible sources of our information for their clients.  If your promotions budget allows, maintain on ongoing presence in these service organizations through providing them with promotional pens, mouse pads, etc., for staff use or distribution to clients.  When larger companies are forced to lay off large numbers of their employees, they commonly provide a job search service on-site to assist their employees in finding new work. If local media identifies such an event, make contact with the company or union, and offer our course as part of the assistance they can offer.

Once again, the point here is that targeting the unemployed specifically is very possible, and could be very effective at producing more students. Identify where those people will be looking, and get our course name and information there. Enlist the support of the people who deal with the unemployed every day. It takes some work, some confidence and some leadership and communication skills to make this happen, for sure, but aren’t these the very things that we have gotten from our exposure to Christophers? If we are not willing to get out there and demonstrate these things, then why should anyone believe that they or their clients would develop them through taking the course?