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Built into Bricks-n-Books' operational structure is the Bricks-n-Books Labor Pool. This pool of Bricks-n-Books participant labor is designed to operate in partnership with local workforce investment and other employment agencies (One Stop Career Centers) within each community, while permitting direct access by local employers seeking to hire our participants. |
Each participant enrolled in a skills development program is automatically enrolled in the Bricks-n-Books Labor Pool and made available for permanent or temporary job placement. As an extension of the job-readiness training program, Job Placement begins in the enrollment process, which includes case management to determine where the prospective participants is educationally, occupationally, and behaviorally.
Job Development Utilizing traditional sales and marketing approaches, Bricks-n-Books Project's Job Developer is responsible for employer recruitment and networking, employer-employee job matching, individual participant job counseling, participant job-placement, ongoing employer post-placement support and employer and participant follow-up for a predetermined period. Job Developers often also serve clients with their second or more job placement needs, while working hard to encourage participant successful job retention. Job retention is a typical goal of job developers and they use various strategies, including sundry incentive options, to encourage participants to provide proof of both employment and evidence of longevity on that job (i.e., employee pay-stub or letter from an employer).
Often employers prefer to hire people with employability skills (soft skills) instead of those with specific technical skills. In research conducted by the Department of Labor’s Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, employers expressed that they would prefer to hire a person who knows how to arrive on time, be dependable and take supervision, and then the employer would provide him or her with the technical training necessary to perform his or her job duties. With this in mind, in addition to occupational skills, Bricks-n-Books basic skills include those presented in the chart below.
