David Harris
How You Help: Putting Our Community Back to Work, One Career at a Time
It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more than 22 million Americans had been forced out of work, including Jeffrey Goodman. As the pandemic’s grip on the world tightened, Goodman was furloughed from his company in the spring of 2020, before ultimately being let go. “Being laid off due to COVID-19 was a struggle,” he said at the time. “But thankfully, I knew where to turn.”
Goodman had learned about JVS Career Services while he was in college. “Kim Slaton [Managing Director and Senior Career Coach] led a LinkedIn workshop at Cincinnati Hillel,” Goodman explained. “Fast forward to when I lost my job, I knew I could reach out to her.”
Gifts made to the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s Annual Campaign fund JVS Career Services, supporting career services, business development, and Cincy Internships programs, including Careers Cincinnati, Onward Israel and Workum. For the past 80 years, JVS Career Services has been helping Cincinnati residents secure an income so they can raise a family, remain independent, live in dignity, and continue to play a productive role in the community.
For Goodman, not only was he trying to navigate the challenges of being unemployed during a pandemic, he was also navigating a new way of doing business virtually. All of Jeffrey’s career coaching was done over phone and video calls to help maintain social distancing. “That was something brand new that I had never done before that I had zero experience in—I was totally out of my element. I had never been on a video call before. I didn’t even know how to change my name in the corner.”
Slaton helped prepare Goodman with mock interviews so he knew what general questions he was going to be asked, and have well-prepared responses. “It was great to practice and get comfortable with what I was going to say during a real interview, but it went beyond that. Kim also taught me how to present myself on camera, how to be in the center of the frame, how to be professional, what I should wear.”
Goodman’s career coach also helped him update his resume and LinkedIn profile so he could maximize his impact on potential employers. The organization also hosted a number of online training workshops to help job seekers like Goodman have the best chances of finding work in a difficult time.
As for Goodman, all of his hard work paid off and led to him earning the career he always wanted. When asked what he would say to others in a similar position as him, he said, “take the career coaches’ advice, but don’t expect them to do the work for you. They are there to help guide you, but it’s still up to you to look for positions and get the interview. Working with them definitely made my chances of getting the job go up.”
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