Her dad needed a job – Birmingham Job Skills Camp

Yesterday was the Birmingham Job Skills Camp at UAB. The event was a huge success.  We had approximately two hundred people between 10am and 12pm.

I volunteered for the welcoming committee which means I stood outside and told people what was going on, where they needed to go for mock interviews, where the vendor hall was, etc.

It was interesting the types of people attending the camp.  I can’t pinpoint any one demographic for the people I saw. There were older people, younger people, well dressed people, people in jeans, people with resumes, people that forgot their resumes. One woman told me she drove 85 miles to get help with her interviewing skills.

A colleague volunteered on the mock interview tribe and had far more interesting stories than I did.  She spoke with one gentleman that was asked to give an example of how he handled an insubordinate employee. His response was essentially “I fired him on the spot because I got annoyed”.

The number of people that were laid off was just astonishing.  I spoke with one woman that had worked at a Bank for 30 years and was let go in downsizing.  She was scared to death about entering the job market.  The job skills camp helped ease her mind a bit. We freshened up her resume, helped hone her interviewing skills and then led her to a chair massage in the vendor hall.  All for free.

The funniest the thing I heard was a young woman, clearly a student, asked me if she could learn about being a TA. I told her “no the camp was for resume critiquing, mock interviews, etc.”  She responds with “Oh, you mean like parent jobs? I’ll tell my dad.”  Oh to be young again.