Talk to Orville
About Job Search Work Teams
and Organizational Programs
If you are using Orville’s book, The
Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search as
part of an organizational program or in a Job Search Work
Team, this page is for you.
This is the place for questions that are
not answered in the book or in the free downloadable material
in the Teams and Organizations section of this site. Please
check the FAQs below to see if your question has been answered
there.
If your question isn’t in the FAQ
list, please read the legal notice below and then click here
to talk
to Orville or copy and paste this address into an email:
organizationalprograms@highlyeffectivejobsearch.com. If the
topic is of general interest, he’ll post your question
and his response below in the FAQs. Orville can’t promise
to respond to all e-mails, but he’ll do the best he
can.
Frequently Asked
Questions
About Job Search Work Teams and
Organizational Programs
Questions:
Why would people share information
with each other in Job Search Work Teams when they’re
all competing for the same jobs?
Aren’t these teams too
complicated for volunteers to lead?
We’re using teams in
a church and thinking about praying for each team member as
part of the discussion section of every meeting. What do you
think about that idea?
Orville’s Responses to Questions:
Why would people
share information with each other in Job Search Work Teams
when they’re all competing for the same jobs?
Team members are sometimes worried about
competing with other team members for “scarce”
jobs – especially before they’re experienced with
the Team process. But, in reality, this “competition”
nearly always turns out to be more imagined than real. For
the competition to be serious, two people would need to be
going for exactly the same job titles in the same targeted
employers in the same geographic area and with about the same
number of years experience. It just doesn’t happen much.
And if it does, the two can collaborate
anyway if they trust each other and want to. They can agree
to help each other all the way through – even after
the first one is employed. Because their work is so similar,
there are endless ways they can help each other.
Nonetheless, it’s important never
to urge people to share specifics in the team meeting unless
they’re comfortable doing so. And it’s not uncommon
for people to sometimes omit the name of a place where they’re
interviewing until they get an offer or a turndown.
Aren’t these teams too complicated
for volunteers to lead?
No.
They may seem complicated when you first
read about them. But once you've seen one, they’re very
easy to understand.
When first getting a team started, it helps
to have more than one person in the team leader role. Two
people can share the role, with both reading the instructions
and giving each other suggestions between the meetings. Re-reading
the instructions after leading a meeting is also very useful.
We’re using teams in a church
and thinking about praying for each team member as part of
the discussion section of every meeting. What do you think
about that idea?
I would certainly expect a church team program
to combine team meetings with religious practices. And exactly
how you do that, of course, is for you and your church to
decide.
As the developer of Job Search Work Teams,
however, I think the teams are most effective in helping people
to get the work of job search done if team meetings are not
interrupted by other activities of any kind. It might work
best if you did some brief prayer at the beginning or end
of the meeting, or both. If you want a longer prayer session,
I’d suggest putting it after the end of the meeting,
with a stretch break in between, rather than as part of the
discussion section.
If you have a suitable space and want a
longer time together, you could follow your team meeting with
a longer prayer session, followed by refreshments and some
social time or even a meal together.
