Counseling can speed job re-entry

BACK TO WORK: Smithfield resident Dennis Fernandez credits OI Partners- Lifocus with helping him gain the knowledge needed to re-enter the labor force. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
BACK TO WORK: Smithfield resident Dennis Fernandez credits OI Partners- Lifocus with helping him gain the knowledge needed to re-enter the labor force. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Dennis Fernandez thought he knew how to properly navigate his job search.
But when the Smithfield resident, who said he typically changes jobs every two or three years, was let go from a Mansfield medical-device startup last January, he found out he actually knew very little about what it was going to take to re-enter the workforce.
“I thought I had a pretty good handle on what it takes to land a job,” Fernandez said. “But I learned quite a bit. Now I’ve got a whole game plan.”
Fernandez attributes his new-found knowledge, and skills, to outplacement counseling he received from OI Partners-Lifocus Inc., a coaching and leadership-development firm with a Warwick office.
The services were provided as part of his severance package from Primeria DX, a molecular-diagnostics company.
“I don’t know if [finding a job] will be easier, only because of where the economy is. But I know I’m better prepared,” Fernandez said.
OI Partners-Lifocus advertises that Fernandez in fact will have less trouble finding a new job after going through its program, which is custom-applied to clients’ laid-off workers, depending on employee position and employment length, among other factors.
The company recently released results of a survey it conducted with some 140 clients and those companies’ former employees throughout the United States.
Seventy-eight percent of laid-off workers rated their job-search skills as excellent or very good after receiving career counseling.
After completing counseling programs, the number of former employees reporting just good or average job-search skills declined 73 percent, going from 78 percent before counseling to 21 percent after.
“The crux of that survey is that folks who have been provided outplacement are much more likely to land a position in their industry and know about the concept of how to conduct a job-search campaign than those in companies that provide no outplacement,” said Thomas Wharton, managing partner of OI Partners-Lifocus. “There’s a lot to learn. There’s so much that we do for them.”
Wharton founded Lifocus 18 years ago and affiliated with OI Partners about nine years ago. The company and other local outplacement firms often start working with an organization before layoffs happen, helping to guide client organizations through that process and then immediately working to help displaced workers cope with the trauma of losing their job.
“We help them get their confidence back. You can’t show up to get a new job until you’ve got that confidence,” said Margaret-Ann Cole, regional vice president in charge of career and management practice for the Northeast region at Right Management, which recently reopened its offices in Warwick.
“The reason for that [reopening] was because our clients have been clamoring to have a local presence,” she said.
The OI Partners-Lifocus survey, which included 510 displaced workers, revealed that those undergoing outplacement counseling felt they most benefited from identifying key career accomplishments (94 percent), marketing their strengths (93 percent), better defining their skills, values and attributes (91 percent), and evaluating their skills and marketplace demand for them (90 percent).
Fernandez, 57, said his counseling, which involved four one-hour sessions, made it surprisingly clear that he didn’t even know how his resume should be written.
Eighty-eight percent of survey respondents said their counseling helped with writing a winning resume.
“I thought [mine] was pretty concise but it looks dramatically different. I’ve had a number of comments that said it was much better,” he said. “When the company offered the service, I said, “well I really don’t need this.” But after just four sessions, I learned just how much I didn’t know.”
Dave Rogers, senior vice president and general manager at Lee Hecht Harrison, a New Jersey-based firm with a Lincoln office that provides, among other services, career transition counseling and coaching, said his firm tracks their success rate for helping laid-off employees find new jobs.
Compared to the replacement time frames provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Rogers said, workers who receive outplacement counseling re-enter the workforce about 50 percent faster than those who do not receive such services. According to the bureau’s latest released numbers, the majority of workers, at 53.1 percent, spend more than 15 weeks on the job hunt; 38 percent spend at least 27 weeks searching.
“What a coach does is help provide a clear focus for the job seeker, to help them find the best job for them and to land more quickly,” Rogers said. “Job seekers are often unprepared, they are apprehensive, they lack confidence. After all, they just lost their job.”
The American Mathematical Society, a Providence-based organization that works to advocate for mathematical research and scholarship through publications and other programs, hired OI Partners-Lifocus to offer outplacement assistance to six employees laid off during an August 2012 workforce reduction.
“We just didn’t get the extra work [orders] we thought we would,” said Tammy Walsh, human resources director.
The employees’ positions were eliminated and Walsh said the company, which places an emphasis on its caring culture, wanted to be sure the affected workers had severance packages that would help them move on.
“We felt that whether they would transition to retirement or whether they were going to be out there looking, that we wanted a service that would be able to help them with that,” Walsh said. “We thought outplacement would help focus them.”
Walsh said that each of the six employees was offered varying amounts of outplacement services. At least one previous manager now is employed elsewhere.
“I think everybody took advantage of the full amount of time that they were provided,” Walsh said. “I’m not sure they all utilized it as best they could.”
Cole acknowledged that services need to be tailored to individual workers in order to have the best impact.
She said Right Management company surveys indicate that job seekers feel they benefit most from personal interaction with the coaches.
“Every person who is looking for a job looks for that in a different way,” Cole said. “When people think about outplacement, they don’t really understand. They think you’re just going to a recruiter and that’s it. That’s not it.” •

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