My new job has been great. But many people have no idea what it is that I do. This is an in-depth description of what my job entails and why I love it so much more than working in a group home. If you or anyone you know is interested in a job like this, the company I work for is Work Opportunities Unlimited.

What is a career resource specialist?

At my place of employment, a career resource specialist is like a job coach. This means that we help people find jobs, work at their job and maintain their employment. The people we work with at my job usually have some sort of disability. I work with a wide variety of disabilities such as blindness, down syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy. The process starts out with a process we refer to as MAPS. This is an intake interview where we learn as much about a person as we can. Some of the questions include their birthday, a vacation they took that stuck out to them, the types of jobs they think they’d enjoy doing and how many hours they would like to work a week.

What does a career resource specialist do?

We do a lot. After the intake process, we help our clients, or consumers as we call them, develop a resume. This is followed by going around and collecting applications from various businesses in the area. The businesses are typically a mixture of places that my company has built relationships with and places that our consumers would enjoy working at. If we haven’t built a relationship with the business yet, we call and ask if we could set up an appointment to speak to the manager or owner to discuss how we feel having our consumers work for them could be beneficial. If the meeting goes well, we pass on the information to our business developers who work in the company.

After we have turned in the applications, we help our consumers research the company to learn more about them in case they get to interview with the company. This helps the consumer be ready to answer questions such as “why would you like to work for this company?”. We also work on mock interviews. This helps prepare a consumer for questions they may encounter during their interview. We help educate them on what kinds of questions employers cannot ask them during interviews as well as how to answer questions they can ask. Some other areas we may work on with consumers is hygiene expectations, appropriate interview and job attire and appropriate work conversations.

After a consumer has found a job, we sit down with the manager, some coworkers and the consumer to help determine what is expected of the consumer during work. This helps the career resource specialist with a task analysis. Task analysis is a processing of breaking down a consumer’s job into steps. An example of a task analysis could be filling the condiment table at a fast food restaurant. For a consumer, simply being told to fill the condiment table could be confusing and hard for them to do right off. With task analysis, we break down the task into simple steps. On the condiment table, there are several things that need to be checked.

Step One: Check to see if the plastic forks need to be refilled. If they do, go to the backroom and grab the box of plastic forks. Return with the plastic forks to the condiment table and fill the fork slot. Return the box to the backroom.

Step Two: Check to see if the plastic spoons need to be refilled. If they do go to the backroom and grab the box of plastic spoons. Return with the plastic spoons to the condiment table and fill the spoon slot. Return the box to the backroom.

This process would continue for each section of the condiment table such as sugar, sweetener, salt, and pepper.

Using this process, the career resource specialist creates a retention plan. A retention plan is the formal version of the task analysis. The retention plan should be thorough enough that anybody could look at it and help the consumer complete their job.

But what does a typical day look like for a career resource specialist?

This completely depends on what job site we are at. The consumers I am with work at a variety of different businesses like Walmart, a mail room and a restaurant doing a wide variety of jobs such as baking cookies, cleaning bathrooms, working in a produce department or greeting people. I’ll share one of my favorite work days. Due to HIPAA, I cannot share much information in regards to who I work with, but I will tell you what happens at my job.

On this day of the week I start at 9am. I travel about 15 miles to get to my job site. When I get there, I punch in on my phone, open a daily note for my consumer and head into the supermarket. My consumer has down syndrome and is always happy to start working. At this site, we start the day in the bakery. I help my consumer gather some supplies, though they usually can do it themselves. Their first task is to set up cookies to bake. This involves getting a cookie rack, several baking sheets and a few different boxes of frozen cookie dough. My consumer is then assigned to set up a certain number(in sets of three) of trays. Sometimes, my consumer is asked to bake the cookies. This requires setting the big ovens to the correct temperature and setting the timer to the correct length of bake time. The next part of my consumer’s job is to package cookies. Some bags need 18 regular sized cookies, some boxes need 12 dipped regular sized cookies, or 42 mini cookies. For the most part, my consumer has memorized how many cookies go in what container. After three hours of working in the bakery, my consumer sweeps their work station and heads over to the deli area of the supermarket. In the deli, my consumer bags popcorn or tortilla chips. This is a more hands-on job as it requires a lot of multi-tasking. I hold the bags while they bag and I tie the bags while they label them. We are here for an hour before it is time for them to go home.

The next part of my day is spent at a restaurant. This consumer cleans the bathroom, sweeps the dining room floor and runs the dishwasher once the restaurant opened. This consumer is very independent and needs very little supervision. This means that I spend most of my shift working on paperwork, trainings for work and anything else I can think of doing. For the last hour of their shift, I will go into the kitchen and talk with them while they run the dishwasher. The kitchen is always very busy so I must make sure that I am not in anyone’s way. At four, I say goodbye to my consumer, finished my notes and punched out to head home for the night.