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A Field Hand No More
A National Career Readiness Certificate Success Story Provided by The Heart of Health Care Career Coaching
Tony – July 2008
In late spring this year, the world lurched for Tony, a 29-year-old Holland man.
Tony was employed at a local bank's call center when his supervisor pulled him aside to reluctantly advise that his job had just blinked out of existence.
Such things never come at a good time, but they hit Tony and his wife at a particularly bad time. The couple not only had to cover their routine housing and grocery expenses, as everybody must, but they also had some substantial immediate bills.
Tony began sending out resumes right and left, but needing money right now, he went to work in Ottawa County's blueberry harvest. It was a form of labor that helped him rediscover not only how much heat, humidity and insect life he could tolerate, but also how much his back, arm and hand muscles could ache.
It certainly was nothing like working with his wits on the phone.
Prospects were bleak, too, because the resumes were producing no results and with each berry picked, the end of the harvest grew nearer and nearer. It was with a growing sense of urgency, then, that Tony applied for inclusion in the No Worker Left Behind incentive. This, in turn, led him to complete the Health Care Career Questionnaire and WorkKeys® assessments at his local Michigan Works! office.
The results of his WorkKeys assessments — which measure his mastery of reading, mathematics and locating information — was high enough to qualify him for the Health Care Coaching Program and obtain a Gold National Career Readiness Certificate.
As a result of three intense career assessments and exploration sessions, Tony was astonished to learn he scored consistently high for training as a Surgical Technician — a high-demand hospital job. Upon completion of funding eligibility requirements and other follow-up meetings, Tony qualified for and was accepted in the Surgical Tech program at Baker College in Muskegon.
Now — with the memory of blueberry-picking as incentive — Tony is eagerly engaged as a first-time college student working for his associate's degree in science in the Surgical Tech program at Baker College. The future looks much better from a classroom lab than stooping beside a blueberry bush.
Visit www.michigancrc.org/fc3 for more information on First Choice Career Coaching (FC3).