the Price of Career Training

When I lost my job, we lost 2/3 of our income and were in dire straights. We had to apply for food stamps and my parents were helping us to make our mortgage payments. Part of the agreement of being approved for the food stamps was to take career training classes. Both myself and my wife took these classes that were offered for free from the local government office that supplied us with the food stamps. We attended six classes over a two week period at the courthouse classroom. The same instructor taught all six classes. We were trained on specific career goals according to the type of jobs we were looking for. I was looking for a bookkeeping or accounting type job and my wife was looking for a clerical or writing position. The class was both taught as a group exercise where we would be on the computers working and as one on one time to be specific to what your personal career goal was. Each class lasted about two hours.

I have to say that, if possible, I would have paid for this service. I still find it amazing that they offer this service for free (via tax dollars)to people in need of career help. The instructor was very educated on a wide variety of careers and they also had a lot of books and instructional tutorials on the computers to use. I would recommend this type of service to anyone and I really think its great that they MAKE you take these classes in order to get the government help to begin with. It makes you feel like you are earning the help and it really did help me. While they were not able to find me a job on their own (they have local businesses who work with them to place people into jobs), the training did, I feel, help me to get the job I have today.

Do not be afraid to take a class like this. There were people from all walks of life there, all ages, races, etc. As a 35 year old at the time, I felt sort of dumb being in a classroom again and I was also nervous that I would not do a good job or would not come across as wanting to learn anything because I am shy. This was not the case. If you open your mind up, you will learn a lot and that can only help you in the future.