"If you unexpectedly lose your job when you are 51, it has a big impact on you. Just try keeping a cool head or taking the time to consider 'your future' (with or without work). You really do need some help with this, as I have found out. I had already tried to list what I thought I was good at and what I enjoyed doing. That is a good start, but you still don't have any idea which direction you ought to be able to go or how to do it.
Thanks to expert support from iScreen, I was forced - in a positive way - to keep on reflecting about myself. To weigh up the pros and cons. To make decisions about my principles. To be on the lookout for suitable vacancies and to present myself as strongly as possible during job interviews. In between the regular in-person meetings, we kept in contact by phone and email. Thanks to hard work, expertise and mutual trust, ten months of pleasant cooperation was rewarded by a new job that suited me!"
Mark Dijsselbloem
Participant in Job-to-Job Support
If you hear that your job is soon going to disappear and that, involuntarily, you will have to go in search of a new challenge?
The employees of BioClinica were given the bad news that their office was going to shut down. BioClinica is an international organisation operating in the field of clinical trials and clinical research, amongst other things, providing services to various pharmaceutical and biotechnology organisations.
The members of staff in Leiden were offered the opportunity of taking part in iScreen's Job-to-Job programme. The goal was to support the employees in their search for new work. The focus was on developing skills so participants could take control over their own career paths.
After getting to know the job-to-job coach, it was time for individual sessions. The participants' support needs and definition of the problem were extremely varied, so a tailor-made plan of action was defined depending on the individual's requirements.
In the course of the support process, the majority of participants passed through two stages:
A person-focused stage
A work-focused stage
In addition to these individual sessions, participants could put their names down for the following workshops:
Applying for jobs via LinkedIn
Goal: More effective use of the networking function of social media for career purposes.
In this interactive workshop, we answered questions such as:
Job application skills
Goal: A good preparation for the job application interview.
Subsections of this workshop:
Job fair
To further improve the chances of getting a job, we organised a job fair during which DOCS Resourcing Solutions gave a presentation about opportunities in the labour market. Following this, participants could sign up for an individual meeting with a DOCS recruiter to enable concrete discussion about available vacancies.
Results
With the help of the coaches, the discussions, personal motivation and effort, almost everybody found a new post within 3 to 12 months.