“Employment is nature’s physician, and is essential to human happiness.” So quoted Claudius Galen, renowned Greek physician. For many, however, physical, mental, or emotional limitations may stand in the way of obtaining meaningful work.

For those who find themselves in this dilemma, there is hope offered through Goodwill Industries’ Vocational Evaluation, Situational Assessment, and Work Adjustment programs.

“Part of what I do here is job placement and situational assessments, as a job developer,” explained Adam Karam, job development specialist at the New Philadelphia Goodwill Industries office.

The first step is vocational evaluation, where Karam helps provide standardized testing to identify workable vocational goals. Aptitude, work values, academic skills, and interest areas are all evaluated to begin to find the type of work the client may do best. At that point, a situational assessment process begins, where both strengths and weaknesses of the potential worker are explored.

“There may be someone who has been in a type of accident, and finds that upon recovery, they can no longer do the same type of job that they did before. When that happens, we would start programming to figure out what their skills are. Can they type? Are they competitive in that? We look at those things. We find a fit. Some of these people end up being employed by Goodwill Industries.

“We start out with a facility-based training. This is the missions services side of it, programs and services. We could have people out on the floor of our Goodwill store, who may want to be a cashier, getting training. Then there is a whole group of people who are just Goodwill retail employees. We also have a group of older New Phila school kids who come over and work once or twice a week to get that training. They learn some basic skills. We also have mature service senior employment people who work here,” added the job development specialist.

“I work with the clients if they have any barriers to employment. So, let’s say we have a client that is not able to work very fast, or any other barrier to employment. We then go to community leaders and business leaders to help them get jobs. We may go to a worksite, and say, we think Tom needs 40 hours worth of work a week, and we help him obtain competitive employment. I go out with him and help him do that,” said Karam.

During the work tasks, participants have the opportunity to develop their abilities and work skills with the help of their job coach. This may include learning about proper work attire, hygiene and health, good work ethics, and other important factors.

Finally, the client is helped with direct job placement, including preparing a resume, completing job applications, and interview skills.

“I have so many worksites right now. I have worksites that want to help people out, but I don’t have enough people to fill those jobs, believe it or not,” commented Karam. “Most of our people need to be referred from an agency, like the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation, or perhaps a mental health agency, to work with us. Consumers have an option as to which agency they may want to work with. The point that I want to get across is this: at least give us a call, and we will explain to you the protocol, rather than just putting your finger on a provider and guessing. We are pretty big, with a lot of resources for consumers.

“Right now, we are placing people in anything from general labor, to janitorial, teacher, you name it, and we work with it. You can’t really name many jobs we don’t work with. Until July when budget cuts kick in, we are also at The Employment Source in New Philadelphia twice a week. Then, we will be back here in our office.

“We work with many other agencies,” Karam pointed out. “As a community, we need to rally together.”

The job development program can be reached at 330-339-5994, extension 203.