What is it?

Convened by Skillworks and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley, the Career Coaches COP is a peer network and forum for practitioners to meet, learn about and share helpful tools and best practices for working with under and unemployed jobseekers and other hard to serve/underserved individuals.

Who is it for?

The group welcomes any direct service practitioner working with individuals and families to provide an array of services related to economic opportunity, sufficiency and success.

What Does This Group Offer?

Regular monthly meeting schedule switching off between two main formats:

• Community of Practice (COP) Meetings: 2.5 hour meetings involving a structured networking activity and best practice/resource sharing, followed by a learning opportunity chosen based upon coaches’ expressed needs and interests.
• Trainings: 2.5+ hour-full day professional development opportunities to go more in-depth on a topic of interest, through a more formalized training/workshop.

Joint convenings:

Occasionally, the Career Coaches COP will collaborate with other practitioner networks to offer networking and learning opportunities. (Past convening partners include: United Way’s Financial Empowerment Coaches, SABES Adult Basic Education Advisors, and Success Boston postsecondary coaches)

Informal peer mentoring:

Networking, connecting and learning from peers is highly encouraged and a core component to all meetings and trainings. Most meetings will include structured or informal opportunities to network.

Supervisors of Career Coaches Community of Practice:

United Way and SkillWorks recognize the diversity of programs across platforms that deliver career coaching services and recognize the essential role supervisors play in supporting career coaching within an organization. We believe that by supervisors sharing emerging and best practices for how to support career coaches, supervisors can deepen their skills to support career coaches in effectively working with participants. In addition, we value the development of partnerships across agencies and platforms to better leverage resources to support a culture of coaching. More information on the Supervisors COP can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/careercoachescop/supervisors-cop

Listserv:

An email list that members can use to access and share resources, training opportunities, referrals for clients and more. Learn more: https://sites.google.com/site/careercoachescop/listserv

Website:

Online source for past meeting and training materials, calendar of upcoming events, and links to/access to download any other tools and resources across a variety of topics including training and education, financial literacy and student aid, labor market information, and job search resources. https://sites.google.com/site/careercoachescop/