CareerCatchers Inc.

CareerCatchers' goal is to get every client into training and long-term careers. By developing long-term employment plans, we help individuals find and maintain meaningful employment in career-oriented jobs to move toward self-sufficiency. CareerCatchers' overall model and approach has three essential components:
1. To provide personalized one-on-one employment and job skills counseling to ensure stable employment;
2. To identify and encourage participation in workplace skills training;
3. To enhance self-esteem and foster empowerment.
In the short term, we encourage participation in one-on-one counseling sessions that serve to improve psycho-social health using the Empowerment Theory (knowledge dissemination, access to training, counseling); build self-esteem; increase job readiness; and boost career prospects. Once our clients are employed, we continue to provide coaching in order to increase employment retention for up to two years

CareerCatchers' staff provides intensive, one-on-one career counseling to job seekers. These sessions include help with interviewing skills, job search strategies, and résumé writing. We also support academic achievement by offering mentoring through our volunteer program for certification courses such as GED preparation, ESOL, basic computer skills, and much more.

Additionally, we host weekly Job Clubs and Empowerment Workshops led by our team of experienced workforce professionals and guest presenters. Attendees are challenged to interact and reinforce their knowledge of evolving jobs markets and employability skills. Participants also benefit from group interaction, increasing accountability, networking opportunities, and emotional support that are designed to lower the risk of employment frustration. Discussion topics include Résumé and Cover Letter Writing, Completing Job Applications, and Mock Interviews. Much time is also spent teaching clients to build and utilize their networks in order to market themselves effectively.

A significant number of our clients are immigrants, with English is their second language. Our volunteer program matches these individuals with English tutors and other educators according to clients’ unique needs. Through feedback many participants have expressed a significant boost of confidence after receiving help with their language skills. Among the population we serve there is also a need to improve basic computer skills. To address this we match volunteers and clients to work one-on-one, and we also work with a volunteer educators who provide a series of courses to help clients learn computer basics. In an effort to advance technical literacy in our community we provided clients with 25 donated laptops.

By utilizing a strategy of counseling, individualized training, community and employer partnerships, and job retention services, CC equips clients with the resources to make positive change in their lives as they move out of poverty. A reduction in barriers to employment is accomplished through our work and our more than 100 community partners and local employers. Our relationships with Holy Cross Health, Starbucks, Goodwill, and other employers show how we create opportunities for our clients to help address systems and policies that contribute to disproportionate negative outcomes for BIPOC individuals and communities.
We address the need for economic empowerment and equity/access through coaching and our partnerships with the Gaithersburg and Wheaton Financial Empowerment Centers. Our in-house coaching and workshops on budgeting, credit repair, and banking are the first step. Our partnerships with the County’s two FECs reinforce our work and provide clients with a path to financial literacy/positive financial health. Overall, we strive to level the playing field for those disadvantaged by life’s circumstances.
Our programming has expanded vastly over the past two years. CareerCatchers added an additional program, Empowerment Workshop, to its roster in the wake of the Pandemic. We have also offered various new virtual job readiness skills classes led by our volunteers. We went from 60 participants in 2019 to 240 participants in 2021. In 2019 we were also 100% in person. However, in 2020 we were 100% virtual, and in 2021 and 2022 were hybrid (virtual and in-person mix). Corresponding with this, we hired a volunteer coordinator in 2020 to help acquire volunteers to teach skills classes and they work one-on-one with clients for individual tutoring. We additionally helped clients with receiving computers in 2020.
That same year, we helped 150 families qualify and get paid through the Emergency Assistance Relief Payment Program (EARP). To provide more outreach, we started the Weekly Community Resources and Job Opportunities in 2020, sent out to 2400 people per week. Toward the end of the year, we hired a Data Analyst to improve our client tracking program. Between 2021 and 2022, Montgomery County Rapid rehousing program asked CareerCatchers to serve an additional 300 people.
Our employer outreach also greatly increased in 2021 and 2022, as we now have more than 30 employer partners. Likewise, as of 2022, we increased the amount of work with partners to conduct Learning Communities and we now have a contract to provide career counseling services in Washington DC in Wards 7 and 8. We also partnered with the Wheaton FEC and Gaithersburg Financial Empowerment Center this year. To add, the Housing Opportunity Commission of Montgomery County now pays to send their residents, who are not CareerCatchers clients, to our skills building classes

We hired a Volunteer Coordinator (VC) in 2020 to recruit community volunteers. CareerCatchers has always offered very personalized one-on-one guidance for career coaching, we apply those same principles to our volunteer services and group training classes. Prior to the pandemic, we held 2-3 volunteer-led workforce skills classes per year. We served about 60 clients per year with these in-person classes. In contrast, starting in 2020 and extending to the present, we offer one to two skills classes per month attended by 10-30 clients each session. Thanks to our volunteers, we have grown the number of clients taking our virtual skills almost 4-fold to 240 in 2021. In 2021 CareerCatchers had a total of 50 volunteers, who provided a total of 603.25 hours of service. The number of clients taking our classes in 2022 is on track to exceed 2021. The increase in the number of clients completing our workforce training classes has resulted in more clients being job-ready and finding employment.
This year alone, we have helped 228 clients receive new jobs, the total value of which is $7.7 million dollars. We have assisted 1073 clients attending workforce development trainings we have hosted.