In early November 2021, Lisa Edwards was visiting Goodwill’s Smyrna store when Career Coach Glossie Echols greeted her in the lobby. This turned out to be a serendipitous encounter, as Lisa was unaware of Goodwill’s career services and was in a career transition then.
With more than 30 years of work experience and a master’s degree, Lisa first needed to consolidate her four-page resume down to one page.

Next, Lisa worked with Glossie to streamline her search efforts, focusing on jobs aligned with her passions, education, talents, and experience. An immediate goal was to earn extra money for holiday gifts for her family.

Lisa shared her concern that being over 65 might hinder her from reaching her goals. Glossie assured her they would create a workable, customized strategy for her. They utilized Goodwill’s A-B-C job search approach to help her reach her goals. At Goodwill, A-B-C stands for A job, a Better job, and a Career.

Lisa registered with TeamWRX Staffing Agency and immediately accepted a temporary assignment. She flew to Oakland, California, on November 16th and earned $2,600 for four days as she assisted Kaiser Permanente with staffing needs during a strike.

When she returned, she and Glossie scheduled several coaching sessions and reduced her resume to the desired one page. In addition, they created three different resumes, which were designed to target the positions she was seeking, and they updated her LinkedIn profile. Glossie shared Goodwill’s Target Market Search Strategy worksheet and guided Lisa through this exercise, which allowed her to summarize her strengths and work history to assist her in refining her job search. Lisa remarked that she had never done anything like this before and found it helpful in renewing her confidence.

By late November, Lisa had secured employment at the B-12 store, where she is working as an LPN. Working 20 hours per week is allowing her time to reach her goal of beginning a new career. As she continues to tweak her strategy and enhance her LinkedIn profile, she is optimistic that an exciting new opportunity is forthcoming.