Many customers were coming to The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County looking for assistance in creating resumes and completing online job applications. Library staff recognized the need to have more formal training on skills that would assist people in applying for and interviewing for jobs. However, staff did not always have the time or expertise to provide the in-depth assistance that customers needed.

The Library formed a partnership with the Super Jobs Center. The Super Jobs Center is the One Stop Employment center for Southwest Ohio. They provide job-readiness workshops, job leads, job fairs and career coaching at their centers in Cincinnati. Through our partnership, they agreed to provide their job-readiness workshops at any of The Library’s 41 locations throughout Hamilton County. These were presented at no cost to the Library or customers.

The initial phase of this partnership lasted from January through June, 2009 and workshops were presented on the following topics:

• Resumes
• Interviewing
• Job Searching
• Surviving Job Loss
• 8 Steps to Successful Employment
• Financial Management
• Computer Basics 101

Within six months, 11 Library locations held a total of 32 workshops. At the end of six months, a follow-up meeting was held to evaluate the success of the partnership. At that time, it was decided that the workshops were extremely successful and to continue the partnership. However, moving forward, it was decided that workshops would only be offered on the most popular topics - resumes, interviewing and job searching, and that each Library location could only schedule one workshop per quarter. This decision was made to allow Super Jobs staff to continue teaching the workshops while continuing normal operations at their centers.