Career Pathway Coach

At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success.

Founded in 1924, and still relevant today, Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs serving more than 11,000 youth and touching the lives of more than 14,000 youth, parents, teachers, and community members.

Our Career Pathway Coach is responsible for working directly with youth and is responsible for the successful implementation of the @Work career readiness program. The Career Pathway Coach collaborates closely with youth at multiple sites and creates intentional service plans to support those youth in accessing relevant career pathways. The specialist facilitates group workshops and counsels students one-on-one to provide foundational skill building for work readiness and meaningful career exploration opportunities. This role supports program operations to ensure quality program implementation.

Our Career Pathway Coach provides leadership and professionalism by:

• Facilitating work readiness workshops and career exploration opportunities to address student needs in line with the program design
• Providing service planning, ongoing coaching, and follow-up support to a cohort of youth across multiple sites to achieve placement goals
• Proactively engaging multiple stakeholders (counselors, program supervisors, curriculum specialists) to effectively recruit and build relationships with students, assess their needs and match students to relevant employment and postsecondary opportunities
• Collaborating interdepartmentally to revise curriculum and student-facing materials, ensuring best practices in the workforce development field are integrated
• Contributing to the development and implementation of a strategy to integrate workforce preparation into the BAM and WOW programs in collaboration with their supervisor and program designees
• Supporting interdepartmental event planning team to design and execute multiple events focused on work readiness skill building, career exploration, and networking
• Preparing timely reports of the status of the program and participating in ongoing professional development, as needed, to stay current with program area trends

Our Career Pathway Coach has been equipped for this impactful work in education and training with at least:

• Bachelor’s Degree in social work, human services, or a related area from an accredited university program or any combination of education and relevant training and/or experience
• Two years of experience providing job skills training or postsecondary support to young adults
• One year of project management and case management experience, or demonstrated experience in successfully managing initiatives with hard deadlines and multiple stakeholders

Our Career Pathway Coach exemplifies:

• Demonstrated ability to facilitate engaging, youth-oriented workshops

• Strong interpersonal skills, excelling in relationship building with youth, cultural sensitivity, and motivating and encouraging youth and peers

• Demonstrated ability to deliver/present data and content to stakeholders

• Flexibility to embrace and maximize changing environments

• Collaborate in team settings as well as work independently

• Demonstrated ability to be solutions-focused, self-reflective, and dedicated to the continuous improvement of service quality

• Proven project, case, and data management skills

• Clear verbal and written communication skills

Core Competencies:

• Communication: Uses effective written and oral communication with internal staff, teams, and community served; demonstrates empathy and listening
• Client orientation: Recognizes needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation, to ultimately maximize the impact
• Equity mindset: Understands and is committed to goals of equity, consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace
• Growth mindset: Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if the change is required, demonstrates curiosity and eagerness to learn
• Ownership and quality of work: Effectively manages own work, and work of the team to ensure delivery of high-quality work
• Supervisory skills: Effectively manages and develops others
• Mission drive: Demonstrates commitment to the missing of the organization as a whole and alignment with organization values

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is required to sit and stand for sustained periods of time, frequently talk, hear, use hands and fingers to feel, handle and operate objects or controls, and occasionally stand, bend, stoop, kneel and crouch.
• The employee is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures, transcribing, and viewing a computer terminal.
• The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

• Occasional travel may be required.
• The duties performed are primarily in an office setting & working with the public, COVID-19 vaccination is required

What Youth Guidance offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• Hiring Range of $60,000.00 - $73,000.00.
• A hiring bonus of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time.
• A retention bonus of $250 after 90 days of continuous service.
• A competitive benefit package. Even though healthcare costs have gone up, we have not passed along those increases to our staff.
• If you are pursuing your social services licensure, we can help you by providing licensure test study support. Licensing test reimbursement. Assistance in attaining licensure supervision hours.

DEI Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DE&I through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:

• Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff;
• Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity and expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices;
• Influencing systems that youth, their families, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEI in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people.

The above is intended to describe the general content of and requirements for the performance of this job. It is not intended to be an exhaustive statement of duties, responsibilities, or requirements. This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an “at-will” relationship.

Youth Guidance is an equal opportunity employer and proudly values diversity. Youth Guidance does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law and is committed to creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity along all of these lines. People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.