{"id":92343,"date":"2009-12-21T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/goforward.harpercollege.edu\/page.cfm?p=5654&newsid=910"},"modified":"2009-12-21T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T14:00:00","slug":"laughter-needed-medicine-for-the-unemployed-daily-herald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/92343","title":{"rendered":"Laughter Needed Medicine for the Unemployed, Daily Herald"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
By Eileen O. Daday | Daily Herald Correspondent<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mark Malone of Arlington Heights has an MBA from DePaul University, but his fundraising job with a nonprofit agency dried up months ago, leaving him to join the ranks of the unemployed.<\/p>\n

Rather than make the trip into Chicago to utilize DePaul’s career placement services, Malone turned to a closer resource: Harper College in Palatine.<\/p>\n

Last spring, he began attending the college’s monthly Career Stimulus sessions, held in its Wojcik Conference Center, and he was not alone. Each one draws nearly 200 people, estimates adult learning specialist Nancy Wajler.<\/p>\n

“I’m having to look at making a career change, and the support I get from people here keeps me on track,” said Malone, who hopes to get into marketing and sales. “It’s all about networking, and meeting more and more people.”<\/p>\n

On Friday, a standing-room-only crowd filled the conference dining room for the last session of this year, which put a comic spin on the economic downturn.<\/p>\n

Richard Oberbruner, a Second City graduate and career resource facilitator with the DuPage County Workforce Development Division, delivered the keynote address, which he called, “Lighten Up – It’s Only Unemployment.” <\/p>\n

He used improvisational games to mimic interviewing situations, including having them turn every question into another question.<\/p>\n

“I sense that just beneath the surface is frustration and anger,” Oberbruner said afterward. “These improv games allow them to express themselves and release some of the tension.”<\/p>\n

Practicing these types of games, he added, help job seekers to think on their feet and sharpen their interviewing skills. <\/p>\n

Oberbruner also encouraged his audience to be proactive in closing the interview, and not let the interviewer have the last word.<\/p>\n

“Look the interviewer in the eye and tell them you think you are a good fit for the company, and that you look forward to hearing from them,” Oberbruner said. <\/p>\n

Such pep talks went a long way for people like Bill and Wendy Anderson of Schaumburg, who both have attended the Career Stimulus programs since May.<\/p>\n

“I had been with the same company for 26 years,” said Bill Anderson of his job as a warehousing supervisor. “This made me understand how hard it is to find work and how diversified the marketplace is.”<\/p>\n

On Friday, the couple attended a breakout session on establishing realistic New Year’s resolutions for their unemployed status, and another one on stress management.<\/p>\n

Harper’s Professional Advancement and Learning Center launched the Career Stimulus sessions last March, and already has drawn more than 1,500 people.<\/p>\n

“Our role is to build services for adult learners,” Wajler said, “and right now, this is where we need to be, with the unemployed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eileen O. Daday | Daily Herald Correspondent Mark Malone of Arlington Heights has an MBA from DePaul University, but his fundraising job with a nonprofit agency dried up months ago, leaving him to join the ranks of the unemployed. Rather than make the trip into Chicago to utilize DePaul’s career placement services, Malone turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}