Customer Success Story: Little Friends of Illinois
Facing industry-wide staffing shortages, Cassidy Kaput, Program Director at Little Friends in Illinois,
spent a lot of time strategizing how to meet the needs of a large number of individuals with varying degrees of neurodiversities and support needs.
While Job Seekers were connected through referrals, not much was initially known about them
other than the fact they were able and willing to begin their new careers in underrepresented sectors of employment. Additionally, Cassidy’s program was brand new, so her team needed a standardized and systematic approach to assessing individuals.
Cassidy and her team selected Employment Pathfinder as their Career Exploration and Discovery tool due to its ease-of-use and mobile capabilities. Little Friends’ Job Seekers appreciated that it was a less intrusive – and a more independent way to assess their job readiness, interests and skills. They would simply receive an invite from Cassidy and her team, download the app, use the username they were given to login – and simply take the assessments in their own time, pace, and from the comfort of their own homes.
Today, Job Seekers arrive at their first meeting with Little Friend’s Staff armed with a baseline report of their employment desires, talents, job matches, and details on solutions to help them overcome potential challenges in the workplace. This helps the team at Little Friend’s not only determine where the “go” mark is with each Job Seeker; but helps them build more sustainable employment opportunities for those they serve right out of the gate!
Job Seekers are seeing intrinsic value to Employment Pathfinder, as well.
“For many of our job seekers, their biggest fear is about job readiness.” Cassidy states. “The end report in
Employment Pathfinder helps us demonstrate their exact level of readiness and gives them the tangible evidence they need to move forward in the career exploration process with more confidence.”
As for working with the CreateAbility team through the entire onboarding process, Cassidy adds that, “We felt supported throughout the entire process from inquiry, to roll-out.”
