As a career specialist, Carina Langstraat advises all sorts of people.
She’s met with a foreign service officer, a Gates Foundation project manager, a North Kitsap teacher and a homeschooled ninth-grader.
She’s even counseled a Rhodes Scholar, fresh out of Oxford.
“In the hopper of Indeed, he’s still one of 500 people,” Langstraat explained.
Everybody can use a little job search help.
Langstraat — a mom, a master’s in library science candidate and a small business owner — is one of three volunteers on the Bainbridge Public Library Career Center team, which was formally established earlier this year. She’s available for 30-minute appointments from 2:30 to 4 p.m. on Mondays.
Josy Koumans, an account director at Willis Towers Watson, conducts one-on-ones between 6:30 and 8 p.m. every fourth Tuesday, except in July and August. Rounding out the squad, Buddy Bassett of Compass Vocational Services does one-hour consults once a month. Other weeks, he rotates through Kitsap Regional Library’s Poulsbo, Port Orchard and Bremerton branches.
“Every client has different needs, so every meeting is different,” Langstraat explains.
Her go-tos, however, are constant: She whips out her templates for résumés and cover letters, shows job-seekers how to populate applications with keywords and preaches the wonders of getting your name in the CEO’s inbox.
But sometimes, she’s just a superlative sounding board and a doler-outer of practical advice.
Andre Chaisson came to see Langstraat in January, looking for a new direction.
He had a decade of teaching experience in his tool belt, but had left the profession to study film around the time that he had his first kid.
Two years in, he’d decided that the two were incompatible; film would have to give.
“I couldn’t exactly leave at a moment’s notice to film bears in Yellowstone,” Chaisson explained.
He thought Langstraat might help him generate a list of possible jobs, but instead, she encouraged him to revisit his past.
“She told me that at the very least I should have a valid teaching certificate and be open to the idea of returning to the classroom, given my desire to find stable, fulfilling work,” Chaisson said.
Four months later, Chaisson was hired by the Bainbridge Island School District. He’ll be teaching American studies, horror/mystery/science fiction literature and film studies to high school students this fall.
“I’m thankful for Carina’s help and very excited to get back into the classroom,” he said.
Bassett’s tactics are a little different. He’s the dreamer of the bunch. Sign up for his Career Path Exploration Workshop and he’ll ask you about your childhood ambitions.
“You can literally find patterns between things people wanted to be when they were 4 years old and things they want to be when they’re 40,” he explained.
Nothing is taboo in this game — Batman, included.
“If they wanted to be a fireman when they were 5, Batman, an architect, it doesn’t matter,” Bassett said. “All of it is valid.”
Bassett’s specialty is connecting the dots. Four years of this and he’s got the aptitude to spot the common values. Lawyer-professional baseball player-rock star: “It kind of looks all over the board but when you boil it down it’s about recognition, materialism and being at the top of the monetary food chain.”
Archaeologist and construction worker: “Digging in the dirt.”
Police officer: “Could be protection and injustice and doing what’s right, but for another person, it’s power and kind of a hero complex.”
Post-brainstorm, Bassett hands out two worksheets. For the first, he helps participants condense their discoveries into five occupational values. Number two is the application part, the sorting hat, so to speak, of where a person belongs.
“We give an individual all the tools they need to look at an occupation and decide if it’s going to be rewarding or satisfying before they get into it,” he said.
His work doesn’t end there, however.
Bassett leads three other workshops — Job Search Strategies, Résumés That Get Noticed and Interviewing Skills — to help seekers become the most competitive candidates they can be.
Most of his material comes from the New York State Government’s Uniform Curriculum Project. He begged them for it, when he started all of this, as a way to help people in chemical dependency recovery find jobs.
Since then, the program’s morphed; he realized its usefulness was universal, “and I wrote it into my grant that I can help anyone, anywhere,” Bassett said.
As a community partner, KRL pays a small membership fee to cover overhead.
“You just have to keep asking why, why, why. As a society we’ve become complacent with vague generality,” Bassett added. “When I ask you why you do something, you say, because it’s fun, because I’ve been doing it all my life, because I enjoy it. But you didn’t tell me anything!
“The problem isn’t that we do that to each other; it’s that we do it to ourselves. We go through life doing these things and we never ask ourselves why we do it.”
Help wanted
Get support from KRL career specialists between 2:30 and 4 p.m. Mondays or select Tuesdays in July and August.
July 12, Bainbridge: Appointments, noon to 7 p.m.
July 19, Poulsbo: Appointments, noon to 5 p.m.; Career Path Exploration workshop, 6 to 8 p.m.
Aug. 9, Bainbridge: Appointments, noon to 5 p.m.; Résumés That Get Noticed workshop, 6 to 8 p.m.
Aug. 16, Poulsbo: Appointments, noon to 5 p.m.; Résumés That Get Noticed workshop, 6 to 8 p.m.
To make an appointment or RSVP for a workshop, call the Bainbridge Library at 206-842-4162.
