With concerns rising over the health of the U.S. labor market, the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University is releasing Bouncing Back: Nine Lessons in Resilience and Reemployment, a research brief that offers advice from long-term unemployed workers on coping and getting back to work. These helpful insights are from individuals who were enrolled in the Heldrich Center’s innovative New Start Career Network (NSCN), a privately funded program offering free online information and career coaching from hundreds of volunteer coaches to more than 6,000 job seekers.
Also available is a comprehensive summary research report on the center’s six-year-long NSCN project, Helping Older, Long-term Unemployed Job Seekers: A Report on the Heldrich Center’s New Start Career Network. It highlights the impacts of NSCN, which offered New Jersey job seekers free web-based tools, individual and small group coaching from trained volunteers, employer engagement, and connections to resources provided by a wide array of private and nonprofit organizations.
The brief was written by Carl Van Horn, Ph.D., Director of the Heldrich Center and Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University, and Maria Heidkamp, Founding Director of NSCN and Director of Program Development at the Heldrich Center.