Hello everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us for today's TechSoup for Libraries webinar, Public Tech Instruction Online Job Search Assistance. We'll be using ReadyTalk for our meeting today. Please use the chat in the lower left corner to send questions and comments to any of the presenters. We'll be tracking your questions throughout the webinar and we'll answer them at designated Q&A sections at the end. All of your chat comments will only come to the presenters, but if you have comments to share with the entire group, we'll share them back out for you. You don't need to raise your hand in order to share a comment or a question in the chat. Just go ahead and put it right on in there. Now, should you get disconnected during the webinar, you can reconnect using the same link in your confirmation email. You should be hearing the conference audio through your computer speakers, but if your audio connection is unclear, you can dial in using the phone number in your confirmation email or that was actually just put into the chat by Becky, our assistant today. If you're having any technical issues, we can try to assist you in the chat, but you can also call the ReadyTalk support number that's listed on your screen. Now you are being recorded today and this recording will be archived on the TechSoup website. If you're called away from the webinar or if you're having connection issues, you can watch a full recording of this webinar later on. You'll receive an archive email within 48 hours of the completion of the webinar and that will include a link to the recording, the PowerPoint slides, and any links shared during the session. Now if you happen to be tweeting this webinar, please use the hashtag TechSoup. We have someone from TechSoup live tweeting the event today, so you'll see them online. Now TechSoup is an organization that connects nonprofits, charities, libraries, and foundations with tech products and services, as well as with information so that you can make informed decisions about technology. TechSoup has been around since 1987 and since then has distributed over 11 million technology donations to over 200,000 nonprofit organizations. In addition to offering products including the latest versions of software like Microsoft Windows and QuickBooks, TechSoup also offers consulting services. For more information about TechSoup products and services, please visit us online at TechSoup.org and click on Get Products and Services. So now that we've made it through all the housekeeping and introductory bits, I'd like to welcome you once again to today's TechSoup for Libraries webinar, Public Tech Instruction, Online Job Search Assistance. Today's webinar is part of a series on providing public technology instruction in libraries and nonprofits, and is sponsored in part by ReadyTalk. Now my name is Crystal Schimpf and I will be your host for today's webinar. I'm joined by two fabulous guests today who will be sharing their expertise in the area of helping job seekers. Shannon Distle joins us from the Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Arlington Heights, Illinois where she has served as business librarian for the past three years. Shannon, will you say hello? Hi everybody. Great, thanks Shannon. Stephanie Margossian is the Chief Operating Officer at Trail, the company that created Job Scout, an online resource for job seekers designed with libraries and nonprofits in mind. Stephanie would you like to say hello? Hi everybody. Hi Stephanie, thanks for joining us. Now assisting us with chat we have Ginny Meese and Ariel Gilbert-Knight, and also Becky Wiegand, all folks from TechSoup here that make it happen behind the scenes and bringing these webinars to you. So thanks for helping us out with the chat, with Twitter, and with the questions that are happening. So today we will be covering a few key areas with relation to online job search assistance. First I will give a brief overview of this topic and I will ask you a few questions about your current experiences with job seekers. Next, Shannon will talk about the types of services libraries and nonprofits can provide to job seekers, including some ideas for using library subscription databases to help job seekers. Shannon will share many of the services they provide at their library and will share the tips that she has learned from her own experience. Lastly, Stephanie will give us a demo of the Job Scout app, a new web and mobile app to teach basic tech skills to job seekers. You can use that app to help them navigate the job search process. Stephanie will show us how libraries and nonprofits can utilize Job Scout to assist patrons who are working on finding a job. We will have time for questions and answers at the end of the session and possibly in the middle. But you can submit your questions to us at any time in the chat window. Again, that's in the lower left corner. So you can submit those questions throughout the session. We will keep track of them and get to as many as we can at the end of the session. If we run out of time we will follow up with an email to you with the answer to the question. So we do appreciate your questions and the conversation that happens in the chat. I also hope that in today's webinar you find a few new ideas to help you provide services to job seekers whether you are a library or a nonprofit that you walk away with a few new things. Let's just start by taking a minute and thinking about the needs of our communities when it comes to job search assistance. We know that people are looking for jobs. Our unemployment rate has been hovering at 6.7% in the United States. We know there are not enough jobs. There is high competition for jobs that are out there and people have been suffering from changes in the economy. Some of our job seekers are unemployed. Some are underemployed. Some may be changing careers. And some may be re-entering the workforce after some type of leave for family or for retirement. Many are unexpectedly forced to learn new technologies just to apply for a new job. And they need so much more than just basic computer skills to navigate those job listing websites and format their resumes. Now in our organizations we might be serving many different groups of people not just job seekers. And we may not be trained to be job search specialists but we are there to help in whatever way we can and in the best way that we can. Now there is no one size fits all way to provide job seeker assistance. But what matters is that you look into the unique needs of your community and find a creative way to meet those needs with whatever limited resources you have. Now there are many questions you will want to ask about your community's needs. And this is just an example, one that we'd actually like to know about.  And tell us, are job seekers in your community, do they have basic tech skills? And you can actually submit your responses by clicking on the radio buttons here to let us know. Do most of the job seekers need more help with basic computer skills? Or do just some of them, maybe not a majority but some of them do need help with basic tech? Or are all of them computer literate? If you are not sure there is an opportunity for you to select that response as well. So I'll give you just a few more seconds here to select your responses. I can see many responses are coming in. And in a minute we will close the poll. One thing is that it does help if you click submit after you have selected your response then that response gets sent to us and you can see the results on your screen. And I see Michael you say define basic. And I know that in a short question like this that is hard to say. But let's talk about just the very basic needs to use a computer, getting online, having an email address, really a very basic minimal level of computer skills. I can see that the responses have slowed a little bit to maybe indicate that everyone is going to respond is going to. So I'm just going to close the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. And I'll close the poll and now you should be able to see the results. So the majority of you, almost all of you in fact say at least some help is needed with basic tech skills. And only a few of you say that all of your job seekers are computer literate. And a few of you say you are not sure. And that's okay too because sometimes this is now maybe the first time you are thinking of this question you are going to go out and take a look at your community needs and see if that is in fact a need. So that's something of course we have to consider when we are helping job seekers that they may not have those basic skills. So now I'd actually like to ask you another question, this one about what you are already offering in your library or in your nonprofit. What services are you already providing? This question you can select multiple responses because you may be doing several of these things already. Or it may be that job seeker services are a new arena for you. So go ahead and select what options on this list are represent services you are already providing. And go ahead and click submit. I'll give you a few seconds. There is a long list here. Some of them are kind of computer help based services. Some of them are more specialty services. And some of them just relate to the resources. If you select other, we would love to see if you are providing some other type of job seeker service and you select that option. We would love to have you type in the chat and tell us what that other type of service is. This is a great way for all of us to get ideas and we will actually share your idea back out with the entire group. So I can see lots of many responses are coming in. I'll give you a few more minutes to work your way through this list. And sometimes we don't always think of the types of services we are offering until we see a list here. We go, oh, I'm actually doing a few of these things. So this maybe helps us recognize the work we are already doing. And so I see that the responses have slowed a little bit.  So I'm going to close the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. I'm going to close the poll. And we can see some of the things that are already being offered and really a wide range here. I like some of the things that I see coming through in the chat, translation services, job bulletin boards. Also some libraries are creating their own online guides for people who are looking for jobs. And Stephanie has shared one of those and I think we'll be able to share that back out to the entire group in just a minute here. So I appreciate you sharing your ideas here for the specific things you are doing. And I also just want to recognize and maybe give yourselves a pat on the back for all the things you are already doing. Now for those of you who aren't offering services yet, well you've come to the right place to get some ideas to start. And I hope you do today. But really we can see there is a wide range of different services that can be provided in our libraries and nonprofits. There are also a lot of resources available. And I've just listed a few of them here on this slide. You can see that Job Scouts listed at the top. We are going to hear from Stephanie Margossian about that resource later on in our webinar today. Some other resources are listed there. And I just also want to mention make sure to look up your local workforce centers and local job listing sites. Consider those as well as you go into sharing and creating services for your communities. So now we've kind of made it through our overview and I'm going to turn over the mic to Shannon who is going to tell us about the job services at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. Shannon? Thank you Crystal. Hi everybody. Thanks so much for participating in the webinar today. I am Shannon Distill. And as Crystal mentioned, I have been the business librarian at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library for three years. And if you are not familiar with Arlington Heights, we are located about 25 miles from downtown Chicago. We have about 75,000 residents and approximately 55,000 of those residents are current card holders. Our building is approximately 132,000 square feet and we have about 270,000 items in our circulating collection. So I'll just give you a little overview of the size of the Arlington Heights Library. So what I'm going to talk to you today about is the job services and the resources that we have here at Arlington Heights Library. This first slide that you are going to see is the library job services. And you are seeing a snapshot there of our digital studio which was created about a year and a half ago when we did a major remodel of our building. Now the first bullet point you see is for our Job Seekers series. That was begun in 2010 by a very generous grant from the Arlington Heights Rotary Club and we continue to partner with them to provide programming on a monthly basis for job seekers and those who need career assistance. You do not have to be a resident to participate in the Job Seekers series. I was delighted to see how many of you provide one-on-one appointments. That's a very big part of what I do. One-on-one appointments here are with myself. You can also schedule a one-on-one appointment with our tech staff and I'm going to talk a little bit further down. We are going to see a slide for our resume reviews but those are one-on-one as well. Now our digital studio is incredibly popular. We have a lot of software in there. You can create a video. You can work on an online portfolio. You can take a head shot. It's just a wonderful resource and extremely popular with our residents. Now this snapshot here, this is the slide for the Arlington Heights Library Job Resources. And that slide is one side of our business center. Our business center was created approximately four years ago and it is the location of many of our business programs and our job programs, also classes, our reference and business and job circulating collections. There are also five computers in there and we have a TV screen that runs all hours that we are open. We also have databases that are subscription and our residents can access them from home and anybody in the library can access them from the computers within the library. We have approximately 55 computers in our library. And the other job resources that we have is community outreach which I am very, very active in. I go to a lot of career programming events at local churches and community colleges. I participate in job fairs and I do a lot of networking with the local Chamber of Commerce, local businesses, and other individuals who help our job and career seekers in the community. Right here, this is a screenshot of the Arlington Heights Library's Jobs and Careers page. And if you want to look at this live, the website address is www.ahml.info, forward slash research, forward slash jobs. And you will see here there is a resume help section and if our residents click on that red hyperlink, they can sign up for a one-on-one appointment with one of our two resume reviewers. Also the career research portion of this webpage links to some of our more useful databases which I am going to talk about shortly. And then we have a list there of local resources and each of those resources I partner with and they are very, very active in the state of Illinois and active in our area. You will also see a small calendar box on the side which lists resume reviews and open appointment times for upcoming dates. And the Meet with a Specialist box, that is where they can click on the appointment form link to set up an appointment with me. And I will talk about who our resume reviewers are shortly. So databases, I am going to briefly talk about four of our databases today. We have approximately 90 databases at the library, many business and databases that we consider useful for our job and career seekers. I am going to talk about four. GaleCourses, lynda.com, referenceUSA, and tutor.com. And it looks like from the poll over 60 of you had mentioned that you also subscribed to databases. So you may be familiar with some of these and others that are here in this small list you might not be familiar with. GaleCourses is formerly Learn for Life, that is an instructor-led six-week course. lynda.com are video tutorials, referenceUSA, which most people consider strictly a business database is actually a wonderful resource for our job seekers. And then tutor.com which many people are only considering for students when actually they have a wonderful career resource section of that database. So I am going to show you some screenshots. Now this is Learn for Life, and this is now called GaleCourses. And we just subscribed to this database about a year ago. Now Learn for Life are instructor-led six-week courses. And when you sign up for the courses, when you complete these six weeks, you get a letter that certifies that you have completed the course. I am actually taking two courses myself that started on April 16th. And there are two different lessons per week. There is also a discussion board where you can talk with your fellow students and also connect with your instructor. And it is proven to be incredibly popular. Now this screenshot here is a number of the job-related courses that you can take through Learn for Life. Now when we first subscribed to this database it was limited to only five courses a year. We have now opened that up to unlimited courses for anybody who would like to sign up to take the courses through Learn for Life. It is wonderful. This is Lynda.com, which many of you may be familiar with. And Lynda.com we have had a subscription here at the library for a number of years. And a couple of years ago they removed the access to remote access for Lynda.com for us. And that proved incredibly difficult. We now have remote access back for this database and it has just been absolutely wonderful. Now these are video tutorials on literally hundreds of topics. I cannot stress enough how much this is used by our job and career seekers, everything for how to create a resume, to interviewing tips, to updating their skills on software, to management tips. It's just wonderful. And I'm going to show you another screenshot here. This is an example of one of the video tutorials within Lynda.com. And this is Job Hunting Online. Now you'll see on the left side that the entire tutorial is one hour and 56 minutes. But what I particularly like is that it's broken down into small chapters. So many of our job seekers just want to go in and refresh their skills on something that they might have forgotten such as how to do a mail merge or one particular aspect of how to use Excel. So incredibly popular and I'm hoping that Lynda.com will continue to allow us remote access to this database because I use it on a consistent basis with our job and career seekers. It's also one of the few places that has QuickBooks classes and Google AdWords tutorials and free software instead of our residents having to go to the local community college to pay for those classes. Now this is Tutor.com which many of you may be familiar with. You might have used it yourself. Your children might have used it. Your library customers may have used it. Most people think of this as test prep and study resources but they actually have excellent resources for those who are looking for job assistance and those who are looking to change careers. Now you can actually connect with a live tutor on Tutor.com. Here at our library the tutors are available from 3 p.m. until 10 p.m. in the evening. And I'm going to show you a screenshot of the career resources section which is this slide here. And it's under topic for adult services and then subject job resources. And then subtopic which would be if you needed help with a resume you can actually upload your resume to a tutor and they will edit it for you. You can share a cover letter with them. You can get interviewing tips. They can help you with the job boards. And it is absolutely a wonderful resource that's not just for students. This is ReferenceUSA which is hands down probably the database that I use the most. I use it with the businesses in the community and I use it every day with our job seekers as well. And you'll see in the available databases in the middle of that screen capture the first bullet point is U.S. businesses, the second one is U.S. jobs and internships. How I use this with our job seekers is we often create targeted lists of companies that they might be looking at either because of the size of the company, because of the geographic area, because of the standard industry classification code, sometimes because they are the competitor to a company that they worked for previously. And the U.S. jobs and internships database within ReferenceUSA actually pulls in job postings that have been posted on indeed.com. Let me show you that screenshot here. So this is a result for doing a simple search in the U.S. jobs for marketing, for marketing positions. And it pulled up over 1,000 results in the Chicago metropolitan area. Now the hyperlink for the job title will take you to the job posting on indeed.com. And the hyperlink under company name will click you to the company record within ReferenceUSA so that the customer can do further research. Excellent, excellent database. Now our resume reviews, I had seen a chat come through about who our resume reviewers are. We have two resume reviewers. The resume reviews are available for Arlington Heights residents only. And they are limited to three resume review appointments in a calendar year, two within six months, or three in a year. Now our resume reviewers, we have a man and a woman. Our man's name is Rich. He has a background in human resources. And he does appointments on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Appointments are one hour in length. And he does them from either 6 to 7 or 7 to 8 p.m. Our other resume reviewer, her name is Julie, and she previously worked at our local unemployment office. And she also has a background in human resources. And she does appointments from 3 to 4 and 4 to 5 on Wednesday afternoons. They have been with us for years. I absolutely think they are two of the most wonderful people I've ever met. And they also started a LinkedIn group to connect the people who have come through our resume review program. Since January 1 of 2014, we've had nine of our customers land jobs. And a lot of that is because of the success of the resume review and also because of the further networking that goes on with the LinkedIn group. So we used to have a job search support group here that met on Thursday. And when those numbers started to decline, we tried this LinkedIn group and it's been very, very successful. And our resume reviewers are paid. That budget comes out of our library programming budget. They are not volunteers. Now one-on-one appointments, these are done in an appointment room. That picture there is actually my assistant Julie and our genealogy librarian Michael. But I wanted to give you an idea of what our appointment room looks like. And this is where I do appointments for our small businesses and also for our job and career seekers. Again, like I said, when I was talking about the databases, we do a lot of company research. Sometimes they want to know what the credit rating is of a company or how many employees are at the company, or if they are able to get to the company using public transportation. We create a lot of business lists in reference to USA and we also use corporate affiliations and also Lexis and Nexus to make lists for our job and career seekers. I do a lot of appointments with LinkedIn. I can't even tell you how many appointments I do on LinkedIn and also on how to use social media in the job search. I help people with personal websites. We check to see what their professional profile is like online. I have them Google themselves just to see what's out there about them. Some people are setting up personal websites more because they are looking for a job. Others are using it as a portfolio or because they've decided to start a small business. And then the online job search that is incredibly popular, helping them to use the job boards, helping them to use Twitter for the job search, which believe it or not is a wonderful resource for our job seekers. And before I go to question the answer, I wanted to give you some tips because when I took this job, I didn't have any experience working with job seekers. My background was as a technology resources librarian. So when I took this position here at Arlington Heights, the librarian before me had been here for 20 years. So I definitely came in and redefined the job based on what I was seeing in the community and also what my greatest skills were with helping them. The very first thing that I did, I got into the community. I went to the unemployment office. I went to the local churches that had job groups. I went to networking events and I went to job fairs. I had a table for the library. I passed out my business card. I worked with our marketing department to create handouts and a one-page flyer so that people would know that we could assist them at the library. I also speak frequently. Any place that somebody would like me to speak, I'll go. The Village Hall, a local church, the local college, the local career center at the college is a great resource for us. Also, locate your free resources. And there are so many wonderful resources out there including YouTube. YouTube is one of the resources that I use the most. There's also GFC Learn Free which is another website that we use. And then resources in the communities that are free by partnering with some of these community organizations has been wonderful for us. Learn Social Media, that's another tip because you're going to get a lot of questions about how to use LinkedIn or if Twitter is going to be good for the job search, or can I post this on Facebook or is my prospective employer going to see me on social media? And some of you may recognize Ted Lang there if you were a Love Boat fan. That is Ted Lang who was the bartender Isaac Washington on Love Boat. And I often describe what I do here at the library as being like a bartender.  And I listen a lot. And sometimes our job seekers just want you to listen. And sometimes they actually want you to sit down with them and figure out the resources. And as long as you can be as patient as a bartender and just keep your ears open, you'll be very, very successful. So I believe, Crystal, we're in the question and answer time now. Is that right? That's correct. It's time. We've just a minute or two for a couple of quick questions. And we've been getting a lot in and we'll also have time at the end to follow up on some of these questions. But a couple of the quick ones. Somebody asked who does the headshots? Is it library staff or is it volunteers? My assistant Julie is a professional photographer. She owns her own small business on the side. And she takes the headshots. We did a program last year that was headshots for adults. And in June we are doing a headshots program for recent college graduates. But we've also had some of our digital studio staff if Julie is not here, go in and set up the camera. And we've taken pictures ourselves and we've also used cell phones. Great. Great. So many different options there. You don't have to be a professional photographer to help people out in that area for sure, but nice that you've got one on staff. I just have another person who asked how do you use YouTube? Maybe you could tell us a little bit how you use YouTube to help job seekers. You know there's a lot of videos out there about how to write a resume or interviewing tips. And one of the best channels that I use is called the Interview Guys. And it's kind of in a cartoon format. And they do very short videos that are clever and light and quick and they're fun. Everything from resume writing to tips on the job search. And it's not very serious because it is in like a cartoon format. But for some of our residents who cannot access our databases remotely either because of issues at home or because they don't have internet access or because even they're not our residents, I refer them to YouTube, to channels like the Interview Guys so that they can watch videos at home or on the go or on their tablet or on their cell phone that have some job and career tips for them. There's also videos on YouTube on how to use our databases. We've created them and other libraries have created them as well such as how to use ReferenceUSA and how to use Lynda.com. Great, great. And we're getting a lot of very specific questions with regards to the way you use different databases. And some of them we may have time for later. I want to assure everybody that if you are asking questions and we don't answer it live on the webinar we will follow up with an email because some of them might take a little bit more time for us to answer but we will get back to you. So please continue sending your questions. Shannon, just one question before I move on to Stephanie's section. There's still a little bit of questions coming in about the resume reviewers. And can you just clarify for us, are the resume reviewers employees of the library or are they contracted or are they volunteers? Just as brief as you can explain that. Our resume reviewers are not library staff. We have contracted with them. We do a year contract at a time. They sign a letter of agreement. And again their budget does come out of our library programming budget. We pay them $30 an hour. We have a set number of resume reviews that they do a month and that is their contract. And they are absolutely wonderful. We have had free resume walk-in workshops here at the library. And we organize those with volunteer resume reviewers. But these two resume reviewers are contract and they are here weekly. Great, thank you. And that is different than the one-on-one appointments with librarians or library staff, correct? That is correct. No staff at the library will do resume reviews. All right, good. I think that helps clarify that point that we were having some questions about. So Shannon, we may have some more questions for you at the end, but for right now I want to give Stephanie some time to talk about JobScout. So thank you again Shannon for sharing. Stephanie is going to tell us about JobScout which is a free online resource for job seekers that can be used in public libraries and nonprofits. Stephanie? Hi everybody, thank you Crystal. And thank you everyone for joining us on the webinar today and listening to me talk about JobScout. So my name is Stephanie Margosi and I am the Chief Operating Officer at Trail. And Trail is an education technology company. It's an acronym. Our name is an acronym. It stands for Technology Resources and Internet Literacy. And we build educational platforms that teach people digital literacy skills. So what do we mean by digital literacy skills? Well, digital literacy can mean a lot of things. It could mean basic computer skills like typing, mousing, being able to turn on a computer. And it can also mean how you navigate software and how you navigate the Internet. And when we talk about digital literacy, we mean those skills that are necessary to use the Internet sufficiently. So why do we build these tools for people to learn Internet skills? Isn't everybody online? And judging from the poll results that we took earlier in the webinar, I think I'm speaking to a choir when I lay out the issue that no, everybody is not currently online. And the numbers are shocking actually. According to Pew Research, there are 60 million people in the United States who still do not know how to use the Internet. And that number surpasses 5 billion people worldwide. We're based in San Francisco. And here we get a lot of resistance when we talk about the issue. There's a lot of disbelief, so there's that many people who don't know how to use the Internet, and it's shocking, but it's true. So why is this so important? I mean, we existed for a long time before the Internet came around. We got along just fine. Well, the fact is that the Internet has fundamentally changed our lives in the way we interact with each other, the way we interact with society, more and more resources are moving online. And these are becoming necessary skills to be marketable job seekers in the workforce. Digital literacy is now starting to affect all industries and even industries that we might not traditionally think digital literacy skills were important for, such as hospitality, retail, dry cleaning, automotive, and other trades. One of our favorite stories that we like to tell is about a company here in San Francisco called Laundry Locker. And Laundry Locker is a dry cleaning company. It's the kind of company that comes and picks up your laundry from you at a specific site and then delivers it back to you when it's all done. And traditionally you don't think of these kinds of companies as being automated, but this one in particular is very much automated and it's very much dependent on the Internet. Everything runs off of an iPad from the laundry line to the intake people to the folks out on the street delivering and picking up laundry. So it's very important for their employees at Laundry Locker in particular to have a variety of skills but of utmost importance are digital literacy skills. So Job Scout was or is our first platform and it was born out of a partnership between Trail, the California State Library, the iCalifornia Campaign and the Link America Foundation. And the California State Library was facing a unique problem around the time around 2008 when the recession, 2009 when the recession was at its peak. They had a lot of people coming in to the library looking for job resources which in and of itself was not a new problem. But there was another layer compounding that issue in so much as those, a lot of these people had been newly laid off, did not have any digital literacy skills and were unfamiliar with the new landscape of trying to find a job. So there were a lot of people coming in looking for job resources but then they needed that extra help of needing help to get online. And so they needed some digital literacy education. And so the librarian was thinking as a state librarian at the time, Stacey Aldrich, she wanted to come up with a creative solution to this problem. And so she was thinking maybe there's a way that we can build an online self led education platform where people can get the digital literacy skills that they need to have a successful job search. And thus was born Job Scout. So our solution was Job Scout. It is a completely self led online education tool. We often joke around and say it was either the best idea that we ever jumped on or it was going to be a little bit difficult to implement. But this has been incredible. We've had an incredible response to Job Scout. Those folks that have our users have been incredibly happy with it. And so we are here today. We're available in libraries all across California and in organizations across the country as well. So I'm going to go ahead and give you a little overview of Job Scout today. So we're going to take a quick look at the platform so everybody can get the difference of what we have to offer. So I'm going to start my desktop sharing here in just a second. See if this works. It looks like I'm sharing my desktop with everybody. So Job Scout is an online resource and it is completely free to the end user. So it's available 24-7 online. Whoever logs on to myjobscout.org can sign up for an account for free. So I'm going to log into my account and you do need to sign up for an account to use the resource. And that is because we need to have a way to save your progress through the site so that you can save whatever data that you enter into so that you can go ahead and come back and complete lessons and so on. It looks like my network is dragging just a little bit. Oh, here we go. So you should be looking right now at the Job Scout dashboard. We did initially design for first-time Internet users and this means that our goal was to build a platform that was one inviting and two easy to use. So Job Scout was built so it feels like somebody is sitting next to the user kind of guiding them through some of these resources. So the first thing we do is try to guide the user through our own site. So the first thing the user is presented with when they log on to Job Scout is the Job Scout dashboard. And on top of the dashboard is a list of things that you can do with Job Scout. You can learn about the Internet. You can update your resume. We have a resume builder. We have other tools like a job search function and an application management tool we call the One Stop Job Shop. We also have an internal social network on Job Scout. We employ a learn and apply model. So we like to give our users the opportunity to apply the skills they are learning and their lessons directly on the site. So the first thing we are going to do is take a look at one of our lessons. So our lessons are broken up into a variety of different units. We kind of go through levels. So we go from the basics to some more advanced skills. We cover everything from browsers and email and Internet etiquette to social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for the specific purpose of finding a job. Also more quote unquote traditional job resources online like Career Builder, Craigslist, Simply Hired. And then we also cover micro-entrepreneurial sites like Etsy, TaskRabbit, and other sites like Elant that allow users to make money and participate in the economy in a slightly different way. And we will be expanding those offerings and micro-entrepreneurial lessons offerings very soon. So we are going to take a peek at one of our lessons. This is one of our vocabulary lessons kind of getting used to the language of the Internet. Right now we are running on a text-based system. We don't employ video because many of our partner organizations in California and also nationwide, they work on a variety of different kind of technological infrastructures.  We wanted a system that would accommodate all of those different setups. So we have text here. We accompany that text with screenshots. And then when a user is done with content, they are engaged in an activity. And these activities are designed to allow the user to review the content they just saw. So when a user has successfully finished a lesson, they earn a badge. And those badges live on the dashboard. Our badges are one of our most popular features. It's a great motivator tool for our users. And I will click into a badge so you can see it. Now in addition to lessons, we also offer tools on JobScout for job seekers. Our resume builder is one of our most popular tools. So we have developed a fill in the blank template for our users. And they put all the information that they need for comprehensive resume into this template. And then we provide a pre-formatted PDF version of their resume that they can either save on a thumb drive, on a desktop, or they can print out and have a hard copy of. We also offer an application management tool. And so this application management tool is called the One Stop Job Shop, which you are looking at right now. We break down the application process into four different steps. We allow the user to read a job description that they have saved off of our job search feature which we'll take a look at. Find a contact email off of that listing and enter it in. And then send the resume that they built in our resume builder directly from our site to the listing contact. And the resume is sent with a customized email, a pre-formatted customized email that's sent out from our system. But it looks like it's sent directly from the user. And we pull information from both the user's resume and from the listing to make sure that it looks like it was something sent directly from the user and not something that's automated. We also have a calendar feature that allows users to keep track of interviews so they can schedule the date and time. We're also available on mobile and iOS and Android. And on the mobile phone this calendar feature syncs up with the calendar on the phone, so either with iCal or with Google Calendar. So in addition to our One Stop Job Shop and our application management tool, we have a job listings job search feature that we offer to our users. And this is used in conjunction with SimplyHire.com. So we share an API with Simply Hire which is a job listings aggregator which allows our users to look for a variety of different jobs all over the nation and all over the world actually. We use SimplyHire because it is an aggregator and it pulls from sites like Craigslist, like Career Builder. It also pulls from government websites and allows its subscribers to post job listings directly on the site. So it offers a variety of different options. And then finally is our social network. Our social network is pretty paired down. We do not allow our users to self-identify on the social network other than their JobScout username. They can send private messages to each other. They can also share their badges and they can search for people based on location, the kind of work that they're looking for, or the last lesson that they took. Again, this is an opportunity for our users to apply some of the skills that they are learning on our site in regards to social networking and online communication. So that is the JobScout platform kind of in a nutshell. I'm going to try and turn off my screen sharing here and go back to our initial presentation. Oh, it looks like somebody already did that for me. Thank you very much. So as I mentioned, JobScout has a variety of lessons on the site. We actually have 39 lessons to date and we will be expanding those offerings within the calendar year. We have mapped all of those lessons to the California Digital Literacy Framework. California is the only state in the nation that has adopted a digital literacy framework. And it was created at the state level actually with help by the Link America Foundation. In addition to the user-facing platform, we do also offer data analytics and that is offered on a subscription basis for organizations that are interested. We can also create new content and white label versions of JobScout for subscription organizations that are interested. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about our success-to-date trail was recognized this year by Phoenix for our educational application. And we are also statewide in the California library. So you can find us in libraries across the state. And we are partnering with organizations now across the nation and other organizations besides libraries in California. So that was JobScout. I wanted to thank you all again for having me today. And please let me know if you have any questions and feel free to contact me if you are interested in taking another look at JobScout or if you have questions about what it has to offer. Great. Thanks Stephanie for sharing that. I mean we really only got to get a very small glimpse inside the tool right now. And we have quite a few questions coming in. And I want to get to some of the ones I think we can answer most easily I should say and that also may be questions many people are having. So there is this mention that JobScout also has a mobile app. Is that available for download and on what platform? So the app is available for download. It is available for iOS and on Android. So you can access it in the App Store or in the Google Play Store. Great. And also just had a question about that API with Simply Hired. Was that an open source API that you were able to use to connect with their information? Or did you have to contract with them with a fee to get it? Or maybe you can't tell us that but it was an interesting question. No that is a good question. That is another reason why we use Simply Hired because Simply Hired does have an open API. So it is open source which is a great resource. Great, great. And then there are people asking some questions. I'm going to try to group them all together here about people maybe needing help with the different logins and sometimes maybe it being frustrating for people to have an additional login or people maybe not having all of the tech skills to create that login and then also maybe tying into that the assistance that maybe a library or nonprofit staff could help provide. So how do you address that frustration since your tool also has a login? Absolutely. So we work on the trainer model. So when an organization first starts using JobScout or they subscribe to JobScout, we host a training with the staff, show them how to use the tool, show them how to log on, and explain these issues to them about first time users so that they can be available to first time users in their organization, active anchor institutions, and help those users get started for the first time. That's about a 5-10 minute process. After that we found that users are usually able to take the reign and continue on their discovery path on their own. Great. So it sounds like you are giving some support to libraries and organizations that are agreeing to use the tool and then those libraries then provide the support to people to get them started and then they can become pretty self-sufficient after that for the most part. Go ahead. One of the other things we found is that libraries have used the tool in a workshop setting also. So it's great to use them in a workshop setting. They've run through some of the lessons in person and that also gets users started. Great. All right. And then I have one other question that's come in specific to JobScout. You have this custom resume tool and a way for people to directly submit their resumes to a job listed through Simply Hired. But if they want to apply for something that's not listed on Simply Hired, is there a way for them to use that same resume to apply for that job either through the JobScout tool or by downloading it and submitting elsewhere? So they can download the resume that is created for them in our resume builder. They can save it to a thumb drive. They can also print a hard copy or save it to a desktop. In terms of our application management tool, the One Stop Job Shop, all of the tools on JobScout are integrated with each other. So since we use Simply Hired for our job search tool, those are the only listings that can be used through our application management tool right now. So those are the only listings that a user can apply directly for on the site. Great. And still some more questions trickling. And I think this will be the last one for JobScout and then I want to bounce one back to Shannon as our library expert on the panel today. But can you just again tell us what the cost is to use JobScout and who can use it? Like is it limited to a particular audience or is it wide open? So JobScout, the user-facing platform on JobScout is available for free. So anybody can go and log on, create an account. We are also available in Spanish. So if you go to myjobscout.org-ef, you can also use the tool in Spanish. So organizations subscribe to JobScout to use Compass, which is our data analytics tool. And that tool allows organizations to see how JobScout is being used in their organizations basically by their clients. And we provide high level data in terms of how many lessons are being completed, how many resumes are being sent out, etc. And also that subscription provides support from our team. So that subscription allows us to come in and do those trainings that I was talking about. But if you just want to go ahead and poke around on JobScout and start creating profiles, you can go ahead and do that. Great. So just to kind of summarize that, JobScout is a free tool that's available. There's an option to get some additional benefits with the cost, but there's not a limit to anybody who can use it online. And that can be for libraries or nonprofits or even individuals can use that. So thanks for clarifying that. So Shannon, I want to send one question back to you. And we actually have just a minute or so to answer this question. But do you have any last words of wisdom for any of the nonprofits or libraries that are listening? One of the big questions that has really come up is how do we provide the assistance, that one-on-one assistance, and how do we help connect people to these tools? So maybe you could speak to that a little bit in your closing statement here. Sure. My advice is to definitely know what your community needs, and that begins by getting out into the community, whether it's meeting with the local unemployment office and finding out what your unemployment rate is, what kind of services are offered at the local community college and churches and other kind of nonprofits in the area. And then you just really have to find a way to work with library management to open up your time if it will allow you to do one-on-one appointments. I know I had to work with library management to decide how much time I could do on desk, how much time I could do speaking in the community, how much time I could do with doing one-on-one appointments. And you don't have to be an expert on everything. That was the very first thing that I learned was that I wasn't going to be an expert on LinkedIn, but I would be able to connect people to LinkedIn experts. I would either have them come in and speak at the library or watch YouTube videos or use our databases. And if they aren't our residents, you also have to know resources in the community that are free or that are available for anybody. And it works. And then again, listen to what they want because I do see a lot of repeat customers. And I do see, it does fluctuate with how the economy is, how the village is doing where I live, how the state of Illinois is doing. There's a lot of different factors. You just have to kind of stay up on it as best you can and ask for help. I ask for help from my neighboring libraries, from librarians throughout the country, from ALA, from ILA. You just have to start forming some partnerships and ask because I'm here to help. Please contact me if you have any questions at all. Great. Thank you so much. And we are just about out of time. And we have so many questions. We'll be following up with you afterwards. And our presenters have agreed to help answer some of those questions. So we'll be getting back to you. And you'll also be receiving an archive of this webinar, including a recording in the PowerPoint slides and all of the links and ideas that were included. So you'll be getting that by the end of the week. Now I'll be giving you, at the end of this, if you'll stay on the line, you'll get a chance to give us some feedback about this webinar that always helps us improve those that we offer in the future. So please stay on the line to take that. But first, I just wanted to mention a couple of the upcoming webinars that might be of interest to libraries and those nonprofits that are on the line, one on May 1 which is tomorrow on Making Your Grant Request Sparkle, and then one on May 28 which will talk about the Summer Food Service Program and a special app that is being used to help direct youth to meals, so helping youth to find a meal. And that will be on May 28. Then you'll be hearing more about that soon. I also just want to take a moment to thank ReadyTalk, our webinar sponsor today. Thank you also to Shannon and Stephanie for sharing your expertise and understanding of this subject. And thank you to all of you for taking time to come and learn something new with us today. I hope you have a few new ideas to take back to your library or to your nonprofit. Please again, take a minute to tell us what you think about the survey that should pop up as soon as the webinar here closes. And I just want to say thank you. Have a great day, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.


Russia wants to take Bakhmut until May the 9th. The Kremlin wants to capture Bakhmut until May the 9th. President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin allegedly intends, after this victory, to announce the end of the war. The edition RBC Ukraine writes that after the capture of the Ukrainian fortress city, the Russian army may lose the ability to continue the offensive. Back in the summer of 2022, the advance of the invaders stalled after the battles for the Severodynensk agglomeration. It is assumed that the invaders will begin to lose the already occupied territories of Ukraine after the counter-offensive of the armed forces of Ukraine. Thus, the announcement of the end of the war will only be an attempt to gain a foothold in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. If Moscow follows this scenario before the counter-offensive of the armed forces of Ukraine, then there is a risk that world politicians will begin to put pressure on Kiev to start negotiations instead of hostilities. The situation may increase the number of peacekeeping countries which will have negative consequences for Ukraine. In this regard, the task of Kiev is to keep Bakhmut and prevent Moscow from getting at least some kind of victory before the start of the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian army. Ukraine has said that it still controls the critical road of life, resupply route that runs west out of besieged Bakhmut. The city is the focus of fighting in Ukraine and although the Kremlin's Wagner mercenary group is making steady progress towards capturing the whole city, Ukrainian officials have insisted that their forces were not cut off.


Let's see. Does seeing a psychologist mean you're weak and can't handle your own problems? No, no, no, no. I mean, specialization is important. And knowledge is important. And you can't know everything. And it's like, I should have figured this all out myself. Why do I need a read-on rant? Well, because she figured it out already. And she's going to give you shortcuts. And most of us, 99.99% of us, well, 99.999% of us, couldn't figure it out for ourselves. So, absolutely, you want to learn from philosophers. And you don't say to yourself, I'm weak because I have to learn stuff from philosophers. You have to learn from mathematicians. If you want to study engineering, you have to learn from engineers. And when it comes to your own psychology, particularly if you have real issues that you develop because of the irrationality of the culture, because of the irrationality of the world, because of the irrationality of how you grew up, then there are experts who can help you deal with that. Why not take advantage of it? It's absolutely not weakness. And there are certain psychological issues that are very difficult or almost impossible to do by yourself. They're too deep. They're too hard. Didn't I say psychologists? Psychologists, right? So it's absolutely not weak to see a psychologist. I think it's the contrary. If somebody says, I know I've got problems, but I'm going to tough them out. Why? Life is not about toughening stuff out. Life is not about struggle. Life is not about pain. Life is not about suffering. A psychologist, a good one, right? Can help you overcome the challenges that you face quicker, easier than use one? I said philosophers. Okay, I meant philosophers at first. Because we use philosophers to gain knowledge. We use mathematicians to gain knowledge. Engineers to gain knowledge. Specialization is wonderful. Why not use psychologists to gain knowledge about something that is psychological in nature? So absolutely it's not weak on the contrary. Not going to a psychologist is weak. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect. Not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence. And does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Alright, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  But at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at your own book show dot com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals and show your support for all for the work, for the value. Hopefully you're receiving from this.  Then you should subscribe because that way you'll know when to show up. You'll know what shows are on when they're on. You'll get notified. So, yes, like, share, subscribe, support, like, share, subscribe, support. There you go. Easy. Do one or all of those, please.


So my question then is, how many teams do you think are trying to win the World Series? Because Jake and I did this, and I still think that number is pretty low. I think there's teams that aren't trying to win the World Series this year at all costs that will just be happy to make the playoffs, get that first three games set, make some extra dough off the TV rights, and all the money that comes with it. Maybe win it. Be a GM or coach that can say we made the playoffs. We made the playoffs, get a couple of money, and they're kind of satisfied with that in this weird 60 game set. The teams that I think are like all in that are going to overpay, like you're saying, aren't a lot. Like the Yankees got them, right? The A's. I don't know what the A's like 100% needs are, but I'd put them in this bucket. The Twins, the Reys. That's all I have for the AL. I think the Astros want to win the World Series. I don't think they're going to make trades at all costs. They did it last year with Granky. They've had a lot of stuff going on. They might just stand still and let the dice roll on this season. In the NL, you got the Braves, the Cubs, Dodgers. Padres. No. I think they're very satisfied to dip their toe in the playoffs this year and be like, look how fun that was. Let's build on that. Same with the White Sox. I have them in the same bucket. Dude, I feel like that was their mindset last year. Like this is their year to go, man. They don't, like this is the window. They've gotten hot now. They're third in the NL in winning percentage. They know they're going to make the playoffs. It sure seems that way. Why not go get somebody to help your team out?  I agree. And I'm not, they could buy and I wouldn't be shocked. I'm just saying I could also see them being like, let's roll the dice. This has been a lot of fun, but we had someone say, go get Lance Lynn on the Padres and we're like, that'd be fun. Yeah, I can totally see that. I'm looking at, I count 11 teams who I think really want to try to win the World Series. I think seven of them are in the AL and four of them are in the NL. Maybe you include St. Louis in there because they're always hunting for World Series there. That's what they do. So maybe I'll go 12. I could see them going and looking for bullpen help. You know, Jordan Hicks is out. They've only played 18 games still. I mean, 12 games less than most teams. Don't really know what they're going to do yet. But they, you know, they got a lot of games. They need some help. They could be buyers. And I mean, are you, are you saying that the World Series, the serious World Series teams are going to be willing to pay a larger price? No, I think prices will be down across the board. Okay, because I, again, I don't know about that because when we talk about, you know, Trevor just says there's 12, 13 sellers, whatever people buyers interested in doing it. We're still up to one and a half sellers, something like that. And I don't know. I mean, if you're the White Sox and they were the story, they were the story of baseball outside of the Padres until the Padres kind of won up them a little bit. But they've got so much talent on that team. And I mean, every team needs pitching. So let's say it's someone like Michael Givens. I think the White Sox are going to be talking and if they have the prospect that the Orioles want, I think that has them just as in as the Yankees or the World Series contender teams you listed. Yeah, it depends on, I mean, obviously it depends on the return. Sure. But it's just who, I think that the returns are always lower than people expect. Besides the sunny gray deal, that's the only one that has surprised people. The Strowman deal as well. The Mets got blasted for that. Kind of rightfully so now. Yeah. A lot of things considering. But other than that, it's always a little lesser than you think. And I think in this, in this market, it's going to be even less. There's less people to choose from. It's kind of simple as that. I think we just got to see how it goes. I think this week's going to be big. I think, I honestly think there's going to be a flurry of moves here at the end. Just because of the expanded playoffs, man. You going anywhere? You ready to be on call in case there's a blockbuster? Nobody wants to watch me play baseball anymore. No, no, no, no. On the mic. We're on call this weekend. You're talking baseball. You don't play baseball. If there's a big trade. I don't. We got to jump on the mic. Oh, let's go, baby. You're on call. That's what I'm saying. I didn't know where you were going with that. Clearly I don't play anymore. I was horrible two years ago. Yeah. Surely I'm horrible.