Alisha Unick

Responsibilities

I worked with individuals with disabilities, helping them get and maintain employment in different capacities. I worked as a Job Coach in which I would go to the consumers place of employment and help support them navigate any barriers to their stability. The other part of my job would was working with the job development team. This meant that I would participate in meetings with the consumers and work to learn what their goals were, where they would like to work, and help build skills for employment searches.

Accomplishments

My greatest accomplishment was building consumers confidence in their abilities and their work. One individual I worked with had a decently complex job that required computer skills, organization, and assessing the information that they were looking at to make sure that it was correct in the hard copies as well as the online version. They were also very new to the job when I first started coaching with them. This meant providing more intensive supports - prompting, pointing, explaining. As we continued to work together, they were able to build their skills and in turn, build their self-confidence. The most recent time I was able to work with this individual, they demonstrated lots of independence in their tasks and I could tell that they had more trust in themself and their abilties.

Learning experience

I learned a lot about professionalism and the fact that every place you work will look a little different in the level of professionalism that is required and what it means to be professional. It is important to learn early on what your organizations communication style is and their views on professionalism. Are they more relax or are there strict protocols? How do they ask questions? What methods do they use to communicate? These are all important to learn so that you can integrate into the new environment and do your best.

What advice would you give?

It is a very broad major. If you know what you want to do, that can be exciting. If you don't, that can be a bit overwhelming. Take it one step at a time. Learn what you like and go from there. If you like working with a specific population, explore different types of work you could do with them. If you like a specific kind of work, explore different populations you could work with.