The Ten Step Process for Overcoming Barriers to Employment

excerpted from the book, No One is Unemployable
The Ten Step Process
  1. Identify the Barrier

  2. Identify the Candidate's Perception of the Barrier

  3. Identify the Employer's Perception of the Barrier

  4. Determine Which Approach to Use in addressing the Barrier

  5. Eliminate the Employer's Concerns
  6. Identify the Candidate's Selling Points That Meet the Employer's Needs

  7. Turn the Candidate's Barriers into Selling Points
  8. Put it All Together in the Candidate's Words
  9. Practice the Answer Until it is a Natural Response

  10. Carefully Match the Candidate to Appropriate Employers
Overcoming barriers to employment is a challenging, yet central part of helping candidates secure and maintain employment. Whether your candidates are those coming out of homelessness, upwardly mobile executives, inner-city youths seeking their first job, or others, they will experience barriers that could hinder them from securing, maintaining, and advancing in employment. The following section presents The Ten Step Process for overcoming employment barriers, which has proven to be effective with even the most complex issues. In Section V, you will find the Encyclopedia of Barriers, which contains more than eighty barriers with sample solutions, which were developed according to The Ten Step Process. However, this book is not just about the solutions; more importantly, it is about the process by which those solutions were developed and how you can use it to develop solutions for your candidates' barriers.

We strongly encourage you to read the entire Ten Step Process. However, for those who wish to go straight to the Encyclopedia of Barriers, we have provided a brief summary of The Ten Step Process to expose you to how the solutions in the Encyclopedia of Barriers were developed. After reviewing the summary, if you have any additional questions about a step, read the corresponding chapter in The Ten Step Process.


Step 1. Identify the Barrier
Correctly identifying the candidate's barriers is the first step in making him employable. Identifying barriers is an on-going process, and as you work with the candidate you will continually become aware of new issues. In chapter one, we have provided a list of questions that will help you identify barriers by considering the employer's needs and concerns. Your assessment of the candidate must be done from the employer's perspective, since the employer is the one who determines whether an issue is a barrier or not. Many barriers can be removed before the candidate begins job searching, while others will require a good answer in the interview.


Step 2. Identify the Candidate's Perception of the Barrier
Once you have identified a barrier, you must determine how the candidate views the "problem" in order to determine how best to help him resolve it. We have identified four common responses: 1) the candidate is unaware of the barrier, 2) he feels it cannot be solved, 3) he thinks it is the employer's problem not his, or 4) he is aware of the problem but needs your help to solve it. This chapter will offer ideas on how best to deal with each perception. It is important to complete this step, because the candidate, not the employment specialist, must take "ownership" of his job search and future.


Step 3. Identify the Employer's Perception of the Barrier
Understanding the employer's needs and concerns is the key to correctly identifying barriers and developing effective solutions. It is important to remember that what is a barrier to one employer may not be a barrier to another. For this reason, identifying the employer's perception of various barriers occurs throughout the job search as the candidate approaches new employers. This chapter will provide you with ideas on how to anticipate the employer's perception by understanding her needs and concerns.


Step 4. Determine Which Approach to Use in Addressing the Barrier
This chapter deals with the core information of The Ten Step Process. Some barriers are easy to identify and resolve, while others require a great deal of creativity and resourcefulness. We have identified five basic "approaches" for overcoming barriers. They are: Provide a Resource, Change Where You Look, Adjust the Candidate's Outlook, Teach a New Skill, and Develop a Good Answer.

How you approach each barrier will depend on many factors, including whether the barrier can be resolved before the job search begins or whether it must be addressed during the job search. For barriers that can be resolved before the job search begins, you may:
Provide a Resource
Change Where You Look
Adjust the Candidate's Outlook
Teach a New Skill
Using any one of these four approaches will require you to use Steps 1-7 and Step 10 of The Ten Step Process. As a result, the employer may never become aware that the issue was a barrier. For barriers that must be addressed during the job search, you may:
Adjust the Candidate's Outlook
Develop A Good Answer

To Develop A Good Answer, you must use Steps 1-10 of The Ten Step Process.

In this chapter we teach you to choose the approach(es) you will use to address various barriers. We also provide examples and detailed explanations of how to implement each approach. We have found that all the barriers in this book can be addressed by using one or a combination of these five approaches. However, we encourage you to be creative in overcoming your candidate's barriers.


Step 5. Eliminate the Employer's Concerns
As an employment specialist, it is important to remember that you have two clients—the candidate and the employer. If you lose credibility with the employer, you hurt yourself and future candidates. For this reason, it is important that you never encourage your candidates to lie. In fact, you must actively discourage it. There are honest solutions to every barrier. These solutions begin with addressing the employer's concern or need, not merely her stated requirements or questions. This chapter will show you how to do that by building on Step 4.


Step 6. Identify the Candidate's Selling Points which Meet the Employer's Needs
You must market your candidate as the best applicant for the job, not merely as someone without barriers. It is not enough just to remove the negative barriers; you must also identify positive selling points. In this chapter we will teach you how not only to identify selling points, but also to quantify them so that the candidate stands out from the others. For example, "I'm dependable," becomes "On my last job I was regularly to work 5 to 15 minutes early," or "I only missed two days of work in a year on my last job."


Step 7. Turn the Candidate's Barriers into Selling Points
Often the very issues which you identify as barriers can be turned into selling points if you match the candidate to the right employer, or if the solution to the barrier demonstrates a skill that the employer needs. We call this turning lemons into lemonade. Chapter 7 will discuss how this is done.


Step 8. Put it All Together in the Candidate's Words
If you eliminate a barrier using Provide a Resource, Change Where You Look, or Teach a New Skill, you can skip Steps 8 and 9 and proceed directly to Step 10. For barriers that require you to use Develop a Good Answer, or Adjust the Candidate's Outlook, you will need to complete steps 8, 9, and 10. For either of these approaches, the candidate must demonstrate or explain in the interview why the employer's concerns are not valid in his case. To do this, the results of each previous step must be included in the candidate's response. This chapter will show you how to put it all together in the candidate's words and warn you of pitfalls. To assist you with putting it all together, we have provided an Overcoming Barriers Worksheet at the end of each chapter, along with an explanation of how to apply each step by using the worksheet. A master form, which you may copy and use is provided at the back of the book.


Step 9. Practice the Answer Until it is a Natural Response
When using Develop a Good Answer or Adjust the Candidate's Outlook, the candidate's discussion with the employer regarding the barrier must sound honest and natural. If it sounds like a memorized script, the employer may assume it is a lie. This chapter gives ideas on how to help the candidate develop a natural sounding response.


Step 10. Carefully Match the Candidate to Appropriate Employers
Matching the candidate to appropriate employers requires accurately assessing your candidate, carefully listening to the employer, and a lot of practice. Our colleagues in Human Resources tell us that this skill, above all others, is what separates the real professionals in the field of job placement from those they want to avoid. This chapter examines various reasons candidates are considered a bad match and gives tips on how to make a good match.


These steps are designed to be used as a complete process. If you skip a step or do not thoroughly apply a step, the process will NOT work. If you find that you are having trouble developing creative solutions, read the entire Ten Step Process again completely and ask yourself if you are using the whole process correctly.


For more information, buy our book, No One is Unemployable

Barriers List

10 Step Process

Three Option Rule

WorkNet Model

Recommended Workshop Schedule

50/50 Rule

Saying the Hard Things

Fact Finding Phone Call