Five Years at Our Harlem Branch:
A Counselor's Reflections

by David Madison, Ph.D.

Ruth Robbins is a Certified Five O’Clock Club counselor and valued member of the counseling staff at the main branch in Manhattan. There she rubs shoulder every week with middle level and senior professionals, a third of whom earn over $100,000. But about five years ago Ruth began leading small group strategy sessions at Workforce America, the Club’s not-for-profit arm that meets weekly in Harlem. There she worked with adults who earn less than $30,000 and who want to move “from jobs to careers.” The weekly charge at Workforce is $3.00.

As her tenure with Workforce came to an end recently, we asked Ruth to share her thoughts on a counseling experience that, in some ways, presented unique challenges.

While Five O’Clock Club methodology and job search techniques are taught at Workforce—exactly the same as at the other physical and “Insider” branches of the Club—Ruth notes that the foundation of a correct job search, assessment, has been handled differently at Workforce. Because attendees cannot afford the one-on-one hourly rate for assessment with a counselor, Ruth points out that “…assessment is actually done in the small groups, or by breaking the main group into pairs. In the small group clients are asked to describe four of their Seven Stories—and the group helps do the analysis. Or when we break the main group into pairs, your partner gives feedback. Then you switch roles, and the counselor is there to help identify the key elements.”  

I saw people with more guts and ambition than I see at the executive branch of  The Five O’Clock Club.

And the assessment can be a transforming experience. Ruth recalls one client “…who was very negative. But the group’s reaction to three of her Seven Stories was so positive, so reinforcing, that there was a total turnaround in her attitude. She felt like a worthwhile person, and her anger dissipated. That,” Ruth points out, “is a victory. You don’t always have a dramatic landing, but you do have people seeing the world with new eyes. You have work-in-progress.” 

Ruth found that the Workforce participants enthusiastically embraced the entire Five O’Clock Club methodology to lift themselves out of non-career jobs. “People who stuck with the program had a ‘can-do, ambitious, scale-the-wall attitude.’ I learned about the huge difficulties that some people have to face and overcome—people who did not have access to the best education, or even to adequate health care. There were some very tough stories. But the people tried harder. I saw people with more guts and ambition than I see at the executive branch of the Five O’Clock Club.”

One underemployed woman who held several low-level jobs learned the lesson of targeting properly. She leveraged part of her experience to land a job as assistant in the radiology department of a major hospital—and was tapped for advanced training. Another moved from a customer service job into a human resources support position. Yet another Workforce client had held a part-time job doing demographic research for a hospital. She positioned herself so strongly and had done so much Internet research that she had no trouble sounding like an insider. She landed a position with a consumer marketing research firm.     

Thus the success stories emerging from the Harlem program continue to build. Sam Johnson’s move from book store clerk into banking is described in the next page, and in the coming months The Five O’Clock News will carry more profiles of hard work and perseverance at the Workforce program. 

Ruth admits her misgivings at the start. “I was apprehensive. Would I be able to run a group?—don’t forget this was not too long after I finished Five O’Clock Club training. Would I be able to establish my credibility? But everyone saw how great our system is. After the very first night I said, ‘I’m in heaven—I love this.’” And she was inspired during her years with Workforce by its leader, Deborah Brown. “She’s the best. Her vision and abilities as a counselor make people want to come back. She’s such a mentor.” 

During the summer of 2001 the new National Executive Director of Workforce, Dwight Clarke, launched a fundraising campaign and outreach efforts in the Harlem community and beyond. As Ruth moves on to new counseling roles, she wishes Workforce well: “It’s such a worthwhile program—there should be lines around the block for this.”