Hoping to tackle two local issues at one time, an Evanston-based consulting company announced last month it wanted to hire unemployed workers as the newest nurses in its nursing homes and other extended-stay health care facilities.
The company, Extended Care Clinical LLC, promised free training for qualified applicants and a guaranteed job upon certification.
Since then, more than 100 applicants have contacted the company, said Kathy Brockman, the company’s corporate executive recruiter. And reading their stories, such as the one from a family of six with two unemployed parents, can be tough, she said.
“If you can walk away unscathed and not crying, you’re pretty fortunate,” she said.
Sunday’s application deadline marked the end of the first phase for the program, which Extra Care Clinical is calling “Pay it Forward.” Once Brockman’s hiring committee reviews the applications, it will conduct interviews with qualified applicants. Soon after, the committee will notify successful applicants and training will begin.
It’s too early to tell how many applicants will meet the committee’s criteria or exactly how long the selection process will take, but Brockman said she hopes to notify the company’s newest hires by the holiday season.
“It’d be a wonderful Christmas present,” she said.
Wilbur Wright College in Chicago and Everest College in Merrillville, Ind., are providing the training classes, and they’re teaming up with Extended Care Clinical to foot the bill.
The program is being launched amidst high unemployment both nationally and locally. Many of the applicants are highly educated, including some with master’s degrees, and they lost their jobs due to downsizing, Brockman said.
At the Evanston workNet Center, part of the state’s unemployment office network, the number of jobless workers coming in for help remains well above typical levels, said Center Manager Al Saulys. Still, some sectors of the economy are hiring more than others, and health care is one of them, he said.
“Health care is one area that there certainly is a huge demand for and will continue to remain strong,” Saulys said.
Demand for nurses, in particular, is on the rise across the country, Brockman said. That’s happening for two reasons, explained Bernadette Sanner , a nursing administrative consultant for NorthLake Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a facility managed by Extended Care Clinical.
First, baby boomers like herself are aging, said Sanner, a former Air Force nurse during the Vietnam War. Secondly, while dramatic improvements in medical technology are improving the lives of patients across the country, they’re making nursing a more complicated job that requires more training, she said.
Given that demand, the program is helping far more people than just the applicants who get jobs, said Sanner, who is working with Brockman on implementing the program.
Brockman and Saulys also said they think this is the first program of its kind. And even though “her baby” is still in its infancy, Brockman said she hopes the idea will spread far beyond its Evanston roots.
“I really want to set this off as a wave across the country,” she said. “I don’t want it to be a little ripple in Lake Michigan. I want it to be a tsunami.”
