Event Recap: The Working Class

About a month ago, we hosted The Working Class™ (patent pending): a one-night workshop designed as the first step towards taking control of your career (or at least the first step towards refreshing it). People from all different career levels and industries dedicated an evening to investing in themselves.
We used a lofty West Loop, Chicago event space booked through Breather, which was the perfectly creative setting for a career-focused evening. (The buzz that came from being surrounded by some of the city’s most happening restaurants and bars only added to the exciting energy to our group.)
But have no fear, we’re not just writing about this so you can kick yourself for not signing up (maybe just a little) but to share with you some of the important things we learned, things that we facilitated but can really only come from the power of a group:

1. An exercise in aligning your values to your decision-making can really help to illuminate the next steps that then seem like they should have been obvious.
2. People miss Bugles (yes, we had snacks). via GIPHY
3. People take their career so seriously that they didn’t even finish all the wine. You all are invested and engaged!
4. You can feel better even after just taking the first step. By attending the workshop, our participants had taken the first step of controlling their work lives, and that energy was contagious.

And potentially the biggest: we are all in this together. No one is alone in their career strife. In a room with 25 people in 25 different jobs, we were all able to find a common cause. Trying to figure out your next career move (big or small) is such a common experience, and it turns out that learning from our peers is one of the most helpful things we can do (as well as one of the most cathartic). We can learn from one another if the opportunities are made available to us!
We’ll leave you with a quote from one of our participants (because this is a little about how great we are), “John and Jodi are a great team, and by the end of the class I had a better idea of where I should focus my job search efforts.”  (We’re blushing!)
What focus would you like to see for our next class? Networking, negotiating, leadership/management skills, etc? Let us know in the comments!