What we look for:
Men and women who want to share their knowledge with a small business owner.
Recruiting is at the heart of providing quality counseling. We have identified 137 different counselor skills and our recruitment efforts are focused on filling any gaps, providing a full range of business disciplines and attracting volunteers representing the faces and ethnicities in our area. This allows us to provide award winning service to our clients.
While the majority of our counselors are retired, several are still working part time and some full time. Our younger volunteers help keep us current in today's technology environment and fast paced business practices.
Many counselors become involved in our workshop program and this helps them learn additional skills. We include an educational portion at our interesting and informative monthly meetings. The meetings also add to cohesion of our membership.
We have a strong indication of client and counselor satisfaction. We pride ourselves on our 75% client follow-on rate. Many of our client sessions involve co-counseling. This gives the client additional expertise and is also an area where counselors learn additional skills.
New counselors are expected to become involved in chapter activities. This includes counseling, attending meetings and workshops. When necessary, these requirements can be modified to fit into their work schedule. All counselors are rated each fiscal year against these requirements with allowances made for work or health requirements.
Fairfield County SCORE has 50 members who contributed almost 10,000 hours, 36% counseling and 64% other activities. We held more than 3,000 client sessions and attracted 568 attendees to our 22 workshop presentations. Nationally, 10,500 men and women volunteer in 389 offices throughout the country.
SCORE volunteers enjoy a variety of rewards:
- Enjoy the satisfaction of contributing to the success of others.
- Gain community recognition and respect as a mentor.
- Provide leadership in the community.
- Grow professionally and personally.
- Participate in lifelong learning.
- Make new friends.
To become a SCORE volunteer: Contact our membership chairman, Roy Anderson at royandersonsr@yahoo.com and send a resume. Or phone him at 203-831-0748. He will arrange for you to attend one of our monthly meetings so you can get a feel as to who we are and what we are about. If you are still interested, a meeting with our membership committee will be arranged.
This meeting is an informal process that permits both SCORE and the applicant to determine whether there is a good fit. Transferring business skills into counseling and mentoring situations requires different and additional skills than a business owner or manager may have used. It is also an opportunity for you to learn what we expect from our members and for you to decide whether SCORE can meet your volunteer expectations.
If you have been accepted as a volunteer, there will be training and orientation to enable you to further understand SCORE's mission, services and opportunities within the organization. All business counselors honor a code of ethics that ensures client confidentiality and professional conduct.
This will be followed by a mentoring program where you will be asked to sit in on five to seven counseling sessions. These sessions will help to show you different counseling approaches to client requests. They will also show the importance of good listening, interviewing and problem-solving practices. Finally, they will also help you to meet other counselors so you can co-counsel with them when you get your own clients.
As a SCORE volunteer you can:
- Share your success and expertise.
- Develop and present workshops.
- Provide online counseling directly from your home or office.
- Serve in a leadership capacity with SCORE.
Our training, orientation and mentoring programs have been developed to help you give the same quality counseling that has brought Fairfield County SCORE national recognition.
Contact SCORE to Get Started. Help Make Our Client's Dreams Come True.
